I Talk About my Practical Mother

(Princess Sakura of Quarnz)

I had lived a relatively contented life. Until that fateful day when I choked on a cherry seed during my 7th birthday party.

No don’t laugh, it’s actually not as humorous as it sounds. If my nurse Xia hadn’t noticed immediately and pounded me on the back until the seed was dislodged from my throat I might have even died. As it was I merely fainted.

Fainting does not seem like a major deal especially if it is a young princess doing the fainting as princesses are known to do so. But there have been many times since then, that I have fantasized that instead of fainting that I actually suffocated to death on that day. Don’t get me wrong I am far from being suicidal, but you know that saying: “Ignorance is bliss?”

Well one doesn’t realize just how true that proverb is until your ignorance is painfully stripped from you. I know from personal experience, losing your innocence can be more painful then flayed flesh.

As I have said, my life was relatively content. I was born as the first daughter and tentative crown princess of the Kingdom of Quarnz. I was unaware at the time but I happily lost the title a year later when my younger brother was born.

Happily because as crown princess I would have been constantly tutored and under direct supervision of various stern servants. This I know from visiting my brother. I was much more free as a ‘mere’ princess, and besides because of my mother’s wishes I had been somewhat protected from being married off.

My mother had been an exotic courtesan with imperial royal blood. She was a Nimese, and when our country formed political connections with hers, as the sole remaining unmarried female of the imperial royal family at that time, she quit her career as the Highest Flower in order to marry my father out of filial duty.

Which wouldn’t have seemed that bad a deal in this country, as our courtesans are just expensive prostitutes, but apparently in Nim a Highest Flower can be considered equivalent to a major nobility in social status and honor. This was even more so because my mother was one of the rare few courtesans who had accomplished the task without ever becoming a man’s mistress.

Part of this was because of said royal blood, but in my opinion the main reason my mother remained ‘pure’ was because of her generously sized pride and ambition. According to Xia I now know that my mother had originally desired to be the queen in her own country.

So it really wasn’t the biggest of catches for my mother. However as you might have guessed already all the unrelated royalty were already married or completely unsuitable. Some of them according to rumor had more than one wife. As said my mother was a most prideful woman.

Though she might have considered being a first bride in a polygamous relationship, there was no way that she would stand for being a second let alone a third bride. Her ambition was much too high to settle for that. So although it wasn’t the best she could do it was extremely far from the worst.

My mother’s pride was mainly two. Fold firstly the majority of her pride went towards herself. Her beauty primarily and then about all her courtly manners. I should know because Xia and the other Nim servants have practically made my ears bleed with all the compliments and stories I have been told about these commendations.

The second area of her pride had to do with her pride for her country. In her opinion Nim was the greatest, most cultured, and advanced country in all the world. And this is just the beginning of a long list of compliments.

In fact, if my grandfather the emperor hadn’t pointed out all the merits that a foreign marriage would have for Nim as well as the fact that my mother would act as a showpiece to the Quarnz for how superior the Nimese were. She probably wouldn’t have even considered it.

The way he worded things with his silver tongue you would think that Nim was doing Quarnz a favor, rather than the truth which was that it was mostly the other way around.

At that time Nim was living by a very old fashioned feudal system in which a few rich nobles lived off the bounty of hordes of hard working peasants who were kept in line partly by poverty but mostly through fear of a group of warrior aristocracy known as samurai.

But then for some reason or another (I am not that familiar with Nim history) Nim picked a fight with one of our shared neighbors but got more than they bargained for. They won, but at a great cost, their ranks of soldiers were greatly depleted and their numbers of samurai devastated.

They quickly started to implement plans to create more samurai through adoption and through the promotion of some of the more skilled rank and file soldiers but it wasn’t quick enough. Peasants not having as much to fear started uprising and less working meant less food and other raw materials being collected or created. Famines started in many areas which created more uprisings which…well you get the idea.

Fortunately for Nim there was an upside to this debacle that is the country they picked a fight with was apparently a long time enemy with Quarnz so they were inadvertently doing us a favor. So Quarnz cut a deal with them.

Quarnz would sell its food to Nim for extremely low prices, essentially let them “borrow” some of their soldiers to protect them until they regained an appropriate amount of samurais and soldiers, as well as send an ambassador with experience in negotiating with unhappy lower classes.

And all they had to do in return was sign a treaty of peace and alliance with Quarnz and find a suitable person of royal blood to become the young king’s bride. Like my mother my father was apparently also having difficulties finding someone appropriate to marry, either that or perhaps he had heard the rumors of my mother’s beauty.

Doesn’t really matter ,because to my grandfather the answer was obvious he immediately sent a representative (my uncle the imperial crown prince) to sign the treaty. And begain to polish his silver tongue in preparation for the long battle to warm my mother up to the idea.

I really want to meet that talented fellow one day (he is still alive) to hear him speak must be really something for after only a few weeks of flattery, promises and quite a large gift in the form of a huge dowry my mother acquiesced.

Along with her huge dowry my mother also took hundreds perhaps even thousands of servants practically an army of guards and body guards, and various supplies, treasures and even animals.

It was probably almost everything in her ‘small’ personal mansion but perhaps the kitchen sink. There was no need Quarnz like Nim is quite advanced in technology and has plumbing. My mother was most practical and also used to a most luxurious lifestyle that she didn’t feel that the ‘inferior’ Quarnz could meet.

As to her thoughts on my father they were probably at least neutral.

As said what my mother desired was to be queen, and if possible queen in her own ‘superior’ country but as she was the 7th or so royal daughter (can never remember the little details) had 12 or so royal brothers not to mention the tens and dozens of royal cozens and nephews, in order to become queen she would have to somehow plan the deaths of hundreds of people.

While Xia might tell you such a wonderful, dignified and noble lady such as my mother would never even consider the idea of murder. From the little that I remember about her before her death, as well as from eavesdropping and reading between the lines, if she had the opportunity she probably would have taken it.

But alas murdering so many is not only hard to do without someone finding out and hating you for it but also just not practical, and my mother was as said if not anything else practical. Apparently her practical nature stood her good in her marriage for not too long after arriving I was born.

Despite the rumors I was definitely my father’s. Despite mostly looking like a Nimese on the surface I have his bright green eyes. I also overheard several servants laughing and joking about my, shall we say unusual girth and stature?

It seems that other then some vaguely Nimese features I didn't get much from my mother’s side, most of whom seem to come in rather slender petite sizes especially for the females, instead was formed in the mold of my late paternal grandfather. King Helmrick had shared with me his generously large body proportions. Or as I heard:

“She is just like a miniature version of great Helmrick the third, only female.”

A year after me as I’ve said, came my brother and a few years after that my mother unfortunately or fortunately possibly passed away from an illness.

You may be wondering why I have been talking so much about my mother, well there are several reasons.

First of all, after this speech, I will mostly cease talking about her, so if I didn’t do it now I probably will never feel the need to. Which as you might soon see would probably would cause all sorts of misunderstandings.

Second of all, I don’t want you to feel any sort of pity for me, or be under the illusion, that since I never mention my mother, that I must have this big secret issue with talking about her or that I am a poor motherless child.

You might not completely understand why I am saying this until later, but simply I do not want to be seen with any more sympathy then I have to.

Finally and most importantly I am telling you about her, because I don’t want you to be able to find a gap in my story and start making wild imaginings on what happened to the queen, and worry about assassination plots or murder mysteries.

There is no mystery so far as I know, and even if there was evidence of my mother being assassinated I don’t think it would matter anyway. Firstly my father and brothers do not seem so hot headed as to start a war over her death if the origin turned out to be another country.

Also and more importantly, I don’t see any way that it could affect me now regardless, not only was it so long ago. There can’t possibly be a chance that I will be attacked in my mother’s places as a crime of passion especially since I am not beautiful like mother.

Now that I have hopefully settled the matter, let me hammer the final nail in her coffin by telling you about her cause of death. She died from food poisoning. And no, I am not making this up.

Xia likes to dramatically recount that my mother died from homesickness from desperately missing her family and old life, and if you take away some of the more dramatic parts of what she said I would be able to agree with that assessment, in my opinion technically it is a correct one.

My mother did die from missing her homeland, or to be more precise missing some of her favorite and familiar foods she was craving.

Being the queen there would have been no problem if her craving had been something that is easy to transport and store like rice, but destiny had other plans it seems. For she had been craving one of the most dangerous foods known to mankind.

She had been greatly craving fish. In Quarnz although our food is neither disgusting nor primitive as Xia would like to think, I cannot deny that it is rather lacking in aquatic bounty. This is partly because most Quarnzen people think that fish is disgusting, but mostly because unlike the peninsular and island kingdom of Nim, Quarnz is completely land enclosed, except for a few small lakes and rivers, and very few people even know how to fish.

My mother had to import fish in, if she wanted to eat it, and the closest source was over a week away by trader wagon. I don’t know if the fish was bad to begin with or if the journey took its toll, but not long after happily consuming her favorite food whilst complaining of the taste, she started puking and things got worse from then on, and I am glad I am not able to tell you anything in detail.

Now that my mother is finally done and buried we can continue from where we left off, shall we?

I was a most chubby and happy child. Chubby because the Nimese cooks my mother had brought with her in her copious entourage made exquisite and near heavenly food. Happy because I was the sort of happy go lucky kid that found joy in the smallest of things.

I was so content at my lot in life, so accepting of whatever might happen to me that I believed I probably would have remained so, as I had been an optimist who could find the silver lining in almost anything. If only I hadn’t decide that day that I craved fresh fruit preferably cherries. If only I hadn’t clumsily swallowed the seed and chocked on it instead of spitting it out as intended.

But I did choke, in fact I nearly died from that cherry seed, and when I awoke, I remembered everything. Some were things I had forgotten because of my young age. I suddenly could recall everything up to my toddlerhood when I had first gained some ability to reason.

This would have been fine and perhaps useful. However it wasn’t only kind of memories that I gained. Unexpectedly not only could I remember some of my should-have-been-forgotten infancy but also I could recall things from even before that.

Yes, it is exactly as you are thinking, I impossibly now could remember not just the little I had experienced in this life but all of my past life as well.