Elvira/Story

When Karstedt suggests telling Elvira that Rozemyne is Rozemary’s daughter, Ferdinand advises him to instead reveal everything to Elvira and ask for her help. Karstedt asks Ferdinand to make the request to Elvira in person, since he believes she will accept it more readily if it comes from him. They plan a meeting over dinner. Elvira immediately sees through the “Rozemary” story, but she agrees to baptize Rozemyne as her own daughter.

When Rozemyne first visits Karstedt’s estate, Elvira is present to meet her. Ferdinand mentions that she seemed excited to welcome a daughter into her home, since she previously only had sons.

Later, Rozemyne calls the Gilberta Company to the estate to purchase rinsham. Elvira is at first reluctant to have a merchant in her home, but she is won over by the quality of the products Benno shows her. She also ends up ordering several hair ornaments.

At her noble baptism, Rozemyne becomes the legal daughter of Elvira and Karstedt, before being adopted by Sylvester. However, Elvira is still considered her “true” mother.

When Rozemyne needs to gather donations to fund the furnishing of the Hasse monastery, Elvira is responsible for teaching her how to politely solicit donations from other nobles. Later, Rozemyne suggests featuring Ferdinand in a charity concert to raise money. Elvira’s interest is caught, and she orders her to make the concert happen “no matter the cost.”

Elvira helps to organize the concert and takes responsibility for selling tickets. Later, she accompanies Lamprecht on a visit to Rozemyne at the temple, ostensibly to discuss the concert but primarily as an excuse to see Ferdinand.

The concert is an overwhelming success, and Elvira in particular is delighted by Wilma’s exclusive printed illustrations of Ferdinand that are on sale. However, Ferdinand expressly forbids selling illustrations of him again, to the vast disappointment of the noblewomen present.

Although Brigitte is scorned in noble society due to breaking off her engagement, Elvira takes her under her wing. She favors Brigitte and invites her to exclusive tea parties, causing other nobles to treat her more politely.

Shortly after Lord Wilfried's lacking education is exposed when he and Rozemyne swich places for a day, Lamprecht is offered a chance to resign from Wilfried's service to avoid the risk of being dragged down should Wilfried fail his assigned tasks before his debut. Unsure of what he should do he visits his mother for advice. There she tells her son, that she suspects that Veronica might not merely have ruined her grand-son's education out of negligence, but that she might have done so intentionally to turn the boy into an easily manipluatable fool so he could serve her as a puppet Aub in the future. She reasures him that if he wished to serve Rozemyne, it would likely be very easy for him to get the position of her guard knight, but ultimately he decides to stay loyal to Wilfried.

Elvira is present at Rozemyne’s winter debut, but she sits away from Rozemyne’s retainers to reinforce the impression that she is the archduke’s daughter.

Later, Elvira hosts a tea party for the supporters of the the charity harspiel concert. While Rozemyne keeps her promise not to print any regular illustrations, she does manage to use random-seeming lines on the back of financial reports that reveal a picture of Ferdinand upon being folded into an origami paper-shuriken, to the great delight of Elvira and her friends.

Once Elvira finds out that Rozemyne is making a new dress for Brigitte, she advises her daughter on the process to make sure the new trend is introduced correctly and that Rozemyne takes full credit for the design.

When Georgine visits Ehrenfest, Florencia meets with Elvira at a private tea party. They discuss the threat posed by Viscountess Dahldolf, the mother of Shikikoza, and decide on their political plans for the future. Florencia reflects that she feels Elvira is more reliable than her husband, Sylvester.

When Rozemyne teaches her mana compression method to the archducal family, Elvira is among those present.

After Charlotte’s attempted kidnapping, Elvira is present at the interrogation of Viscount Joisontak who was apprehended as one of the conspirators. She makes it very clear that she is Rozemyne's true mother, regardless of any presumed blood relation with Rozemary. Bonifatius predicts that she plans to eliminate Rozemary’s family at her earliest opportunity.

While Rozemyne is asleep for two years, Elvira takes leadership of the printing industry. She hopes to set up a printing workshop in her home province, Haldenzel. However, when she contacts Benno to begin the preparations, the Plantin Company and the Gutenbergs are busy preparing for winter and don’t have time to prepare the tools and training for a new workshop. Benno convinces her to delay until the following spring. Because Haldenzel's rivers freeze over in the winter, paper-making would have been impossible either way.

With her plans postponed, Elvira instead secures Ferdinand’s permisson to print her manuscripts in the Rozemyne Workshop in the temple. She also has her own artists draft new illustrations of Ferdinand, and has them inserted into select editions of the newly printed books to be distributed only among her friends. She swears the workshop employees to secrecy and collects all printed copies, including those with errors.

When Damuel breaks off his engagement with Brigitte, Elvira acts quickly to set her up with a good husband in Illgner. Later, Ferdinand muses that Elvira may have predicted that Rozemyne would dismiss Damuel from her service so he could marry. Because letting Damuel go would represent a serious security risk, she acted to prevent that possibility before Rozemyne woke up.

After Rozemyne wakes up, Elvira works with Corinna to quickly alter her skirts to the style expected of a ten-year-old.

When Rozemyne returns from the Royal Academy, she is gifted two of Elvira’s books printed in Haldenzel: Hand-Selected Knight Stories and Royal Academy Stories. When she reads them, she learns that Elvira managed to print the knight stories with illustrations of Ferdinand without getting caught.

Elvira calls Rozemyne to a private tea party, where they discuss the history of faction politics in Ehrenfest, the current condition of Haldenzel, and the reasons behind Elvira’s fervent support of Ferdinand. She admits that she was ostracized by Veronica herself, and felt sympathy for Ferdinand. Finally, she gently persuades Rozemyne to nullify her magic contracts with the Plantin Company in order to allow the printing industry to grow.

Later, Damuel laments his poor chances of finding a fiancée and asks Rozemyne to ask Elvira to help set him up with someone, which she promises to do.

When Rozemyne becomes frustrated about the noble scholars’ contempt for the commoner merchants, Elvira suggests training the layscholars and medscholars working for giebes in the provinces, since they are more familiar with commoners than scholars in the capital. The archduke accepts this suggestion, but asks Rozemyne to appoint an archscholar to oversee the industry. At Karstedt's suggestion, Elvira is nominated for the position.

Elvira is also heavily involved in the efforts to beautify the lower city of Ehrenfest in preparation for the expected influx of merchants and nobles from other duchies lured by Rozemyne's new products. Part of this beautification is giving the lower city a sewer system to keep the streets clean.

Thanks to inside knowledge of the upcoming purge, Elvira takes her pregnant daughter-in-law Aurelia into the main estate and isolates her even more from the former Veronica faction to make sure there isn't even a speck of suspicion about her being involved with the criminals. She also uses her influence to make sure that Aurelia isn't even questioned by the knight's order to avoid any stress during the pregnancy. Since Lamprecht's old room is still filled with weapons, which would be a hazard to a child, and Aurelia doesn't want to be a nuisance by having furniture moved around, the young woman stays in a guest room. The birth had been expected to happen in autumn, but the baby only came in winter. Despite the delay Aurelia doesn't suffer any complications and gives birth to a healthy boy in the winter, with her husband present. Elvira even manages to convince Aurelia to not wear her face-veil for the sake of the child, while in the safety of the estate.

Even after Trudeliede left Veronica's employ due to her marriage, she kept working for her former lady in the shadows. Elvira was aware of this and did not approve in the slightest. Thus she kept a close eye on her fellow wife and meticulously documented the crimes she committed for Veronica's sake. When the purge happened in Rozemyne's third year at the royal academy, Elvira presents the knight's order with her collection of evidence. While Trudeliede's crimes are apparently not critical enough to warrant a death sentence, she is still imprisoned and in the wake of her arrest Elvira closes down the side-building in which she had lived and dismisses her servants. While Elvira is sympathetic toward them for being thrown out in the winter without any time to make alternate arrangements, she can not risk having the potentially vengeful or disloyal people in the main estate, so she can only suggest they apply to work directly for the castle, which is sure to need additional personnel to care for the many prisoners sharing Trudeliede's fate.

When Lamprecht is finally able to visit his wife and child after being to busy to do so throughout most of the winter on account of the purge and the Lord of Winter hunt, Elvira advises him to try to keep Nikolaus away from Rozemyne as much as he can, fearing that the young aspiring knight might have been infected by the hostility the former Veronica faction holds toward Rozemyne. At her insistence the close family will also keep the existence of the baby boy secret among themselves and not even inform their extended family, as the regular tradition. At Aurelia's insistence Rozemyne ill be told, but due to the political situation in the wake of the purge and Count Leisegang Emeritus's death she is against inviting Rozemyne to the Karstedt estate as to not pour fuel on the fires of the Leisegang faction's rekindled ambition to make the girl the next Aub Ehrenfest. As such Lamprecht is to tell her in private, while delivering warnings against socializing with Nikolaus.

< Elvira