The Princess of Darkness

Chapter 3: The Choosing (Alex's POV)

                                                                  Chapter 3 (Alex)

Though I am a prince, I find it hard to stay composed at times like these.

My father is forcing me to marry a girl who I probably will not love in the Choosing. The Choosing is a competition in which all un-married girls over the age of 13 and under the age of 16 are entered in a contest. This choosing happens only when ties with nearby countries don't need to be satisfied by marrying a royal from that country.

These girls basically send in a form that they fill out with their likes, dislikes, hopes, dreams, etc. I wish that it didn't have to be like this.

My father's advisors choose 50 girls whom they think would be good queens. They do not take into consideration which girls would be suitable wives for me, (which I think should influence their decisions.) These 50 girls get sent to the palace to compete for the throne.

45 of them are from inside the kingdom. The other 5 are from the Savage Lands. I don't even get to speak to the princesses one on one until there are 20 of them left! The Choosing seems dreadful and I am not looking forward to it.

The Kingdom of Mortalius is cut off from the surrounding regions that we like to call the Savage Lands. I could never understand why we called the outlying lands savage. We all knew that the people living there were perfectly peaceful, and civilized, but the name "Savage Lands" kind of stuck.

Anyways, the kingdom of Mortalius is not merely home to the rich and the fortunate. There are still peasants, criminals, merchants, and standard middle class families.

The outlying areas that surround the kingdom are simply farming land, where some wealthy nobles even buy land for exquisite summer houses.

My father is king of Mortalius and all of the regions and captured lands that surround it. He is in charge of all political matters and other boring bussiness that I will one day be forced to attend to. My mother is not a typical queen.

Instead of sitting back and watching the country be ruled she runs all the military affairs. She leads our army into battles, and nearly gives my father a heart attack every time she leaves for combat training. But she is still a woman, and she refuses to actually fight in any wars. She doesn't like getting her hands dirty. (She is also afraid that she won't go to Heaven if she fights in a battle.)

My mom is also the reason that we have 15 girls from the Savage Lands in our castle right now. She is the reason that I have to go through not one, but two Choosings.

So my mom's army was going around the Savage Lands collecting forms, when they came across a village that hadn't recieved any forms. My mother sent soldiers to give forms to all the houses in the village.

The village leader refused to hand out any forms to the people in the village. He didn't want anything to do with Mortalius.

This angered my mom, and in her rage she stormed the village and took all girls that seemed to be about my age to the palace. It's a good thing that it was a small village. If it were a large village then there would be way too many girls in the palace, at the moment there are only 15.

The royal advisors have already chosen 45 girls for the Choosing from the kingdom.

There are 15 girls from that small village already inside the castle, but there were already 3 eligible girls from the Savage Lands who were chosen.

Which means that 13 of the girls from that small village in the palace will have to leave.