"Do you hope to see him again? Your brother?"
Helena ran down the corridors of the palace, a little wooden sword held aloft as she chased after her elder brothers. The little Novellen, with her tresses of red hair and her tiny crown their father had made, and her handmaidens with their snide remarks. Life was simple then, even if tragedies loomed soon on the horizon.
And then the tragedies began. Her mother and father were called before the Church for a supposed scheme to slay the pontiff, and the Crown of Balian was thrown in the air for all to grab and claw at. Her days were then spent being introduced to priests she cared not for, pilgrimages to little churches in the middle of fields she never wished to visit, and sowing and reaping fields to prove humility that the Princess didn't have. It was only fitting, then - perhaps judgement from GOD - that she was thrown off to sea. The Princess had disappeared for two decades, until fate would have it that she found her way back onto the shores of Aevos again.
"Tell them."
The first face she saw in her return was her brother. John Casimir and Helena Casimira - reunited at last. They spoke for several hours, teary-eyed in the Hanseni tavern. She returned to a humble life on the coast with her children, until her husband, Aslan, had driven her to her wit's end. So she took her children and made way for Balian, bruised, battered, and now widowed as she were. Pikes and trenches greeted them.
A war had begun again. John was excommunicated a second time, their family was back upon the butcher's block. She would not have her children die here, and she would fight for her kin - stubborn as they were - to live past this. John and Kathryn especially. All would be alright.
"Tell them the truth."
The Novellen-Butcherer, the disowned Vuiller, many names that Ledicort had been called - all for their own reasons. He aimed to have the name Novellen trampled into the dirt, and yet, on a quiet eve he'd found himself speaking to one in their own camp. And Helena found herself speaking to the enemy. The man who she figured was the cause of all of this - she was not dumb, she had seen the writings. Behind her back she'd clutched a dagger with nothing but distrust in her eyes and hate in her heart.
He returned home after a conversation that lasted some eight hours, when the night sky began to lighten to a dull orange. Helena was left to ponder. To what side did she belong?
"I hope you find some piece of mind ..."
Time drew on. She fell in love with 'the enemy', started a family alongside 'the enemy.' She thought of him as that no longer. But then, what were her kin? Better yet, what was she to her kin? A day before the battle, they had caught her sister-in-law and John's wife, Kathryn. Helena remembered her fondly, the girl had been the elder sister she never had. Yet she had been the one to point the finger. 'That's ... my sister. My sister-in-law, Theveus.'
Nothing came of the capture. No closure for the woman, nor information for the church. And Kathryn left unharmed after several harsh conversations Helena had with the Haelunori, who to her horror, wished to disembowel the Queen Consort.
And then the final battle arrived.
"I hope you find some paradise ..."
John was dead.
She learned about it beside the very man who wished him gone. The King of Balian was dead. John, 'the last', was dead. Her brother was dead. For several nights and several days, Burgundy rejoiced while their Lord Justiciar was left to mourn on her own. For who would mourn the enemy?
"John . . ."
"John, I'm sorry,"
Helena wept.