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Chapter 1: Tatiana

The sunlight beating down on the terrace practically blinded me the moment I stepped outside. I blinked a couple of times before my eyes adjusted, then sat down at the table where my mother, Tabatha, and my sister, Lydia sat.

As I sat down there was no “Good morning” or “How are you feeling?”, just a “Really, Tatiana, is that the best you could do?” from my mother. At this, she was referring to my plain, un-princess-like appearance.

I shrugged. I’ll admit that I could have done better. I’d quickly glanced at myself in the full-length mirror that hung in my bedroom before I left for tea. What I had seen was a tomboyish 18-year-old girl in a worn floral print sundress with freckles and a mess of tangled brown ringlets. Although I was wearing my tiara, I did not see a princess.

But though this was certainly not my best look, it was by far not the worst. I had a wide selection of worn and torn and dirty dresses, muddy boots, and chipped tiaras. But I liked to save those for special occasions.

Take the suitor dinners for example, though there had not been so many of those lately. Since I was six years old, my mother had been trying to set me up with princes, dukes, and heirs from all the nearby kingdoms. Although I was too naïve to realize what was going on at the beginning, by the age of nine I’d figured it out. I began to act completely barbaric at all of these dinners, which scared away most of the suitors and their parents.

However, at the age of eleven I found myself betrothed to a suitor I’d never met, who was the prince of a kingdom I’d never heard of. When we did meet, he acted like a snob and I acted like a pig. After some begging and pleading from both of us, our parents called off the engagement.

Since then, there hadn’t been quite so many suitor dinners. There was the occasional disastrous dinner, but I was always victorious. This, of course, made my mother furious.

At a young age, I found that I could never please my mother. What she had wanted was two ladies for daughters, but instead she had one lady, Lydia, and me, Tatiana. While Lydia excelled in embroidering and grooming herself, I had more talent when it came to tree-climbing and sports. Though the activities I preferred were supposedly meant only for boys, I was able to learn much from my older brother, William. My mother, on the other hand, thought I should learn from Lydia. She was often glancing admiringly at Lydia, then disappointedly at me, almost as if to say, “Why can’t you be more like your sister?”

As much as I loved Mother, I knew that if I tried to impress her, I would only fail miserably. It was much more fun to annoy her.

But whatever made my mother unhappy would probably make my father proud, since the two were opposites. Though they still got along fine, I often thought it quite strange that they had done so well enough to marry.

Thinking of my father made me notice that neither he, nor William, was present.

“Mother?” I began softly, placing my dainty tea cup on my saucer.

“Yes, dear?” she responded, doing the same.

“Where are Father and William?” I questioned.

“That’s it!” Lydia cried, her face breaking out in a smile. “That’s what feels different. But yes, Mother, where are they?”

I rolled my eyes at my sister’s stupidity. Though she may have been beautiful, Lydia wasn’t the brightest. Then I turned to Mother.

“So?” I asked.

Mother shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

“They went... to a meeting,” she said, nodding afterwards, as if to convince herself that this was true.

“Oh,” said Lydia.

But I said nothing, for I could tell by the awkwardness of what my mother had said, that this was not just any meeting.