Castel Stirling, Royal Demesne, Novy Moskva Military District
Eden, Edenstar System
Pentagram Cluster, Solar Hegemony in Exile
The upper galleries and grand-hall of the Castel Stirling were alive with happy voices and well-turned-out grandees in fine court-attire. The setting of this grand reception and brunch, held prior to that evening's planned banquet and official courtly debut-reception concluding in a celebratory ball, to be begin later and continuing long into the night, was far from the long abandoned Royal Stirling palaces of Unity and Versailles on long-lost Old Dirty, that is to say, Earth. The architecture here and now was firmly grim, grey, martial, and utilitarian; battle-steel, cut stone, and mass concrete, without much in the way of decoration aside from an artfully placed heirloom here and a smattering of newly made handicraft-work tapestries there, battle flags, captured weapons, and the like, recalling an aesthetic much more eleventh century than the grand seventeenth century style those present had been accustomed to in those golden days before the dark times, before Tubal Khan, before the coup, before the regicide, before the civil war, before the megas-road.
On the other hand, many of the attendees considered that to be very much an improvement, as the Court of House Rhomanov-in-Exile was considerably more martial and practical, now that most of the dross had been burned away in the nuclear-fire. In fact, the active duty military and civil-service majority, as well as the retiree veteran majority of those present in the grand hall would likely admit, if only secretly, that this all was rather a blessing in disguise, as the now firmly and almost exclusively martial-aristocracy gathered here knew deep in their bones how bad it would look to their subordinates, dependents, and subjects to be seen as a detached and spoiled pack of nobles who did not share the labours and sacrifices of the rank and file. But as the overwhelming presence of dress service-uniforms (instead of honorary ones) testified, these rather grizzled and be-scarred men and women, many having only recently been granted their formal peerages and titles in the very land-taking and settlement of the Pentagram Cluster of worlds, were doers of deeds and men and women of action, hardly an idle hand to be found. This room was most assuredly not full of useless effetes, dandies, fops, hedonists, nor God forbid, politicians; neither House Rhomanov-Stirling nor the Solar-Hegemony-in-Exile had any use and even less patience for useless people in this time of distress.
'Alas' thought Elise von Hapsburg-Hohenzollern y Rhomanov-Stirling, Queen-Mother, Regent of the Grand-Duchy of Earth, and acting First Lady pro-tem of the Solar-Hegemony, but only internally, silently, and without nary a shadow nor quiver crossing her calm, schooled visage, only perhaps a slight dulling of the eyes and a slight quirk in plucked eye-brow, 'if only it were 'all' not 'most'' as she stolidly endured the inane yammering of the Comte Boris von Berg in his thick and gratingly affected pseudo-Russian accent. She was tall for sex, slender, regal of bearing, refined and gentle of features. Burnished gold brushed with hints of silver was her hair, icy blue were her eyes, red her lips and cheeks, and cold, cold as the ice in her eyes and in her blood was her spirit, steady the slender hand and fine fingers that signed writs of severity and mercy alike. All winter she was, winter’s ice, frozen will directed at one single purpose, her children and their inheritance of the crown in her keeping.
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