Elvira

Elvira (エルヴィーラ, Eruviira) is an elegant archnoble who is influential among noble women and hosts tea parties. She is Karstedt's first wife and mother of Eckhart, Lamprecht and Cornelius. Elvira became the noble mother of Rozemyne, introducing her to women's noble society and teaching her etiquette.

She is a dignified and elegant woman. She is the head of the Leisegang faction which is opposed to the Veronica faction. This results in her getting along with Ferdinand because of the abuse both got at Veronica and her allies' hands.

During her time at the Royal Academy Elvira graduated in the scholar's course. Her attendance overlapps with that of Rauffen who would later go on to become a professor.

Elvira has suffered greatly under the bullying of Veronica, who relentlessly abused and harassed anyone she considered even a potential threat to her and her children, in particular her half-siblings and their children. Since Elvira's and Veronica's mothers were half-sisters she too fell into that group. Eventually Elvira gathered up all the women who were thus mistreated by Veronic and formed a counter-faction with them. When Sylvester married Florencia, she too was bullied by Veronica, leading to her joining Elvira's faction, which in turn took on the name of the archduke's first wife and is now called the Florencia Faction, despite Elvira still being the leader.

When her husband took the former mednoble Rozemary as his third wife it cause quite some trouble in the family. Rozemary's family let her new status go to their heads and made unreasonable demands, leading to harsh backlash from Karstedt's second wife Trudeliede and her family, who took to bullying Rozemary. Due to his love for Rozemary, Karstedt failed to view the situation objectively and sided solely with her newest wife, forcing Elvira to side with Trudeliede in an attempt to keep the balance. This constant fighting exacerbated Rozemary's already poor health and eventually led to her death.

Even years after Rozemary's death the relationship between Elvira and Karstedt remained a strained one, over their mutual misgivings in their respective choice of actions over the dispute between Trudeliede and Rozemary's families.

Nevertheless she is willing to accept Rozemyne into the family and even goes so far as to take her on as her own child, while keeping quiet about Rozemyne's biological mother upon getting a good explanation and a personal request from Ferdinand.

By accepting Rozemyne as her own at her baptism ceremony, Elvira becomes her de facto mother, legally overriding any previous relations. Although it was surposed to be Karstedt's third wife Rozemary to be Rozemyne's mother, she takes the authority over it and Rozemyne in an attempt to keep Rozemary's family side-lined and thus prevent the old conflict with them from re-igniting. While this kind of practice is usually only done with the children of concubines, it is still fully applicable here too. Usually a lack of biological relation results in a less than warm relationship between the new mother and child, but Rozemyne and Elvira get along very well, with the girl calling Elvira mother not just in public, but also when among themselves.

As stated Elvira is the head of her faction, which comes in conflict with the previously more powerful Veronica faction, which caused a lot of friction at home as well as politically for her. Her husband's third wife was part of the Veronica faction, which is part of the reason, why her husband and her were having issues around the time Rozemyne joined the family. Florencia also is in Elvira's faction due to Veronica disliking Florencia.

When Rozemyne needs to raise money to fund expansion of the budding printing industry and to support the orphanage, Elvira organizes a tea party and shows her daughter how to collect money among the noble society. Upon learning of this "new trend" Rozemyne is starting, most of the nobles present initially believed that it was actually Elvira who started it and is giving credit to her daughter to ease her entrance into noble society.

Elvira was also key in organizing Rozemyne's fund raising concert starring Ferdinand, which was a great success bringing in a lot of money, though also angering Ferdinand due to Rozemyne unintentionally causing Rihyarda to lecture Ferdinand like a little boy and because of illustrations of him being printed without his knowledge or permission. This causes him make Rozemyne promise she would never again print any illustrations of him without his express permission, which he would surely not give. This caused quite some despair among the noble ladies and Elvira in particular who are all very fond of the illustrations drawn by Rozemyne's attendent Wilma.

While Rozemyne keeps her promise not to print any regular illustrations, she does manage to sneak some illustration-like objects under Ferdinand's nose that look like nothing but random lines on the back of the reports about the usage of the money earned in the concert, but reveal a picture of Ferdinand upon being folded into an origami paper-shuriken, to the great delight of the present ladies, Elvira included.

Once Elvira finds out that Rozemyne is making a new dress for Brigitte, she leads Rozemyne and makes sure that the dress is properly presented into women society and as part of Elvira's faction while having Rozemyne taking full credits for the design. As she said: it is part of the archnoble's job to start new fashions and trends.

As Rozemyne's legal mother she is present at the interrogation of Giebe Joisontak after his capture following the attack on the Archduke's children shortly after Charlotte's baptism. She makes it very clear to Joisontak that regardless of whether Rozemary really was the Rozemyne's biological mother or not doesn't matter. As the one to accept her at her baptism Elvira is Rozemyne's true mother, rendering any biological relation with Rozemary's family effectively null and void, and that she is very happy that her daughter does not have to live with the knowledge of being related to such an aweful person as him.

While Rozemyne is unconscious for 2 years, Elvira takes the lead in the printing business and wants to set up her own printing workshop in her home province Haldenzel. She contacts Benno to begin the preparations, which puts the Plantin Company and all Gutenbergs in a bit of a pinch, due to Elvira not understanding how much time and effort it takes commoners to prepare for winter, leaving them little time to also prepare the tools, materials and train personell needed for a new workshop. Thankfully Benno is able to convince her to delay until the following spring, since Haldenzel's rivers all freeze over in the winter, which would have made paper-making impossible either way.

Due to being unable to set up her own workshop, she opts to print her manuscripts in the Rozemyne Workshop in the temple in the meantime, with Ferdinand's permission.

Elvira's books focus on romance stories and she enjoys the experience of writing new books. She also managed to sneak in some illustrations of Ferdinand - drawn by one of her own artists rather than Wilma - while printing at the Rozemyne Workshop, which technically does not violate Rozemyne's promise to never print illustrations of Ferdinand again, since Rozemyne herself was not involved in any way and was even comatose at the time.

Upon Rozemyne's return from the Royal Academy she learns that Elvira has been very lively as of late. Apparently she found great enjoyment in writing books and is very pleased with her new hobby.

When Rozemyne expressed concerns about noble scholars not treating the commoner merchants fairy and respectfully, she formed the plant to train new scholars for this task. Elvira suggested that it would be easier to train the lay- and medscholars working for Giebes for this task, since they already interacted with commoners far more often than those in the capital.

When the idea was brought before the archduke, he agreed, but thought it would be wise to appoint an archscholar to oversee these efforts. At Karstedt's suggestion Elvira was nominated for the position. She brought the necessary skill, connections and interest in the printing industry. With all their children being grown enough it wouldn't pose a problem for her to return to scholar work.

Spoiler from Part 4 Volume 4

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.


 * Elvira really likes the pictures of Ferdinand that were sold by Rozemyne at the charity concert. She tries to get more only to find out that Rozemyne is banned from selling more by Ferdinand. But Rozemyne hints to Elvira that she can still make and sell them.
 * The main hero of Elvira storys looks like Ferdinard. Ferdinard does not notice due to him having a lot of paper work and being very tired and tells Fran to print what ever Elvira wants.