The door opens

The door creaks open, the heavy oak protesting the intrusion of the early morning. You don’t need to turn around to know who it is. Besides, there's only another person in the house, your maid Irmtraud.

Irmtraud enters with the practiced, silent gait of a woman who has spent her life as the servant of the castle. She is in her mid-thirties now, having been appointed to take care of a three year old you when she is just a teenager. She couldn't follow you when you were sent off to the monastery, but when you return, your father the king saw it fit to reassign her to you.

"You are up early, Your Highness," she says. "The sun hasn't even bothered to show its face, yet you are already brooding at the window."

She begins to move about the room, tidying the silks you discarded the night before. This was the woman who wiped your scraped knees when you were a 'spare' child forgotten in the palace garden. She has a significant role in your upbringing that the king assigned her to your manor perhaps thinking her influence would curb your budding bad reputation.