Second Female Leads' Playbook

Breaking off the engagement was going to be hard.

I decided to talk with Mother about my engagement with the prince today. Mother had been good friend with late Queen Henrietta, Prince Sebastian's mother. Before the two of them had been married respectively, they had made a pact. They decided their children would marry each other. Don't ask me why they did that, but I think that's really stupid. Look at how it turned out for Sebastian and I. However, it's not up to me to decide. And to put it politely (since one should not say bad things about the late Queen nor one's mother), the late Queen and my mother are both... bubbly.

When Queen Henrietta had been pregnant with Sebastian and Mother with my brother, Adrian, they had already been planning their wedding. (To be quite honest, they were planning Sebastian and Adrian's wedding, so Adrian should be the one marrying him, not me.) But alas, it turned out Adrian was a boy. Mother was disappointed and rumor had it that Mother was so sure it's a girl, she had only bought baby girl clothes. She had even wanted to dress Adrian in girl clothes. Father stopped that in time so baby Adrian didn't turn into a boy who once wore baby girl clothes.

Two years after that, Mother was pregnant again. The two of them became excited once again. This time Father forbade Mother from buying bunches of baby girl clothes, I guessed in the fear that if this turned out to be a boy again, Mother might really dress the baby in girl's clothes. They had planned Sebastian and Jesse's wedding, their still very much non existent grandchild's baby shower... Of course, Jesse was a boy. Mother was extremely extremely disappointed.

You see from then on Mother and Queen Henrietta became... obsessed. So when I had came two years later, if they could I was sure they would throw Sebastian and I together and marry the two of us as soon as I had been born. Of course they could not (thankfully and I was sure that's illegal), Sebastian and I were engaged.

Why was I describing such detailed episode of Mother and Queen Henrietta's lunacy (no delete that) epic wish? I listened to that extremely detailed and crazy epic tale from my mother just now.

See, that's why I decided to bring up the topic tactfully.

"Mother, you see I am engaged to Prince Sebastian since the very first second I was born... but..."

"Oh yes! You and Sebastian are going to make the loveliest couple!"

Uh-huh... look how we turned out.

"Well... Mother... we are just not close to each other! We don't even talk. We are not even friends. Maybe..."

"What nonsense, you two literally grow up next to each other! You were so talkative whenever he came to play with you!"

I was five. Which child wasn't talkative when she was five? I was at an age when I liked to make-pretend. All Sebastian did was stand there like a statue.

I admit, we were close once. As in I could talk to him and regard him as my play mate. But that was before Queen Henrietta passed away which happened when I was ten. Since Queen Henrietta's death, Sebastian no longer visited me. Guess what happened to play mates who hadn't talked to each other in six years? They became strangers!

"Mother, that was six years ago... Now..."

"Poor Henrietta!" Mother started sobbing. "Back when..."

Mother thus started to tell me her stories with Queen Henrietta and their failed attempt to marry Sebastian with Mother's first and second born.

I knew that I was not their first choice! But did you have to say 'It's such a pity Adrian isn't a girl.'????

Life for a reborn girl was going to be hard.