Yuze is a planner. It's one of his strongest skills, aside from combat, and a large part of why he's so good as First Eye.
After a few days of monitoring Chenzhou and the miasma's reaction to Eirian's magic, they agree with her decision to try again once it seemed like Chenzhou had recovered some of his strength.
Eirian received a reply from Eric that afternoon, with assurances that the King was on their side and a warning that Chenzhou would be receiving his own letter from the King soon. He wanted to visit in a few months, once things had calmed down. He had offered to help from the capital and Eirian had sent him a list of questions about Arnheim and the Camelia. She hadn't come right out and said what was going on, just in case someone else got their hands on the letter, but Eric was smart enough to figure it out as he found the answers for her.
He hadn't said anything about her father either, just a single note that she was still his heir and that she should continue to use the title, Lady Soliel.
She desperately wanted to know what had happened, but Eric would never risk writing about it, and she hadn't received a single communication of any kind from her father or stepmother, not that she'd sent any of her own. Whatever it was, must have infuriated them, though. Her father could name Brigatta's child heir to all his worldly possessions, but if Eric was still claiming her as his heir and she was still Lady Soliel than the child had no official position in the family. He was no better than a bastard, even though her father had been legally wedded to his mother.
She didn't even know if the babe was still alive. Traditionally, children weren't entered into the family registry until they were a year old and there was reason to be confident, they would survive childhood. Some families waited even longer.
Eirian herself hadn't been registered until she was five and only partly because her father had spent most of those years too drunk to stand. Eric hadn't been added until he was seven.
It was no small thing to add to a family registry, especially if it was a landed title that could be fought over. She and Eric had long suspected that something along those lines was responsible for the tattered relationship between their fathers, but to this day, neither man was willing to speak about it.
In truth, not that Eirian or Eric would find this out for years to come, Jacques and Francis Soliel had been broken apart by far more than a fight over a title. Though the title had definitely played a role.
Their biggest divide had come over a woman. Francis had won the battle by marrying her, but Jacques had won the war and her heart and neither one had ever been willing to forget the piece of her they didn't have.
Eirian knew little about her mother, other than the gossip she'd heard from the maids when they thought she wasn't listening. Erin Soliel had been a Princess in another land, before her side of the family had lost a war and escaped to the Land of Sorrow to survive. She'd been fourteen when she meet Jacques and Francis Soliel at a ball and both brothers had courted her through their teenage years. By all accounts, she'd been a vivacious beauty, with shimmering blond hair and bright green eyes Eirian was said to have inherited. She lacked the sharp features Eirian got from her father, as all the paintings portrayed her as soft and a bit rounder than most women preferred to be, but even in oil and charcoal there was a presence about her.
Growing up, Eirian hadn't been able to walk by a picture of her without stopping to stare for a few moments.
It was rumored that her musical ability had even gotten the attention of the King, Jacques and Francis's father, but he'd stepped away when he'd realized both his sons were already fighting over her.
It had been a forgone conclusion that she would marry one of them when she turned eighteen and society had delighted in trying to guess which. Francis had always been the more demonstrative, with grand gestures and huge bouquets and musical concerts in the garden.
Jacques and Erin were only ever seen talking quietly together, usually with a chaperone and guard a few feet away.
Francis' romantic attempts to sweep her off her feet held the attention of the court for the four years leading up to her birthday but his relationship with his older brother had crumbled a bit more with each one.
Erin herself had never spoken publicly about her relationship with either brother. Part of the reason Eirian knew so little about her mother or what had happened between the three of them.
Most of Erin's family had died before she turned seventeen and in her last year, she was a ward of elderly family friends who passed long before Eirian or Eric had been born.
That year Francis had begun announcing his wish to marry her to anyone who would listen and Jacques, who had a reputation as a cad and a bounder, had suddenly disappeared from the brothels and card halls and he and Erin had been spotted talking with far more frequency than ever before.
The King had stayed out of the fight between his sons until that year, but at the beginning of that season he'd set a deadline. One of them had to marry Erin at the end of it.
Perhaps he should have intervened. Or at least spoken to the three of them about the situation. He could have prevented everything that had happened years later, but where Jacques was known as a King quick to take action, his father was not. Good King Winfred like to think and think and think and then think some more. He preferred to have people make their own choices, instead of him having to step in and make them and it was never more apparent than in his relationship with his children.
His inability to make a decision had long festered into concern of who he would name as heir, leading to a false assumption that Francis had a chance at inheriting the throne over his older brother.
It had not gone well when Winfred had finally made a choice.
~tbc