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The Fourth Son

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His eldest sister, older than his eldest brother, is aggrieved.

Why not, in the other principality, their near neighbour and rival for more centuries than anyone could remember had recently amended to rights of succession to allow for the eldest child of either sex to ascend the throne.;

Her best friend and accomplice in crime Isobel had done just that, and if her father wasn’t the bloody-minded bastard he was, she would have been queen and not her pesky little brother.

Perhaps slightly less on the Richter scale of explosiveness, his eldest sister was a leaf out of her mother’s book and inherited the same bloody-mindedness and ruthlessness as her father.

Somehow, those traits passed our new king, and although yet to be proved, it might be a blessing in disguise that he was the monarch and not her.

She was not backwards in telling him what she thinks

He resists the urge to simply poke his tongue out at her.  Childish pranks of siblings are not the considered and measured response of a proper monarch.