She was not the one he loved.
She wanted him to embrace his own desires. This was his only chance, before everything slipped through his fingers. She knew what he loved most: the people of his nation.
Tears welled up in his eyes as he thought of them. He told her it was no use. He had to leave this country. Otherwise the impure needs he carried would touch the citizens he loved. He had fallen so deeply in love with his people, and he could not expose them to his desires, his narcissism, his possessiveness. He could not be king.
She asked him what made him think he was unfit for the throne. There was nothing impure about what he wanted. Whose approval was he trying to get? There was no sin in wanting the approval of the people, or in wanting to become a king they desired. He had always loved them. He had opened his heart to them.
She spoke of Leon as a respectable person, one who always put others ahead of himself.
In the game, Leon remained in the kingdom of Frieia as Pride's fiancé. As the days went on and she continued tormenting him, he endured all of it. It was not because he had nowhere else to go. He did it to maintain the alliance between Frieia and his beloved country. Even heartbroken, even locked in a room he could never escape, he held fast.
He learned from Pride that the feelings he had for his nation were not impure. It was all right for him to embrace his desires. His noble heart would surely guide him down the correct path.
He hugged her tight, suddenly, and told her he did not want to leave the kingdom of Anemone.
Trade relations were going well. In the future they would gather a great many resources and the nation would undoubtedly become rich. The children in the city had told him that one day they wanted to collect goods from all around the world and become merchants. A month ago, farming families on the outskirts had smiled and told him they had successfully cultivated a new produce, and that they wanted him to eat it someday. The last time he went to town to observe, women let him hold their babies, and some of them even named their children after him, hoping the children would grow up to be as kind as he was.
Even after his bad reputation spread, every last one of them said they believed in him.
He loved them. Everyone in this country.
That was exactly what Pride had been hoping to hear. She had come all this way to help him get everything back. All he had to do was embrace his resolve and take her hand, and she would make sure he was happy.
Leon was grateful that Pride had gotten him a change of clothes. He asked who it was that had saved him from the pub.
Pride called Val over. He was a bit worked up and rough about it, being a street urchin, but by the time he burst into the room he ended up falling into a bow on the floor, because the fealty contract forced him to show decorum.
Leon thanked him anyway, and promised to repay Val's kindness. Val told him it had not been his choice. He had been ordered by Pride.
She lifted the decorum clause so that Val could express, at length, that he did not give a damn what happened to Leon. And still the prince did not care. Val had saved him. That was the only fact that mattered. He was grateful to Val, and to Sephi and Kemet too.
Pride apologized for the suddenness of the audience with Leon's father, King Gregorio. She wanted to explain the events that had led up to now, but she had one request to make first.
Summon Prince Irwin and Prince Homer.
The king seemed a bit off about it, and began making excuses for them. Pride made it clear that she was not here as Leon's fiancée, but as a representative of the queen. She had received official permission from her mother to make this visit, and she asked again that he summon his other sons.
The two of them arrived and played the relieved brothers, smiling and telling Leon how glad they were that he was home safe.
The atmosphere turned nervous when Pride came up and thanked them for taking such excellent care of her darling fiancé. She smirked at them, and they backed away.
Then she gave the floor to Leon.
He told his father that he had woken up sitting in a pub in town, unable to move, and that Pride had saved him before anyone noticed. All of it was part of a plot by Irwin and Homer to frame him. They had come to his room, given him a spiked drink, and abandoned him there.
They tried to object. They had only shared some wine with him last night, they said, because they were sad to part ways with him. His accusation was wild.
Leon was firm. Pride's men had rescued him from the pub, and they had determined he had been drugged.
Irwin told him that proved nothing. It was all rubbish cooked up by Princess Pride, and the kingdom of Frieia was trying to pull the wool over his eyes. Homer added that Frieia had been buttering Leon up to give themselves an excuse to declare war, and the men in the room were getting angry. The brothers pressed on about how the knights had somehow found him just in the nick of time, suggesting Frieia had fabricated the whole thing.
The king slammed his fist on the table and warned the two of them that he had already told them to clean up their act before it was too late.
He bowed before Pride and apologized on their behalf. Then, under his authority, he stripped both Irwin and Homer of their royal titles and every right that came with them.
The two were restrained by the Anemone royal guard, and Irwin demanded angrily to know who, besides himself or Homer, was fit to inherit the throne.
Pride sighed, and told the king that she had a premonition, and that she knew he had something to discuss with her — or rather, something he had originally wished to discuss with her mother. It concerned the cancellation of the engagement between herself and Leon, in order to give Leon back his right to the throne.
Even Leon had not known that. Somehow, the younger brothers had.
Before the king could respond, Pride requested the immediate dissolution of her engagement. This, she said, was the same as the will of Frieia.
Irwin began shouting that it was ridiculous. Leon was perfect. There was no reason for the engagement to end.
But Pride said that the original need for their engagement no longer existed. It had first been proposed to solidify the alliance between their two kingdoms and to put that alliance on display for their neighboring countries. And she declared that she had seen the kingdom of Anemone fall to ruin once Leon left it.
She told them that Leon was someone this kingdom needed, and that the two nations could be sworn allies as long as their relationship stayed solid. They had no need to prove their alliance to anyone. They could simply retain the equal partnership they had held until now — a strong alliance that did not falter in the face of a canceled engagement.
The two of them made a solemn vow to do it as friends.