Hildebrand/Story

When Hildebrand arrived at the Royal Academy, it was while the student and professors were all attending the advancement ceremony, leading to the corridors of the academy being completely empty. This comes as a disappointing surprise for the prince, who expected some kind of welcome.

Once in the small hall, he is further surprised that his head attendant Arthur does not have a seat, but remains standing behind him the entire time, the same as his guard knights. Only his scholar Dankmar would sit down during the gathering, but in a concealed position under the table, so he could help the prince out, should his memory falter, like a prompter. While his retainers state they trust him to pull off the greetings on his own, they also say that it is their duty to make sure they are prepared for any eventuality so their charge would not be dishonored no matter what unexpected situations might occur. Hildebrand was nevertheless determined to get through the event solely on his own abilities, without having to fall back on his retainers' help.

Initially, he did very well with the studied greetings and prepared responses for all the greater duchies, since their many interactions with the Sovereignty meant he had plenty of information of them, but once the greetings moved on to the middle duchies, his knowledge became more and more fuzzy. By the time the ninth is introduced, he has no choice but to rely on Dankmar to fill in the blanks.

When it is time for the tenth duchy - Ehrenfest - to introduce themselves to him, the prince tenses up considerably. During his briefings, Anastasius warned his half-brother about Ehrenfest and Rozemyne in particular, describing her as "a dangerous individual who comes up with unthinkable ideas that cannot be dealt with normally", instilling both a sense of awe and nervousness in the boy.

Upon seeing the three siblings, Hildebrand is surprised and relieved to see the small, blue-haired girl who looks to be about his own age, since it means he is not the only child who has yet to turn 10 in this place. Based on their appearances, he also assumes the smaller girl to be the younger sister Charlotte and the taller, blond girl with the indigo eyes to be Rozemyne. Apparently his brother's warnings did not even include the most cursory mentions of Rozemyne's appearance, leading the third prince to mistake the two sisters for each other.

While the vast majority of students are still busy with their lessons, Hildebrand secretly visits the Royal Academy's library with only a small group of knights and bringing the entire group to just ten people. During one of his visits, he is surprised to run into one of the Ehrenfest archduke candidates. After the obligatory noble greetings are exchanged, the girl, stating she does not want to inconvenience the prince, quickly retreats to the second floor with one of the library magic tools after ordering the other to guide Hildebrand.

Hildebrand secretly watches her read. While the girl herself does not notice, one of her attendants does.

A couple of days later, Hildebrand notices the absence of Schwartz and Weiss during one of his secret visits to the library and inquires of Professor Solange about this. He learns that by chance he had arrived while Rozemyne and Charlotte along with more Ehrenfest students were in a backroom changing the two magic tools into their new clothes. Hildebrand offers to leave, but his retainers are very curious to witness this, since they had previously worried about Ehrenfest's ability to provide the appropriate attire for the shumils. Due to their difference in rank, Rozemyne has no choice but to invite them in and hand the old clothes over to the royal attendants.

After he tells the kneeling Ehrenfest students to resume their work, the smaller of the two archduke candidates, whom he assumed to be Charlotte, remains standing aside. Since everyone else in the room appears busy either working on or observing the changing, except the girl, he moves over to her to talk. In the course of their conversation he shyly mentions that he heard that Rozemyne was already engaged and inquires whether any such plans existed for Charlotte. The girl tells him that while she was not aware of any such plan, it surely would be discussed during the Interduchy Tournament or Archduke Conference, leaving Hildebrand to dejectedly look down and whisper about being too young to be considered reliable.

Much to his surprise, the girl states that she does not believe that reliability is based solely on age and inquires whether she should ask Charlotte for the prince, greatly confusing him for a moment, until it finally clicks that he has in fact been speaking with Rozemyne and not Charlotte this entire time and had mistaken them based on their appearances. He quickly deflects and asks Rozemyne to keep this part of their conversation a secret.

After the changing is complete, Hildebrand is so enraptured by the shumils' cuteness that he reaches out to touch one of them. Rozemyne tries to warn him off, but is too late, resulting in the prince receiving a mild shock on his hands on account of not having permission to touch them, which surprises him and his retainers, since at the royal palace all magic tools are accessible to the members of the royal family. They strongly suggest that since the shumil are royal heirlooms, the prince would be more suited to being their master than Rozemyne. To their surprise, she agrees with them that it would not only be more appropriate, but also more convenient, listing out all the advantages this would bring, but also sees fit to state the disadvantages as well, like needing to provide a new set of clothes, the amount of mana it requires, and that the magic tools are only capable of referring to their primary master as "milady," regardless of gender.

The royal retainers balk at the time, effort, and resources it would require to provide a new set of clothes on short notice and at the effects that providing so much mana might have on their charge at such a young age, while the prince is quite disinclined to be called milady. As an alternative, Rozemyne suggests that Hildebrand could become a secondary master, provided he has affinities for both darkness and light, which the prince enthusiastically agrees to.

From then on, Hildebrand visits the library daily to stroke the two shumil, while providing them with mana.

During one of his visits, Rozemyne enters the library to inform Professor Solange that she and Lady Hannelore have settled for a date for their tea-party and that it would be in four days. Overhearing this, Hildebrand inquires whether he should stay away from the library on that day to not inconvenience them, but seeing as how part of the tea-party is to make Hannelore into a secondary master for the magic tools as well, Solange suggests to invite the prince too, which Rozemyne does. Hildebrand accepts the invitation, happy at the prospect, since there are so few places he can visit and so few things he can do here at the Royal Academy. He's also looking forward to having a tea party with someone he's not related to, since all of his previous tea-parties were only between his mother and him, or on rare occasions other relatives who came to visit.

Soon after, other students found out about Hildebrand often visiting the library and started flocking there, which made Hildebrand retreat to his villa and stop going to the library at all.

To compensate his former ally for the damage the purge has done to his duchy, King Trauerqual agreed to marry his son Hildebrand to Aub Ahrensbach's granddaughter and heir, once she ascends to the position of archduchess. To this end, the engagement of Letizia and Hildebrand has already been officially announced, which is exceptionally early for such an announcement. Hildebrand only had his official debut in the very same Archduke Conference, and Letizia isn't even old enough to attend the Royal Academy yet.

Hildebrand grew up to stories about how his mother overcame the engagement her family tried to press her into and managed to get together with the man she loved. In more recent history he was witness to his brother Anastasius going to great length to get together with his beloved. This resulted in Hildebrand coming to believe that despite what most nobles said love mattered for marriage after all and that one day he too would have some say in whom he will marry. He also believed that his future wife would marry into the royal family, and they would then live in the Sovereignty. As such, it comes as a big and very unwelcome surprise to him, when he learns that his marriage to Letizia, the future Aub Ahrensbach has been decided.

Privately, he wishes to marry Rozemyne instead, but with her betrothal to her adoptive brother Wilfried being announced the year before that was not a realistic wish to begin with. He believes that like him, she too has been forced into an unwanted engagement against her will by her guardians and would harbour misgivings alike to his own toward her situation. Regardless of his feelings, however, he strives to go along with what he's told since he was raised to be a loyal vassal to his father and wouldn't dare to defy a royal decree.

Despite his frustration about his engagement and the anxiety of being under the scrutiny of every archducal couple of the realm, he manages to perform his royal debut, including the music performance with aplomb, without letting his noble façade show any of his inner disquiet to the onlookers. The moment he is back in the privacy of his home with only his retainers present, however, this façade immediately crumbles, showing his true feelings to everyone present and immediately retreats to his hidden room.

Several days later, Commander Raublut requests an audience, which Hildebrand grants. Due to the pair knowing each other since Hildebrand's birth, the prince lets his guard down and accidentally allows some of his true feelings to show on his face for a moment, when Raublut congratulates him on his engagement. At the occasion, Raublut hands Hildebrand two packages, one containing a toy of some sort, like he did many times in the past, and another containing a secret message that Hildebrand is to only listen to in his hidden room. He also stresses that Hildebrand should listen very carefully since the recorded message can only be played a single time.

He also informs the prince that, in the coming semester in the Royal Academy, he is to gather information on Lady Rozemyne, that his sister-in-law Eglantine will be sent to the Royal Academy to teach the Archduke Candidate Course, and that a new female archnoble librarian would be appointed. He suspects that the latter assignment is due to Anastasius wishing to keep Eglantine away from other men as much as possible. It also serves as a useful test of Rozemyne, to see if she is willing to turn over mastership of the library magic tools Schwartz and Weiss, or is she will selfishly try to keep them to herself.

After Raublut leaves, Hildebrand goes to his hidden room to listen to the message. He is surprised that the massage is not from his father as he thought, but from Raublut himself. In it, he tells Hildebrand that should he truly wish to escape his engagement, he would need to become king himself, and that he could achieve this, if he were to locate and acquire the lost Grutrissheit. Raublut believes that should one of his sons find this bible, Zent Trauerqual would step down from his position in favour of that son without opposition. Hildebrand too thinks this will be the case, since when he spoke to his father in the past, it seemed to the prince that his father never wanted to become king, but was thrust into the position by circumstance and suffers greatly as a result of not having a Grutrissheit. So in Hildebrand's mind, aiming for the position of Zent would help both himself and his father. However, a part of him also clings to his education as a vassal and thus strongly opposes this ambition, leaving him torn between a course of action that would make everyone happy and allow him to make his own choices for his future and what he has been raised to do his entire life, namely letting others dictate his future.

Some days later, he is visited by his mother, whom he only rarely sees since he moved to his own royal villa after his baptism. Without stating any details, he confides in her that there is something he dearly wants and wonders if it really is alright to follow those selfish feelings. She takes this as a sign that despite being the king's son, her own Dunkelfelger blood is running strong in her son and advises him to always follow his own wishes and never give up, like a true Dunkelfelgerian. She also advises him on how he can gain allies to his cause by aligning their wishes with his own and making sure to always give something to them, since people are more likely to be of assistance if there is something in it for them, too. Thanks to the assurances and advice of his mother, Hildebrand is able to make up his mind. He will try his hardest to find the Grutrissheit, to cancel his and Rozemyne's engagements, and then to propose to her.

When he meets Rozemyne again for her third fellowship gathering, he notices her new hair-ornament made from five rainbow feystones. Since he does not believe any of her guardians would give her such a present so late in her life, he concludes that it came from her betrothed Wilfried, which causes a nasty burning sensation to rise up in him and makes him want to give her an even better gift himself, albeit he is able to keep his jealousy from showing on his face.

Due to being unable to enter the underground archive, be begged his parents to learn mana compression early and they agreed. As a consequence Hildebrand has been instructed in both the methods used by the royal family and Dunkelfelger. This knowledge and his own hard work quickly payed off and by the time the next archduke conference comes around, he is already able to enter the archive, alongside Anastasius, Eglantine, Rozemyne, Hannelore and his mother. Furthermore he diligently studied ancient languages, to be useful in the transcriptions being done there. He isn't yet skilled enough to make translations at a reasonably quick pace, but is well capable of transcribing the untranslated texts, to be worked on later outside the archive, or to pass them on to retainers of the royal family, skilled in the old dialects, but unable to enter the archive due to mana capacity or status.

During a break in their work, an ordonnanz informs them that Lady Detlinde has arrived in the library. Since the royal family wishes to keep it secret, that they have students and Hildebrand, who isn't even a student yet, helping them, Solange helps the children to sneak out of the archive without being seen, while Magdalena stays behind, since she is curious about this supposed Zent candidate.

To make sure nobody sees them from a window by chance, and to keep Rozemyne out of the intense sunlight, because of worries about her health, the group decides to wander into the forest. There one of Rozemyne's guard knights spots a small building, which they all go to investigate. Due to similarities of the entrance to that of Ehrenfest's temple, Rozemyne believes the windowless structure to be a shrine and they rest on it's steps until they receive word from Solange that Detlinde has left.

Upon their return, they resume their work in the archive, until everyone leaves in the evening.

In Rozemyne's fourth year at the Royal Academy, Hildebrand is one again chosen to oversee the academy for the royal family. Despite not being a student yet, he is given special permission to join the Dedication Ritual organized by Aub Klassenberg and Ehrenfest, albeit for health concerns, he will join the mednobles, rather than the more status appropriate ritual for archnobles and archduke candidates.

< Hildebrand