Henry, Harry, Harvey, Horace, and Harold.

When you're the fifteenth princess in a royal family with twenty kids, you know that there isn't much chance of you getting the throne.

Ever.

So what my life is going to look like is this:

Fourteen:

Get a job, because even a princess must learn a trade before she comes of age. My trade will be art.

Fifteen:

Start looking for boys you like, or else you'll end up with an arranged marriage and sometimes that backfires and you get stuck with someone you don't like at all.

Sixteen:

Find a reliable man and get married.

Seventeen-eighteen:

Establish a household, preferably in some big palace in the west :o

Nineteen:

Start having kids and don't stop until you turn thirty.

Thirty:

Raise kids, do whatever.

Really wish I was the oldest.

Then at least my life would have a greater meaning than this.

Princess Hero Sammwhattian sighed, flipping through her journals from three years ago. She was already sixteen and still hadn't found any boys. maybe she wouldn't marry. Maybe she'd become a painter in the city of Harven, just across the border of the capital city, also called Sammwhattian.

Maybe she would give her meaningless life meaning. Everything felt pointless to her-- her life was designed around the promise of marriage and children.

Hero didn't like babies much.

Or suitors.

It was Gaeryann Eve, the winter holiday that brought thousands of lovers and families together. Mytra, an herb that only grew when dusted with a light, light snowfall, was hung over doorways, people kissing beneath it. Adorable, her sisters said. Disgusting, Hero thought.  

Younger children would reenact famous battles with snow missiles and snow castles. People danced. Music, a rare treat, since not many people in Sammwhattian were good singers, became common. 

And in the midst of it all was Hero’s seventeenth birthday.

The first proposal came early in the morning, at the honey and sugar festival.

The people of Sammwhattian danced and partied while eating sweet things out in the cold. Hero didn’t much like the holiday, and was going to skip it, but alas, every other princess was there, and she’d have to find a partner soon, or risk turning seventeen and still being alone.

Long tables had been stretched out in between great fir trees that had been cut down and set up simply for the occasion. Kicked-up snow was on the ground, and folks milled about in long fur coats, eating things so sweet it would burn your tongue and teeth. 

Hero, dressed in a red coat with a mink-fur trim, was standing by a thirty-foot-tall tree, bedecked in crystalized sugar ornaments that kids were jumping around and snatching from the branches. The bottom five feet of the tree was bare. 

She pulled her light brown hair out of its complicated braid, letting it fall past her waist in a river of silky straightness. Her white skin was growing rosy from the chill, and puffs of mist rose from her purple-painted lips. 

“Excuse me?” a man asked her. He had soft brown hair and wide glasses, dressed in a soft black coat. He was Henry Turncoat, the son of a nobleman Hero’s parents were friends with, and taller than Hero. 

Hero gave him a look that read “get out of here”. 

“Uh, I know we aren’t really close, Hero, but…” 

Not close? Hero snorted. She had spoken to him once in the past five years!

“Will you marry me?”

Hero was thrown into shock. 

She hardly knew Henry! 

He was weird!

Nerdy! 

And didn’t he already have a girlfriend, Lisabet?

“I…”

“Hero… My parents told me that I had to marry if I was to inherit their positions! And you’re nice, so I thought--”

“That you’d propose to some random girl before even getting to know her?” 

“Uh, yeah, I did--”

“Marry Lisabet. I’m in the same predicament as you, but I still won’t take your hand. That shows how much I don’t like you, Henry.” 

Hero stormed away, kicking up powdery snow in her expensive black snow boots.

Miranda, Elena, Maxine, Velvet, Korinna, Remedy, Bethany, Irma, Winter, Belle, Harris, Timothy, Abella, Mark, Christopher, Fennel, Millie, Jay, and Una are all in the way of the throne. 

Fennel, Millie, Jay, and Una are all too young, though, so I guess it’s only all my other siblings…

Sigh.

We have a ball tonight. Maybe I’ll find a boyfriend here, although I don’t like anyone coming… :P

Maybe I should run away.

No, I shouldn’t.

Or…

Should I?

Hero put away the sketchbook she was drawing on, the winter scene visible through her tower window hidden between the pages. 

A snowball hit the window. 

She pushed it open, shouting “WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?” out and down to the dark-haired, skinny figure below. Dressed in an emerald-green jacket, he was preparing to throw another but stopped when he saw Hero leaning out the window with a frown on her face.

“SERIOUSLY, WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?” 

It was Harry Wyldefaster. 

He was younger than Hero by a year or so, and acted immaturely. Hero thought that he liked her, but he acted the way he did around her all the time, so he could have just been a big goofus. 

“I WAS THINKING THAT YOU WERE REALLY NICE AND I HAVE TO GET MARRIED!”

“WHAT?”

“HERO, WILL YOU MARRY ME?”

Hero threw a half-finished korbaweet, a kind of sugary coffee that was drunk in the Gaeryann season. It splattered on Harry’s head.

“THAT’S A NO, I THINK?”

Hero slammed the window shut and went back to her drawing, annoyed.

Harvey Hattman arrived in Hero’s personal chambers three hours later, as the sun began to sink. 

“No,” Hero grounded without looking up. 

“I didn’t even ask you yet.”

Harvey was a thin young man with straight red hair and a foolish smile. His eyes were as blue as the sky, but Hero never gave him a single thought. “Hero, will you marry me?”

“TWO OTHERS HAVE ALREADY ASKED ME THAT!”

“So you’re engaged?”

“Heck no! I turned them away, too! Like I’m turning you away!”

Hero shoved him out the door and locked it before he could say “wait”. 

If I ran away, where would I go?

South?

I… 

I don’t know, maybe? :/

Hero sat in the throne room with her nineteen siblings.  

That was when she saw about ten boys in the room, some of them actually men, since her eldest sisters were adults. She scowled. When did they show up to the party? Most of her older sisters were either already married or engaged, but the men there weren’t royal! They had no rights to this room. This was where the royal children sat, although only three of them were still children. 

One of the men there-- a dark-haired one, around eighteen years old, dressed in a scandalous orange suit, was without a partner, though. 

He walked to a podium on which many speeches were made, on a balcony taking its palace at the opposite side of the room as the thrones. He turned on a sound-tube, a device that allowed your voice to be multiplied many times, and made an “ahem” into it. 

“Hello, royal children! I have a very special announcement for one of you. The fifteenth one of you, to be precise.”

Hero realized that was her and gave the man a strange look. 

“Hero Sammwhattian, will you marry me?”

Ahh, this again, Hero thought. 

“I hardly know your name, mister,” she said. 

“I’m Horace Fensen,” he said like he was a grand important fellow.

“Yeah, Horace… sorry, but no.” Hero stood up and walked away, leaving Horace and her siblings to stare and gape at her. 

Life goals:

…

I don’t have any. 

Hero was outside in the snow, dressed in a black cape, looking at the sky in sadness. Why must those young men be so… so infuriating! They drove her out of her mind. She hardly knew any of them, and they never asked her what she thought of their relationship. Their nonexistent relationship. Hero snorted, a cloud of icy smoke coming from her nostrils and surrounding her face. 

“Uh… Hero?” a familiar voice asked her nervously. It was Harold Gira, a boy she knew, a little. 

“Don’t ask to marry me. I’ve already turned away Henry, Harry, Harvey, and Horace, whoever the heck he is.”

“Oh.” He smiled sheepishly, looking at ehr with doey eyes. Hero wished he’d stop. 

“Will you marry me anyway?”

Hero threw a snowball at him and ran inside.

Hi, myself.I haven't written in sooooo long, but I’m writing now.

I’m leaving.

Five marriage proposals is five too many.

I’m leaving.

Goodbye. 

Stuff to pack:

Dresses

Food

Sketchbooks

My favorite book

Hair supplies

Makeup

Paint

Pencils

A sign saying “No, I won’t marry you.” 

At the grand ball, people danced and kissed and ate and laughed. Hero, meanwhile, was so angry she could explode. 

When it came time for each of the royal children to give a speech, Hero waited until she was the last one. Gathering the train of her red dress around her, she walked up the stairs to the same podium Horace had been on earlier that day, heart racing inside her chest. 

“People of Sammwhattian…” she began. 

“I, princess Hero Sammwhattian, hereby declare that I will not marry.”

A gasp rose from the crowd’s lips like steam from a teapot. 

“Do not go looking for me. I’m leaving you all for another palace. Merry Gaeryann, y’all. Hope I never see your faces again, ever.” She blew the crowd a kiss and ran to her tower, where she had already packed her bags.

“Hero! Wait!” civilians and royalty alike called as she left.

But Hero paid them no mind as she walked away into the snow in a white cloak, invisible among the dead trees and white frost. 

Sometimes, others will try to get you to bend to them, to please them, or someone else, or who they think you are, or who you should be. 

But never listen to the hecklers and the bullies, the fools and the mistreaters.

You can be your own person.

You don’t have to do everything you’ve ever been told to do.

Be a rebel.

Forge your own path.

--Hero.

P. S:

You should still listen to rational people, though. ;P