Liana Courcel/History

{|style="-moz-border-radius: 10px;border:2px solid #6b0307;background: #000000;width=100%;padding:5px;" {|style="text-align: left;border:2px solid #ffdfa2;background:#191b2f;-moz-border-radius: 10px;margin: 0.5em 0 0 0" {|style="border:2px solid black;background: #ddd6ff;width: 100%;float: right;clear: right;vertical-align: top;-moz-border-radius: 10px;margin: 0.5em 0 0 0.5em" !colspan="2" style="color:#FFFFFF;background:#191a30;font-size: 120%;text-align: center;-moz-border-radius-topright: 10px;-moz-border-radius-topleft: 10px"|History They named me Liana. It means “To entwine. To cling.” And so I was born. Clinging. Climbing. Pushing my way forth, to be the first. To cling to my chance at breath, at life, at everything. Mother said they had to pry my little fist from my brother’s arm to bring me forth into the world. Did I fear he’d be left behind? Did I fear he’d leave me behind? Out of the darkness and into the light, albeit reluctantly. Papa feared he would lose all three of us, and then just one of us. Which one would he have given up? He never had to decide. And so we were born.

Liana and Lysander. I preceded my brother by a mere two minutes all in all, though no one was counting joyfully amid all the blood and fear and whispers. And since that moment he and I have been attached more oft than not. One is light where the other is shadow. One is joy where the other is pain. We are mirrors or opposites, but either way our blood is the same. No one knows me like my brother. No one ever will. How is it that some souls manage to travel the paths of their life alone? It must feel like such a long road.

Though marked both by the struggle of our birth and the privilege of our House, our parents did all that they could to make our childhood as normal as it could be. My father was born the King’s second child and his eldest son. Though it is said that he in his youth enjoyed all the fun and folly that a courtier may, he found in my mother a quiet sort of happiness, and we spent as much of our days in the estates outside of the cities in Limoges as we did around Grand-père and the Palais. We ran as wild things through fields and flowers, Lysander and I. Free as birds. Until Maman wanted another child and made us all afraid for her. Until sadness and death, and Gustav. It took me several years to love my youngest brother. But it was not his fault, was it? He did not know. Papa has been different since, at least a little bit. But haven’t we all?

The year we turned fourteen, Grand-père died, and Papa moved to the Palais again year-round to assist aunt Yvonne in her new role as Queen. It was a good time to be us then. To be me. Ripening into Games of Love as the Queen’s own niece, a rising star at the court. Even if I was yet too young to indulge in everything, there was so much that I could enjoy. So much to make the darkness fade away. I was too busy dancing to worry when the sicknesses came. I barely listened when Papa warned us that it would be a hard winter. We were numb that season, when Yvonne died, and the poor babe with her. A whirlwind. A coronation. Our own father, standing before the Eluan Priest. Humbly saying the vows. The entire nation looks to him now. To us. One day I will rule this country. Can you imagine it? Out of the darkness, and into the light.