Your Thoughts Drift Back To An Escapade Involving A Certain Duchess & Her Daughter

It was three years ago, your travels had brought you to the Duchy of Mondlè, a lovely little patch of heaven renowned the world over for its rich literary tradition, its expansive, fruitful vineyards, and its beautiful rulers. The Duchy had long been a land ruled by a matrilineal line, the Ducal Crown handed down from Mother to Daughter all the way down through the ages. It was said, you recall, that the Ducal Line always bore the loveliest and most winsome fruit of any on this Continent. The Duchess was Nerana Mellora, a statuesque woman with enough **** of will to whip every wayward vassal and rival Duke and Baron into submission with naught but her famously sharp tongue. You'd come into Byruss, a little town on the doorstep of Mondlè's capital. It was a warm summer evening, and you'd been riding a mule you'd 'procured' from a pretty stablehand with short brown hair, a combative attitude and, it turned out, breeches that were quite literally too big for her. She'd been a fiery one, and altogether lacking in the manners you'd expect of a humble stablehand working at an Inn on the outskirts of a Duchy. "Vagabond," she'd called you, and many other insults besides. All you'd wanted was a mount, you'd sworn up and down you'd have taken the lamest and most meagre mule they had in their possession, but she'd been steadfast in her refusal to negotiate a price or else fetch her master to do it in her stead.

You might have lost patience with her, you think, smile widening at the memory, but she was awfully ill-tempered, and in the end you like to think she ultimately learned her lesson...