Chapter 1.1

Chapter 1: The Ruffian Lady (1)

I, Ralphene Emilian, was born into a Marquis family. Maiden name Caliente.

The Caliente’s are pretty prominent in the Empire.  We’re a distinguished family —  one of the only twelve marquisates in the Empire. Among these twelve families, we’re fifth in rank, meaning that among all of the Empire’s aristocracy, we rank seventh since there are two dukedoms who are collateral relatives of the Emperor.

Keep in mind,  there are around seven hundred aristocratic families who own land in the Empire. That should put things in perspective. You understand the significance of being seventh, right?

And I was born into such a Marquis family. Meaning, I’m the young lady of a noble family. A “Your Ladyship.” One of those people who  say “Know your place!” to others. However, I grew up not knowing that I was a young lady from a Marquis family.  Until I was thirteen, I had no idea I was an aristocrat. Somehow.

To tell the truth, I have a lot of siblings. Five brothers, and, you guessed it, five sisters. Father and Mother are very much in love with each other, and Mother also happened to be very fertile — apparently, a child being born was something like an annual event.

Moreover, it seems like our bloodline was blessed with having a strong constitution, so all of my siblings are very healthy and were able to grow up into adulthood without any trouble. By the way, all my siblings get along really well with each other, which is pretty rare among the nobility.

Having many children is a wonderful thing. Offspring prosperity and household prosperity are both very fortunate things to have.  … But, there’s a phrase called “in moderation.”

The Caliente family is by no means a poor noble family. It has vast and fertile land, profits from its trading business, and is most likely one of the better off families in the Empire’s aristocracy.

However, the reality is, raising one person as a noble requires an astronomical amount of money. The higher your status, the more so.

Education costs start from when they’re toddlers. Every subject needs a different tutor and, what’s more, you need to hire only the best tutors to give a quality education befitting your family’s rank, which adds to the costs. Now, you need to hire quality servants for each child. Children tend to copy the behavior of the people around them, so, if you hire low-quality servants to tend to your child, the child’s manners will become uncouth. That’s why it’s common for nobles to spend a lot of money to hire madams and daughters from good families.

Naturally, you need to fill the child’s room with top-quality items. As children of aristocrats, they need to cultivate their ability to discern things of the best quality— to do that, they must grow up being surrounded by first-rate everything: goods, furniture, clothing, people, etc. Not having an eye for quality may cost you your life as a high-ranking aristocrat. Of course, meals and snacks must also be top-class, and the chef who makes these dishes must also be first-rate. Since there are few chefs of this caliber, hiring one requires yet again a large sum of money.

High-ranking aristocrats must never wear the same clothing twice. Every time the same clothing is worn to a public event, the status of that noble family falls. Naturally, this rule applies to children too. Children must also socialize: some events are with their parents, and some are just among themselves, which means that they must wear and discard a lot of clothing. I don’t think I need to mention this, but every outfit they wear is tailored and of top quality, obviously. If the child is a girl, then you’ll need to accessories too. Accessories aren’t single-use, but if you’re a marquis or higher in rank, it’s expected that you wear at least one piece of the latest jewelry to every event.

I won’t mention the rest, but the takeaway from all this is that all these fees contribute to an unthinkable amount of money just to raise one child. The Caliente family has eleven children, so multiply that cost by eleven. Even as a well-off marquisate, some things are simply not possible. Not to mention, about half of the children usually die before they reach adulthood, but the children of the Caliente family all grew up healthily. Although this is a good thing, raising each one of us to be a fully-fledged aristocrat is very difficult, and, — I’ll get into this a little later, but — after reaching adulthood, save for the heir, each child is married off to other families. Unless they decide to become a branch family, the costs and preparations for that are imaginably very tough on the finances.

So, what I want to say is that by the time I, the eleventh and youngest child of the Caliente family, was born, the Caliente’s financial situation was pretty dire. What I want to know is, why did Father and Mother, knowing the financial situation they’re in, decide to have another child? Apparently, since they’re both in their forties, they assumed they wouldn’t have any more children. I’m five years apart from my closest sister. I guess they were expressing prudence during those five years.

Like that, I was born as the late child. By that time, my oldest brother had already married and had children. My oldest sister was already set to marry into one of the dukedoms. A large sum of money was required for a noble lady’s marriage. Even more so if she’s marrying into a family of higher standing. So, what I’m getting at is that there was no money left whatsoever for raising me. Compared to raising the heir’s children and a marriage with a duke, the priority of raising the sixth daughter was, as you would expect, pretty low.

My parents still thought hard about me, apparently. They considered sending me off to be adopted by a lower-standing family, but that also required some money. Money that they apparently didn’t have.

In the end, what my parents decided was to send me off to our territory and have me grow up there. After I reached adulthood, I would marry an influential commoner from our territory to deepen the bond between our territory and the Caliente family. That was their plan.

This was nothing to be shocked about, as many aristocrats do this type of political marriage. But, having that being decided for you from the moment you were born and being sent off to the territory to grow up there was very, very uncommon. As in it never happens under normal circumstances. Until my first birthday, I grew up in the Capital, and after that, I was raised in our territory.

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