It began innocently enough.
I was just a baby, was I? Little princess, like all the rest of the kingdom babies. Coo, burp, possibly utter some gurgly things for the entertainment of the courtiers. I was to be darling.
But I couldn't help it.
I outpaced them all.
By the age of four months, I already knew how to roll over—and stand. I'm not boasting. It's just that there are some people who are born exceptional.
By six months old, I was talking. Yes, babbling like a pro. But at a level nonetheless that astonished the palace staff. I spoke at six months! SIX! I was basically conducting baby debates in the nursery. But that's not everything.
Oh, no.
I was crawling like a pro. And not the wonky, plodding type of crawling that most babies tend to do, but the kind that is as fast as light and makes you resemble a toy army general-in-training. My little legs were pistons.
And by the time I reached eight months, I had graduated in climbing the stairs.
Let's just say the staff were not ready for a toddler-sized Houdini with a strategy.
It was all games and fun at first. The maids fawned over me, amazed at my advanced development. They figured I was just a prodigy. The royal baby genius.
But then, he saw it.
My father, King Edward III. The man who was too busy to rule the kingdom, give grand speeches, and scowl at anyone who dared look him in the eye, suddenly had his attention diverted to the issue that was me.
One afternoon, on one of his infrequent visits to my nursery, he saw me effortlessly scaling the royal bookshelves. He came to a halt.
There was a protracted, tense silence. And then...
"How... how is this possible?" he stuttered, advancing with caution.
I smiled at him, grinning like a miniature angel of chaos.
I jabbered something meaningless. A probable future political platform or a blueprint for global conquest—I'm still unsure.
He looked at me, his eyebrow wrinkling into an expression of exasperated frustration.
"This isn't right. This is..." he stammered, words deserting him.
And then I figured out—he wasn't looking at me because I was surprising him.
No.
He was looking at me as if I was some sort of deadly experiment gone horribly wrong.
The next months were... altered.
My own growth didn't stop at physical milestones. My memory and comprehension of the palace politics were unnaturally acute for my age. I began to tune in to the whispers around me. How the maids were whispering about me in awe, but also fear? They didn't know what to do with me.
I was a baby, but I was already far beyond their expectations.
And then came the moment that actually shattered something in my dad's heart—something I wasn't quite prepared to see, but definitely wasn't surprised at.
I was left in a palace banquet room among other noble clans, where infants my age should be playing with blocks and enjoying mushy peas. But here I was sitting—still, focused—looking at the other infants fight over a rattle. And whereas the other aristocrats fawned over the "sweet little ones," I was scheming.
I crawled to the noble children, stole their toys, and stood up, holding them. The adults gasped. The maids gasped. And the king?
He was angry.
When the court went back to their chambers later that evening, he called me into his presence.
The King's Office
He sat behind his desk, staring down at me as if I were a troublesome animal. I had been called in once more. No smiles, no smug looks. Just hard, calculating eyes.
"You're a problem," he growled, his tone low and clipped.
I stared at him—flummoxed, but attempting to understand what he was getting at.
"You... you're too smart, too quick. You're a threat, Charlotte."
The words struck me like a slap, but I couldn't quite catch. All I'd done was... be. Grow. Be myself.
But then his eyes turned hard. I saw something change in him—a flash of something unpleasant and icy that made my very bones go cold.
"I had hoped you'd be weak. A weak little girl who could be shaped... but now?"
He leaned forward, his fingers curled together in front of him.
"Now I see you for what you truly are. A future slave."
A shiver ran down my spine. Not because I was scared of the word, but because I knew he meant it.
He did not see me as a daughter, but as something to be controlled. Something to be used.
To be molded.
I was no longer a sweet little baby princess to him. I was a tool. A pawn in his political game.
That evening, I lay in my crib and gazed up at the ceiling, trying to make sense of his words.
I had just become the very thing I never wished to be: a means to an end.