In Marriage United

The following is some creative writing I did for my GM persona in VANGUARD, a play-by-post wargame of a strangereal 1940s Indochina War. Jane sits with her mother and father in Trigonia (Not!Italy) and discusses her “intense infatuation” with the Khitanian (Not!Mongolia) king. If you’d like to check out VANGUARD and maybe play for yourself, you can join the Discord via this link.

“Ganbaatar Khan Nergui? Seriously?”

Jane’s mother, Princess Charlotte Dubois-Laurent, could barely believe her ears. King Lorenzo III of Trigonia, her father, was equally stunned, but took to silent pacing.

“Yes, mother.”

“But he’s thirty-seven! You’re only turning twenty next week! You’ve met once!”

“And? We went head-over-heels for each other.”

This was a bold-faced lie. Jane Lauretta Corona Dubois-Laurent did find the Khan rather affable, but the two had nothing more than a friendly meeting at the last eastern summit for United World. The Greater War left east-west tensions in a tangled state, and Jane, being the young, focused, prodigious upstart she was, had large plans for such a large problem - she was going to marry into the eastern powers.

Lorenzo finally stopped moving around the dimly lit room within their royal home-away-from-home in the Trigonian mountains. “What are you up to, Jane? What’s the game here?”

“Merde, daddy, please. Your rules are simple - keep the tactics for the table, and the tact for the talks. I simply love him, that’s all. He’s a kind man, and an aspirational one too - the kind of man I’d get to live a globetrotting, cultured life with. Un vero gentiluomo.”

His eyes narrowed slightly, but he instead turned to the fireplace. Her mother’s eyes were still wide, looking around aimlessly, until she gave a polite scoff and gentle clap.

“Why don’t you let us find you someone?”

“No.”

“Oh go on, that lovely baron over in the FSV, what was his name… Dalton!”

“Maman, non-” Jane’s eyes rolled into the back of her head in exhaustion, but her mother pressed on.

“He’s good money, good power, keeps you nice and close-”

“She said no, Lottie.” Lorenzo’s voice was both stern and gentle. He adjusted a photograph of their family that sat on the mantlepiece before turning and sitting beside his wife. “If she refuses, she refuses. Forcing her has never gotten us anywhere good. We wouldn’t have her if you hadn’t chosen love over political gain, so why give her rules we cannot follow?”

Charlotte smiled, but her eyes were at an incredulous cant. A pause, a crackle of a log collapsed in the fire. A trained, polite sigh with a curt nod.

“Yes, yes… right as always, mon cher. Let us not conjure sins of the father. Jane, dear?”

“Oui, madre?” Jane had been focused on watching her father, and so was gently startled by her mother’s addressal.

“You have our blessing. Go forth and chase as you wish, ma chérie.”

Exactly as planned. A smile and a nod won’t be sufficient, no. Ham it up a bit.

Jane let out an excited wail and threw her arms around her mother and father, feet kicking a little, doing her best to be young and thrilled by the world ahead of her. Her mother laughed gently as her father patted her back a little while Jane squeezed a tad. “Ah, yes! Thank you, thank you maman. Thank you so much! And you padre, thank you.” A rapid peck on both of their cheeks closed out the festivities as she sat back and beamed.

Charlotte smiled and stood politely. “I’m glad you’re happy, dear - but it’s getting close to bedtime. I’m going to go and finish reading my copy of A Tree Grows in Barghest, and maybe you should take a break from all those Monde Uni papers you keep staying up late flicking through?”

“Another night maybe, madre - my duties call!” She spoke with a false flippant tiredness, just trying to close the conversation.

“Very well - not past midnight, though. Bonne nuit, darling.” Charlotte politely walked out the room after leaving a kiss on her husband’s forehead.

Jane smiled at her father before she stood and begun to leave, but was interrupted by a single word.

“Corona.”

Game’s up.

Her father stood up with a grunt and walked up gently behind her as she turned to face him, his arm reaching around her body and shutting the door.

“Yes, daddy?”

His look was plain and knowing as he rested his left hand on her comparably undecorated shoulder. She wore neat, dark clothing almost always - nigh-tactical, if it wasn’t chosen to be deliberately fashionable too.

“You’re shooting for Head of UW Peacekeeping, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And the act was for your mother, as this is a political marriage you’re organising by yourself?”

“…yes.” A slight wince, cut short by a gentle squeeze of the shoulder.

“Well played, figliola.”

Her averted gaze changed to locked, confused eyes. “Pardon, papa?”

“You’re doing what you need to in order to get where you want. Just as I did with your mother. Anjevinian-Trigonian relations needed to survive the years, and so my father asked me to marry her. It was purely logical - but it was a bonus that she was good in the bed and the garden.”

A stunned but calculating pause filled the room, before a lightly cunning smile fell upon Jane’s face. “So you approve?”

“Cieli, Jane, I could have made it bloody easier if you hadn’t been so secretive. Not that you needed me anyway, clearly. Of course I approve.”

A laugh of relief. “Thank god. I was worried you were going to blow my shot apart - hopefully, this marriage between effectively the UCCR and Anjevinia, followed by planting myself into the newly formed Peacekeeping position will be enough to position me as a key coordinator in making sure we don’t have a sequel to the decennio infernale we barely survived. And Trigonia gets a key indicator of peaceful intent - little old me.”

Lorenzo hugged his daughter with the pride of a lion. “Thank the lord you take more after me. Go to bed dear, and prepare - prepare for the stage. They will surely need to prepare for you.”

Jane allowed herself to exchange a smug grin with her father before departing for her bedroom, where the plans of her lifetime awaited. She strung them together for hours, connecting people, gathering histories, identifying weaknesses. She turned to her bed every now and again, but time after time she shrugged it off and went back to her work. In time, however, the plotting princess slipped out of consciousness and into the land of the sleeping.

The land of those sleeping forever returned.

The fires. The bombings. The gunfire. The blood running through the bricks in the streets. Learning how to identify tripmines as a little girl. Studying signs of aggressors and spies. Watching her father take a bayonet to the gut as special forces attempted a raid on their chateau.

The fires, the bombings, the gunfire. All were blazing hot and ever present.

In just over a year’s time, when the same heat began to simmer in Tinh Hai, the United World Peacekeeper was instructed by the Secretary-General to handle the emergency. Lady Jane Nergui hit the ground cold, numb to the impending inferno.

It was time for this nation to understand - she would make sure of it.