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.

Despite the engagement being delayed, Clarissa insists that she still be allowed to go to Ehrenfest as Hartmut's bride-to-be. After finally learning Ferdinand's true feelings about marrying into Ahrensbach, Aub Dunkelfelger feels indebted to Ehrenfest and thus is willing to let Clarissa go early, to help offset the loss of Ferdinand. The intention was for her to go to Ehrenfest during the Archduke Conference, but upon hearing the news Clarissa immediately set off the day after the Feast Celebrating Spring, with just a single guard knight. Out of consideration to Ehrenfest, she didn't take the more direct route through Ahrensbach proper and instead chose to travel through the former Werkerstock territory and Frenbeltag.

Albeit only reluctantly, due to her very unusual behaviour, Frenbeltag eventually allows her passage, after checking in with her home duchy that she indeed has permission to marry into Ehrenfest. Due to her suspicious behaviour however, they assign a knight to keep an eye on her on the way through their duchy. Upon getting permission to cross Frenbeltag, Clarissa immediately rushes straight to the next border gate, without a single pause. They go at such a speed that right after reporting the situation to his colleagues, the guard assigned to keep watch of them collapses into unconsciousness. Meanwhile Clarissa and her guard knight merely jug rejuvenation potions and pressure Ehrenfest's guards for entry.

Due to the surprise and confusion of the situation, the knowledge that both Aubs had given their permission for her and Hartmut to marry was enough to allow her to force her way through the duchy gate between Ehrenfest and Frenbeltag too, but she is finally stopped at the west gate of Ehrenfest City, since foreign nobles are only able to enter with express permission from Aub Ehrenfest himself, communicated through a physical permit with the Aub's seal, which she naturally does not carry. In the end Clarissa and her knight manage the entire journey in less than a single day.

Once in the privacy of Rozemyne's estate, Clarissa is severely scolded by her future lady, husband and parents-in-law, before they inform her that despite the trouble she caused, she will be permitted to stay in Ehrenfest and live in Hartmut's estate.

While Clarissa was entirely willing to become a blue shrine maiden, the way temples are still viewed by other duchies meant that Ehrenfest could never go through with this, even if they wanted to in the first place. As Rozemyne experienced first-hand, no amount of assurances on her part would ever make all the other nobles believe, that she was the one to insist on joining the temple and would hold Aub Ehrenfest and her new family in great disregard for "forcing her into the temple."

Despite her hopes, Clarissa is denied permission not only to move to the temple, but to even enter it at all. Instead she will work in the castle, alongside Philine, with whom she already worked together at the Royal Academy. To not keep Clarissa entirely out of contact with Rozemyne, she is to report to her in person every couple of days at her estate - or her library as Rozemyne prefers to call it - unless Rozemyne is otherwise occupied or absent from the city.

At the castle, Clarissa shows great dedication and attention to detail in her work, impressing the scholars assigned to watch over her. What those scholars do not know however is, that she gives her all for this work specifically to make sure she's taken along to the archduke conference, so she can see her future lady perform the starbind ceremony for Prince Sigiswald and Lady Adolphine in person, a sentiment very much shared by her fiancée.

<Clarissa