Clarissa/Story

Due to her obsession with Rozemyne, Clarissa decides to do everything she can and use every tool at her disposal to try to one day serve Lady Rozemyne. Since the only realistic way to achieve this goal is to marry into Ehrenfest, she carefully vetts all the viable Ehrenfest students for a potential partner. On account of their respective ages, statuses, and duchy relations, she concludes that only Cornelius and Hartmut are viable candidates for her ambition.

She first approaches Cornelius, but he turns her down due to already having someone else. Desperate to convince her only alternative, her approach to Hartmut is very unusual and forceful, even by Dunkelfelger standards. Her proposal begins with her kicking Hartmut's legs out from under him and pinning him to the ground with her body, while holding a knife to his throat and forcefully kissing him and through this contact exchanging mana to judge whether their mana has a chance of being compatible enough to marry. Satisfied with his mana qualities, she then demands that he give her missions to earn his hand in marriage, which the boy fearing for his life does. She explains that this radical approach is something not too unusual in Dunkelfelger, but it's unclear whether this usually involved a knife or might be entirely made up to justify her desperate action. In the course of their unusual date, Clarissa and Hartmut find each other to be kindred spirits in their obsession over the Saint of Ehrenfest.

Over the proceeding month, Clarissa successfully finishes all of Hartmut's missions, and at the same time, eliminates all her potential rivals for Hartmut's affection from his consideration.

When Clarissa learns of Lady Hannelore having a tea-party with the object of her obsession, Clarissa manages to get herself assigned to work as a scholar at the tea party, despite not being one of Hannelore's retainers, for a chance to be close to Rozemyne.

At the following Interduchy Tournament, Clarissa finally gets a chance to introduce herself to Rozemyne and ask both for permission to marry Hartmut and to try to enter Rozemyne's service. In preparation for this meeting, she transcribed all the books in her family's possession that the Ehrenfest book room didn't have any copies of, to present to Rozemyne as a gift. Despite the meeting technically being about Hartmut introducing the girl he will escort at his graduation, it turns into a sort of impromptu job interview.

To Rozemyne's surprise, this is a sentiment that is not just tolerated, but outright supported and admired by Hartmut, for whom it was a given that both of them would prioritize Rozemyne over each other. He also appears quite happy to have found someone who will listen to his endless praise of Rozemyne and considers Clarissa to be the ideal wife for him, not in spite of, but precisely because of, how obsessed she is with the "Saint of Ehrenfest".

At Ferdinand's prompting, Clarissa reveals that her current research is about magic circles that assist area-of-effect magic. She also states that her service to Rozemyne takes precedence over her potential marriage with Hartmut to her. After all this, Rozemyne agrees to take Clarissa into her service, once she has married Hartmut and moved to Ehrenfest, though with her being a year younger than Hartmut, this is still some time in the future.

From this point onward, she keeps sticking close to Hartmut, so she can see first-hand what is expected of one of Rozemyne's scholars. When Ferdinand gives some tasks for his disciple Raimund to finish, she asks to also be given an assignment, and Rozemyne tasks her with creating a magic tool to ensnare people that left a library with a book without properly checking it out.

The next year, Clarissa is present at a tea party between Dunkelfelger and Ehrenfest. Surprisingly, Rozemyne requests that Clarissa be part of the joint research project between the two duchies into the finer points of divine protection acquisition. She also learns that her fiancé has been appointed as his duchy's new High Priest. Lord Lestilaut immediately assumes he must have done something heinous to deserve such a severe punishment, but Rozemyne and Wilfried inform him that Hartmut has done nothing wrong and still retains his full noble privileges. They go on to explain that in Ehrenfest, the temple is treated quite differently than in most other duchies, and how all the archduke's children go there regularly to participate in ceremonies, to the point that Wilfried even calls it a second home. While this appointment to the temple would be ample justification to cancel the engagement, Clarissa will have none of that. Without even reading the letter Hartmut wrote to her, she declares that she will marry him, no matter what her family says. Rather than being disgusted like most nobles would be, she declares that she is proud of him for following his lady so closely, and had she been in Ehrenfest at the time, she would have battled him for the position herself, and how in her heart she is already Rozemyne's vassal, even if she's technically still a Dunkelfelger noble for now. This declaration also triggers her to endlessly talk about Rozemyne's greatness. Lestilaut uses the declaration that she is already Rozemyne's vassal at heart to shirk the responsibility for shutting her up to the Ehrenfest girl. While Rozemyne tries to avoid this, even her brother believes that it is her responsibility.

At this point Rozemyne approaches Clarissa, which finally makes her stop talking, and has her retainers hand over a box with a hair pin which she brought in case Clarissa did not cancel the engagement. She gifts the pin to her and tells her to look at it in her room, but Clarissa refuses, wishing to "burn Lady Rozemyne's visage" into her eyes and mind. Lestilaut allows her to stay on the condition that she stand quietly in a corner. Since the alternative is to get thrown out of the meeting, Clarissa does exactly that and doesn't utter a single word for the rest of the tea party.

Despite their reluctance to have their daughter married to someone serving in a temple, Clarissa's parents ultimately gave in and gave their permission for the marriage, since considering all the potential outcomes and their daughter's obsession it seemed to be the safest option at the time.

<Clarissa