“I will definitely make that child the heir of Temnes.”
After muttering it out loud, he was once again moved.
How could the woman who became his wife do this?
Even before her death, Claudel thought of Valmonde's subjects.
Even when she entered the enemy's house, she had an honest side.
Even in his heartfelt moments, she could have really hated him and cooled down for first calculating the influence of the Duke of Vermont, but Claudel did not do that.
Once, twice.
Even when she is disappointed or frustrated, she gets hit again.
Every time Claudel did that, she touched Kaian's heart.
He was convinced that at any moment she would not give up or let go of him.
When people bump into each other, traces are left behind.
Little by little, she melted the strong heart of the man, who she thought was as cold as a stone and as hard as a piece of iron.
“It’s so small and weak.”
It was surprising that there was such a strong heart in the middle of a small woman who could be easily held in one's arms.
Kaian gently kissed the hair below Claudel's ear and carefully stood up.
Everyone in the castle must have gone looking for a place to sleep, so he was the only one walking through the dark hallway.
The guard who was standing blankly in front of the lord's office straightened his posture and raised his spear when he saw Kaian returning late at night.
Kaian went to the office desk and instead of sitting down, he headed to the right side of the desk.
The top of the wide desk protruded stylishly in all directions, and when he ran his hand underneath it, he discovered a secret device made by digging into a thick wooden board.
It rattled.
When Kaian activated the device, the desk placed on the left and right facing the door rotated, revealing an empty space on the floor.
It was a hidden space.
Kaian put to good use the castle that his ancestor Temnes had renovated.
What he liked the most was this secret space under the desk.
It may be convenient to have a pump that allows you to use hot water in your room without having to fetch it from the castle kitchen, but from his perspective as the head of the household, it made no difference whether it was drawn by a machine or carried by servants.
The bedroom's open ceiling was of little use other than showing it to Claudel once.
But the place to hide the family secret was different. The device that moved the desk could be hidden, so if he decided to lock it in case of an emergency, it would never be found.
Even if he thought there must be a suspicious place inside and broke the entire office floor with an axe, it would be impossible to steal what was hidden.
This is because the walls surrounding the secret space are double, so if damaged, the poison flows out and melts or destroys the things inside. That kind of thoroughness was definitely something that made him think that nerds were nerds.
Inside are documents about titles and fiefs passed down through the family.
A document containing the oath of vassals who swore allegiance to Temnes and the land and rights granted to them in return for their loyalty.
If you lent money to another fief or nobleman, a certificate of repayment - There were several cases of quite large amounts of money that were not returned, and the previous Duke of Temnes used to say that it was hidden property.
If something happens in the estate and urgent money is needed, he can rightfully request it from the family.
There were even a few deeds in which part of the estate was mortgaged in return for borrowing money. The deed with the family head's seal guaranteed that the lands that Temnes was to rule over actually existed throughout Oberon's kingdom.
And several leather pouches filled with large gold bars and precious stones as big as his finger.
Kaian knelt down in the light, stretched out his hand, examined what lay within, and took out one of his books.
After putting the desk back in its original state, Kaian sat down and stared at it without even opening it.
The book, as rough as thick black leather folded in half, contained the most intimate secrets of the Temnes family.
He opened the notebook halfway and started flipping through it.
Sarah. Sarah.
Things written in straight letters on each page followed his fingers.
As each piece of paper with the names of the previous Dukes of Temnes passed by, Kaian's face became more and more expressionless and the warmth in his eyes disappeared.
The things written in this book were records of babies and births born in the immediate descendants of Temnes.
However, contrary to the known fact that there were one, or at most two or three, heirs, there were records of seven, eight, twenty, or more babies.
It's called 'succession identification'.
In the Kingdom of Oberon, many people were born with brown hair and brown eyes. Among them, lineages with distinctive symbolic colors, such as the Oberon royal family, Vermont, and Temnes, were unique.
People value and look up to what they do not have.
What was common was worthless.
The rulers realized this early on.
Rather than pledging one hundred words of loyalty, it is much more advantageous to gain hegemony by openly making people aware that they are different and superior and showing them with their own eyes.
From the beginning of the Kingdom of Oberon, physical peculiarities such as hair color and eye color were sacralized.
The head of a distant ancestral family followed such a move by the royal family.
If marriages within a family were excessively consanguineous, there was a high possibility that a child would be born with genetic or mental problems.
However, the more blood is mixed with external sources, the lower the probability of a child being born with the symbolic color.
So these records have been left from generation to generation.
What was written in the book that Kaian opened was a record of ‘identification of succession’.
Childbirth is the birth of a life.
As expected, the possibility of a child with black hair and red eyes being born into the family was low.
Moreover, in addition to preserving the bloodline, the marriage of the head of the family is a marriage made after various political calculations, so the possibility of the other person having the right color desired by the family is once again lowered.
However, there has never been a child with brown hair and brown eyes in the Temnes family.
The contents written in the book were records written directly by the head of the family.
It was written that at some point, a Duchess or someone gave birth, and a child was born with a certain color of hair and eye color.
Children born without the symbolic colors were discarded.
‘Success identification’ literally means selecting a suitable child as the successor to the family. However, under the pretext of this, if the appearance of the family head was unsuitable, the baby was secretly abandoned.
Meanwhile, genetically speaking, the child's descendants may have black hair or red eyes, so she regularly monitored where and how it was growing.
If a Duchess was unable to give birth to a child, it was also practiced to secretly impregnate the heir of the previous Duke, who was a relative, from outside her.
If the Duchess successfully produced a worthy heir, the child born outside of the family was either replaced or abandoned depending on their appearance.
Sometimes, if a child with black hair and red eyes is born at the same time, there cannot be two heirs. That child became something that should not exist under the sky and was hidden away.
Even if the head of the family was not healthy or lacked the ability to rule the territory, if he had black hair and red eyes, he was completely revered within the walls of Temnes.
Even now, there were quite a few people in the collateral blood family with black hair, but there were very few people with red eyes. There was only one man with black hair and red eyes, Kaian.
However, his father seems to have had slightly different thoughts from the previous Temnes.
The previous Duke of Temnes seemed to have had a hard time accepting the secret of the family he inherited when he became the head of the family.
Kaian's father was a very upright man. It would have been difficult for such a person to obediently go along with discarding newborn babies like objects in the name of family glory.
Also, since the person she took as his wife was the Princess of the kingdom, he would not have been willing to do that to a child born to a wife of noble status.
The previous Duke wanted to stop determining his succession.
His father judged that the respect of the people of the territory for the Temnes family was not just about their appearance.
And Kaian also agreed with that thought.
If he had been a poor and sickly family head, he might have been obsessed with the symbolic color he was born with.
However, the man who was considered to be one of the most outstanding family heads of all time had a firm belief that his personality did not change solely with the color of his hair and eyes.
Even if Kaian had an ordinary appearance with brown hair and brown eyes.
This was because the elegance of an undefeated warrior was something that was trained from within, not something that was innate.
“Vermont’s red hair and golden eyes are also its symbolic colors.”
The residents of the territory all have common brown hair and brown eyes.
Kaian It would not be psychologically easy if he suddenly ordered the people of the territory, who bow their heads in excitement just by running a horse with his jet-black hair flying, to serve a head of the family who looks just like them.
The idolatry that had been close to brainwashing for hundreds of years could not have been broken so easily.
It would be taken for granted that Claudel's child would have the symbolic colors of Vermont.
He didn't know what kind of child she would give birth to, but Kaian thought this was a heaven-sent opportunity to get rid of their bad habits.
When he thought of the Duke of Vermont, he got annoyed and thought for a moment that he could never recognize a child with red hair as Temnes.
Looking at Claudel, the red hair also stood out and looked good.
In any case, if the child was born healthy, Kaian intended to break this record in his generation.
It had to be today, the day he found out Claudel was pregnant.
Kaian soaked the pen nib in ink and began writing in the empty space.
[Kaian Pluck Temnes.]
[Claudel Quinn Temnes, the first child born to my wife from the Vermont family, will be the heir.]
He hesitated and wrote one more line.
[May the sacrifice without honor end here.]
Taking someone's life on the battlefield was answering the call of the country to which one had been commanded.
We do not mourn the daily life and daily life of the person who passed away.
It was Oberon and the flag of another country clashing as swords.
However, being young and delicate is a law that must be kept.
Kaian's eyes stopped on the records of the previous Duke of Temnes.
[Elise Hexa Temnes, October 28, 613, Kingdom Calendar. Delivery. Twins.]
Twins.
Kaian's eyes became even darker as he looked at his birth record.
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