0&1 Ch 1.4

[I’ve never once beaten Edward. I probably never will. But it doesn’t matter anymore. Because you chose me.]

After choosing to hug him, Joffrey’s affection meter filled to four hearts, but I still felt uneasy.

Did he really like the heroine? Or was he just feeling good about stealing his older brother’s girl?

The dialogue felt the same. They sounded like he was saying that the heroine mattered most, but Edward’s presence was too overwhelming. It felt like my heroine had become a tool to soothe Joffrey’s inferiority complex.

Despite being a sociable character, there were no scenes in the game where Joffrey had a meaningful conversation with Edward.

The two weren’t just ignoring each other; they were on bad terms. Even the blunt Edward frowned when dealing with Joffrey.  

But something felt strange.

Prince Joffrey was eleven this year. People called him clever and treated him like he was already the heir. That included Duke Pie, who was the princes’ tutor.

So Joffrey was following a grueling schedule.

After three days, when my fever had subsided somewhat, Duke Pie came to see me. Despite my head being still foggy from the lingering fever, I had to attend class.

“… I’ll see you again tomorrow. It looks like you’ll need quite a bit of review.” Duke Pie said. His face looked as bad as mine, which was flushed from the fever.

At first, he believed that I was acting foolishly because I was sick. I couldn’t understand a single word he said in class.

The next day, during class, Duke Pie closed the book with a very troubled expression.

“Your Highness, if your fever is severe, perhaps you should take a break from class…”

I desperately wanted to do that. The Duke and I looked at each other with troubled expressions and remained silent.

I didn’t mind if Duke Pie thought I was an idiot. The real problem was Joffrey’s mother.

“Prince Joffrey. What’s wrong? Are you still suffering from the aftereffects of your fall from the horse? Your mother is very worried.”

The Queen came to see me every evening to dine with me. Dot, Joffrey’s attendant, said that the Queen was deeply affectionate. Even if it was a sick child, it was rare for royalty to take care of a child like this.

But since all she ever said while caring for him was about studying, it didn’t feel like affection. If I were really Joffrey, I’d have turned out twisted.

A week after classes resumed, Duke Pie sighed in front of me.

Who saw that? There are no secrets in this castle, so the scene spread throughout the castle.

I heard the servants whispering in the hall:

“I heard that the prince became an idiot after the accident?”
“The duke lamented. The prince can’t keep up with his lessons.”
“Didn’t he ask where the dining hall was the other day?”
“Is it dementia at his age? Tsk tsk. What’s going to happen to the  Kingdom?”

Don’t say things like that where I can hear you. The hallway was too open a space. The Queen, who heard the rumors, was furious.

“Prince Joffrey. Don’t worry. I will summon all the doctors in the Kingdom to restore you to your former self. I will punish those who dared to insult you and tear apart the vermin who whispered poison into His Majesty’s ear. You have nothing to worry about.”

The Queen’s eyes welled up with tears. It was terrifying. If I stayed quiet, a literal blood purge might start.

“Please don’t, Mother. I’ll study hard.”
“Ah, Joffrey, you are so kind.”

She pulled me into a hug that felt like she was about to crush my bones.

After the Queen left, I asked Dot to place all the books I had studied so far on the desk. Dot happily did so, and more than a dozen books were neatly stacked.

I regretted saying anything.

Was young Joffrey some kind of genius? What happened to the game’s setting? Wasn’t Edward the genius?

From that day on, I woke up to study, ate, then studied, and studied again before bed. I slept an average of six hours a day, which could only be described as child abuse.

Duke Pie, who pretended to be concerned about my health, came to see me every day without fail and read aloud to me. I was able to understand about half of the lessons, and Duke Pie rarely had to stop the lesson and go back to explain the previous content.

This routine repeated every day.

“When is vacation?” I asked, feeling absurd.

Dot tilted his head. “Vacation? But Your Highness isn’t an academy student.”

That meant that eleven-year-old Joffrey had been doing this absurd study grind all 365 days of the year.

So what about Edward?

Prince Edward was treated like an idiot by the people around him. I heard it from the servants. More than any book, real knowledge in this world came from their gossip.

Whether Edward really was a fool or not, I didn’t know. But it was clear the servants didn’t see him as someone worth serving.

A prince uninterested in study, who only liked playing in the sun.

Joffrey must have felt a mysterious sense of rivalry with that simple-minded prince.

You could tell just by looking at Dot, who grumbled that horses were too dangerous and insisted the prince should ride in a carriage. Even when he pretended to comfort me, he kept glancing over. Was Joffrey insecure about not being able to ride a horse?

What was the actual setting here? It felt like holding a strategy guide full of misprints. The facts I knew and the world I was now in were completely different.