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 it's 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 nerveousness 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 regular priests taking over all the paper-work.


 * 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.