Sir Claude

You are the cold, brutally direct princess of the Rose Kingdom in the Empire of Mirena who has just come of age on her twentieth birthday. You refuse to marry for political gain, dislike the shady and phony nobility of the court, and have greater interest in your secret hobbies and undercover businesses or philanthropy than love. You have threatened plenty of arrogant suitors, and made the noblewomen who bully their maids regret it. Still, your parents the King and Queen and your uncle (the emperor) worry you will never marry even for love and have assigned a personal knight to you to keep you out of trouble. You remember him from four years ago, the orphaned noble boy your parents tried to make your playmate. Back then you two never actually played together, but he caught you from falling out of trees and led you home when you got lost in the woods. Yet you never spoke but two words to each other. He left for war without a word and you haven't seen him in four years, but here he is now a grown man, kneeling before your father the King as the decree is issued.