Melchior

Melchior (メルヒオール Meruhiooru) is the son of Sylvester and Florencia and the youngest member of the archduke's family.

Despite sharing the hair colour of his father, his facial features and blue eyes make him more reminiscent of his mother.

Melchior is very attached to his siblings and tries to spend as much time as he can with them, even trying to join them in their work and studies whenever he can and trying to find other ways to at least stay in the same room, even when they do things he can not help them with.

Like all Archduke Candidates of Ehrenfest, he lives and grows up in a building separate from the main castle to its north.

Since he would never have any opportunity to meet them before being baptized, Melchior was not told about any of his relatives in other duchies, except Constanze and her husband, who had came up in conversations previously.

During their visits to their younger brother, both Wilfried and Charlotte have often talked very positively about Rozemyne, but due to not being a blood-related sibling, she was not able to personally visit Melchior

He is eager to also join his siblings in performing religious ceremonies and is studying geography very diligently for this purpose. He is also looking forward to borrow the boards from his siblings from which they learned the necessary prayers. His parents have decided that he will only join in the ceremonies the following year, so he can get more used to moving and using his mana. Unlike with Charlotte, who had to stand in for her comatose sister right after her baptism, this year there is no pressing need to push such a difficult and exhausting task onto the boy right now.

In the meeting with his parents right after their return from the Interduchy Tournament, Melchior first learned that he had a cousin in Frenbeltag, much to his surprise. His parents explained why they didn't tell him about his relatives from other duchies in the past and said they would soon teach him about them.

Melchior's new room in the northern part of the Archduke Castle has been prepared while his siblings were at the Royal Academy and Interduchy Tournament. He is very excited to finally meet his adopted sister Rozemyne.

A few days before his baptism, Charlotte hosts a tea party for all four children of the archducal couple, where Rozemyne and Melchior finally meet face to face for the first time. The two get along very well. Melchior admits that he felt rather lonely ever since Charlotte moved from the children's rooms to the northern building and couldn't wait to move there too. After he mentions his fondness of books and stories of the gods to Rozemyne, she immediately tells her head attendant Rihyarda to bring the High Bishop's Bible from the temple, but relents after being reminded that this is a bad idea. Instead, she opts to tell her younger brother some stories of the gods from memory.

During the feast celebrating spring, Melchior manages to successfully hide his nervousness and finish his Baptism Ceremony with aplomb.

His father has decided that upon Rozemyne's coming-of-age and subsequent abdication of her post as High Bishop, Melchior will take over the position. In part for this reason, the temple is currently in the process of changing the roles of both the High Bishop and High Priest away from daily administrative work and focus almost entirely on providing mana, performing ceremonies, and leading the blue priests, with the grey priests taking over all the paper-work.

While his siblings are off to the Royal Academy for Rozemyne's and Wilfried's third terms and Charlotte's second term, Melchior is confined to the northern building almost immediately after their departure. He's not even permitted to go to the children's playroom. Despite their best efforts to make time, his parents are just too busy to visit him often, and thus solely in the company of his retainers and tutors, he soon grows lonely and depressed.

When his siblings finally return from the Royal Academy, he's overjoyed to be able to spend time with them. And since they too are told to not leave the northern building, they have plenty of time to catch up and spent time together.

Seeing how much work his siblings and parents have to do and feeling responsible for contributing as an archduke candidate of Ehrenfest, Melchior is eager also work for their duchy. In part to accommodate her younger brother's adorable request and in part to gain the help of his retainers for paper work in the temple, Rozemyne agrees to have him regularly visit the temple and work there from third to fifth bell. Melchior was already supposed to learn the necessary prayers to participate in this year's Harvest Festival, so Rozemyne intends to first have him learn the necessary prayers for that, while also dedicating some mana to the divine instruments to both alleviate the mana shortage and increase his chances of gaining a larger number of divine protections when he goes to the Royal Academy. His older retainers are rather reserved about the issue, but once they learn how praying, dedicating mana to the Divine Instruments, and doing temple work increases the chances of obtaining additional divine protections and that they will likely be able to re-do the ritual to obtain them, even the most opposed come around to being eager to visit the Temple. Rozemyne suggests that they work out a rotating schedule, so that each of them gets the chance to do so, rather than having the same people attend their lord for each visit.

Apart from this immediate concern, this arrangement will also have the added benefit of getting Melchior used to the Temple early, so his transition to becoming the High Bishop once Rozemyne comes of age will go more smoothly.

In the course of his visits to the Temple, Melchior also begins to donate mana to the Divine Instruments. Under Rozemyne's supervision, his first session transfers two small feystones worth of mana. When the Spring Prayer comes up in conversation, Melchior is eager to watch. Sylvester gives his permission for Melchior to accompany Rozemyne on her first leg of the journey, so he can watch the ritual being performed and see the Hasse monastery and orphanage, but refuses to allow his son to sleep there, and instead insists he be back in time for supper.

At such short notice, it is impossible to make ceremonial robes for Melchior, but Wilfried suggests he simply borrow Rozemyne's old robes, since she'll be wearing her high bishop's robe anyway. He is a little reluctant to do so when he learns that it is covered in flower-pattern embroidery, but ultimately his eagerness to join the Spring Prayer wins out over his embarrassment of wearing such feminine clothes and he asks Rozemyne to lend him her old robes.

Once at the monastery, some his his retainers appear displeased with how nobles and commoners not only eat in the same room, but at the same time, but Melchior himself doesn't seem to mind at all, showing only an expression of curiosity at all the new things to experience.


 * Zargerecht - Technically, Zargerecht is still Florencia's retainer and Melchior's tutor at the moment, but will become Melchior's head attendant upon his baptism.