Wilfried/Story

Wilfried is first introduced at Rozemyne's baptism ceremony. He takes Rozemyne from the celebration to play, dragging her away very quickly. Rozemyne tells him to slow down, but Wilfried just tells her she need to become faster to escape the adults and keeps dragging her along. Unfortunately for him, he does not know how fragile she is, and she faints on him. Before he fully realizes what happened, the boy ends up dragging her a short distance, scraping her face against the floor and causing the unconscious girl to bleed quite severely until Ferdinand shows up and heals her wounds. This leaves Wilfried, as well as his guard knight Lamprecht traumatized and very effectively ensures they treat Rozemyne with the utmost care for the forseeable future.

After Rozemyne moves into the castle, Wilfried gets jealous of Rozemyne, being allowed to enter Sylvester's office, talking (reporting) to Sylvester at the dinner table and her being able to leave the castle, already having been "given" a highbest and even being allowed to use it in the castle. He goes to complain about how unfair it is that she get's everything whenever he sees her, until she can't bear his petty whining anymore and suggests they switch places for one day.

The adults are very reluctant at first, knowing full well that there's no way Wilfried could ever do what Rozemyne does as he is at the moment, but Rozemyne manages to convince them to go along with this as a learning experience for him. And thus Wilfried becomes the High Bishop for one day, while Rozemyne goes on to live one day after Wilfried's daily schedule. While at the temple Wilfried is surprised by how much she does and knows and how little free time she actually has.

At the temple Wilfried shows a blatant disregard for anything an archduke candidate should be and tries to use his position to get out of any consequences for his misbehavior. This leads Ferdinand to fly to the castle and furiously demand that Wilfried be disinherited, believing the boy is beyond saving, shocking his parents who hadn't been aware of the problems until now. Rozemyne suspects that the fault lies not with Wilfried alone, but mainly with those around him, so she proposes he be tested. If he manages to fulfill two of his tasks during his remaining time in the temple it will show he has the motivation and ability to succeed in emergency measures to whip him into shape before the winter debut. Ferdinand is convinced that Wilfried will not pass this test, but agrees anyway.

When Wilfried spends his time with Ferdinand as part of Rozemyne's usual duties, he's reprimanded by him for his attitude towards working and studying. He is also surprised that the unbaptised children are able to read and do math better than him. Much to Wilfrieds surprise and dismay for the first time in his life he is unable to invoke his position to get out of his duties, at one point even being literally tied to a chair by Ferdinand. Even Rozemyne's attendants - mere commoners - refuse to give in to his antics and even withold his supper until he finishes his assigned taks.

Despite not knowing how much is on the line for him, he still manages to memorize one prayer and a simple tonal progression on the harspiel, thus just barely passing the test and thus avoids being disinherited and being sent to the temple as a blue priest.

While Wilfried is at the temple Rozemyne advices Wilfried's main tutor Moritz on teaching methods, provides him with teaching materials in the form of karuta, playing cards and a children's bible she all developed and together they write up a curiculum that will teach the boy the bare minimum of writing, math and harspiel necessary to not embarress himself and the archdukal family at the winter debut and in the winter playroom.

Following his day at the temple Florencia takes charge of her son's upbringing and Rihyarda is assigned to oversee Wilfried's attendants. Under her and Rozemyne's supervision anyone who lacks either the competence or the will to porperly raise the boy is ruthlessly removed in the end resulting in about half of Wilfried's former retainers being dismissed.

Now that he is finally achieving real progress his parents praise him for his accomplished tasks, bringing Wilfried much joy.

In the short time left before the winter debut, Rozemyne regularly taunts Wilfried whenever it seems that his motivation is flagging and eventually he manages to succeed in finishing his goals. While he doesn't manage to play his song at the winter debut free of errors, his performance is at least on part with the other archnobles, only overshadowed by Rozemyne himself. Instead of being frustrated about Rozemyne outshining him like some of his remaining retainers expected, Wilfried expressed pride in his adopted sister for her performance.

When Georgine learns of Bezewanst's death, she comes to visit her old home under the pretext of visiting his grave. Not being familiar with many of the complicated euphemisms used in noble society and not realizing how strained the relationship between his aunt and his parents is, Wilfried happily tells her that he would have liked to talk more with her upon her departure, which Georgine uses to extract a promise for being invited agian next year from Florencia, who can not refuse due to Ahrensbach being of a higher rank than Ehrenfest. This leads Rozemyne to hit Wilfried on the head with a paper fan - with Ferdinand's express permission and encouragement, before she launches into a lecture on Wilfried's naivité and inability to read the room.

At the next Harvest Festival nobles of the former Veronica faction guide Wilfried to the tower in which his grandmother is imprisoned and trick him into going inside to talk to her. Up to this point Wilfried didn't know that Veronica had been imprisoned, much less the kind of crimes she committed and thus he believes everything that she tells him.

When Rozemyne returns to the castle and has her first tea pearty with her new younger sister Charlotte, Wilfried furiously storms into the room without permission trying to get Charlotte away from Rozemyne "because she's bad" and even tries to lunge at her, but is quickly subdued by Rozemyne's guard knights.

Wilfried's grades at the academy are average for an archduke candidate, though considering how much he was lagging behind even the poorest laynoble at the age of seven, that in itself is quite the accomplishment. The notable exception to his is that he was able to pass his first court etiquette lesson on the first try, though that was in no small part thanks to Rozemyne's support.

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