Quoted By:
"...if I let a little heat get to me, no way is Papa gonna make me his heir!" you declare your convictions. The convictions your mother left you. A daughter of a conquered people, whose king knelt to the Throneworld after the boy-emperor came from the sea. He took her in the dead of night and made her his twenty seventh bride by the might of his charisma, and his dreadful skill with the sword. "The Sun-king's glare is nothing!"
And nothing it must be. For you will need strength of body, mind, and soul if you wish to sit astride all of Throne and the Planetes Ten Thousand over which it rules. Though fire conquered ice, every flame flickers out in time, and the only thing inevitable is the march of mountain carving glaciers.
At least, that's what mother said, before the heat finally took her to the Night Mother.
Throne does not have glaciers. So close to the Sun King's emerald eye, all ice melts away and turns to water. Even the heaviest winter is gone before the end of spring, and even the high places, the far north and south, have no permanent caps of white. At least that's what the scholars say.
Your dear friend Anke says something different. Her tan face, framed with red hair, twists into a playful smirk as she teases, "The ice girl's gonna melt~"
You retort with the only words that come to mind: "Am not."
"Little Schnee's gonna melt~" she rolls over and forces you to suffer a terrible indignity: <span class="mu-i">tickling</span>.
"Am nooooooooot~!" you complain through fits of laughter. "Anke, stop iiiiiiit!"
"Not until little Schnee admits she's gonna turn into a puddle," she declares, refusing to relent in her assault on your most dignified personage. "Snow children need to stay nice and cool during the summer heat if they don't want all their growth to melt away, don't you know? 'Sides which, mum will kill me if I let her dear lady's daughter turn into a puddle. So, will you walk, or will I have to carry you back to the palace?"
You ponder it for a moment, and then come to a grave decision. "I'll walk... but just because you're worried about me, not because I'm gonna melt! I'm not <span class="mu-i">really</span> made of snow, ya know..."
"Could have fooled me," Anke quips, ruffling your hair and taking your hand so you won't escape.
Silver hair, silk so pale it's almost translucent, and eyes as blue as the winter's sky. The Sunking's glare and the fiery Conjugal Summer most of all mean few on Throne share your fair appearance. Thus, despite being only 108th in line for the throne, you already have a moniker: <span class="mu-s">the Winter Princess</span>.
<span class="mu-i">Now that your dear friend and handmaid Anke has dragged you inside, you can't escape your...</span>
a) magic tutor
b) "dancing" master (actually fencing)
c) dancing master
d) sewing instructor
e) history teacher
