‘There wasn’t a lot of choice.’ She shrugged. ‘My sister-my half-sister-wanted to stay in the palace, but my mother was being cut off with nothing. There wasn’t a lot of love lost between me and Julianna even then. My sister was jealous of me, and my father hated my hair. No. That’s putting it too nicely. My father hated me. I had no place there.’

‘He acknowledged you as his daughter until you were fifteen,’ Erhard said. ‘Yes, there was general consensus that you weren’t his, but the people felt sorry for your mother, and they loved you.’

‘And my grandfather wanted my mother in the castle,’ Rose said bluntly. ‘My grandfather didn’t care about the scandal which had produced me. He knew his son was a womaniser, and he knew my mother’s affair happened through loneliness. My mother was kind, in a family where kind was hard to get. It was only after Grandfather became so ill, and he wasn’t noticing, that my father was able to send her away.’

‘To nothing,’ Erhard said bleakly. ‘To no support.’

‘We didn’t care,’ Rose said, sounding defiant. ‘At least…it would have been nice at the end, but we got by.’

‘So you left the throne for Julianna.’

‘I didn’t,’ Rose said, sounding annoyed. ‘My mother and I assumed Keifer and then Konrad would inherit. We weren’t to know they’d die young.’

‘So you’ve never officially removed yourself from the succession?’

‘I didn’t think I had to. If I’m not real royalty…’

‘You are real royalty,’ Erhard said, emphatic. ‘You were born within a royal marriage.’

‘I have red hair. No one in my extended family has red hair. And my mother admitted-’

‘Your mother admitted nothing on paper.’

‘But DNA…’

‘If DNA testing were done, half the royal families of Europe would crumble,’ Erhard told her. ‘Your mother married young into a loveless marriage, but such things aren’t unusual. Your parents are dead. There’s no proof of anything.’