This story has a story.
Once upon a time, a beta named Billi got sick and tired of typing something dumb and overused into the DocX 'document description' box every time she sent something back to her lovely writers. So, Billi decided to try to be clever and type a thought-provoking question into the box when she sent a certain Captain her chapter back. Captain was amused by the question and demanded that either Billi write something for it, or she would. After a week or two of violently trying to shake Cadmus back into a state of consciousness, Billi was finally struck with an idea. She penned the idea and gave it to Captain, who promptly informed Billi that she should post it on FanFiction.
And so the story was uploaded and posted, and it is hoping to live happily ever after.
(It is also hoping for reviews. So, be a dear, would you?)
Once upon a time, there was a Princess named Elissa, though she preferred to be called 'El' or 'Lissa', with the former being the most appreciated of the two.
(This of course meant that nearly everyone called her Lissa. But, because this story is about El herself, I shall comply with her wishes and call her El and nothing else, until the very end, when her name changes anyway.)
When El was sixteen, she kissed her mother and father on the cheek and set out on an adventure. Her parents were not, as you might think, distressed by her leaving. Even her mother, who was prone to fits of tears whenever her roses did not bloom on schedule, barely shed a tear. In truth, they were relieved; El was a troublesome child, and she had a younger brother who was far more suited to inherit the crown. His name was Becket, but that doesn't matter, because he doesn't come back into the story.
El was happy to leave her parents and brother, who were far too simple and sad for her tastes. She had never left the castle before and was a bit apprehensive about traveling alone, but she soon found that peasant girls traveled alone all the time in the peaceful kingdom of Lemnor, and she was thus not at all out of place. Still, because she knew very little about being a peasant, she made friends with a farm girl named Dilly who, like Becket, does not appear in the story past this point.
After a few weeks of farm life, where she learned enough about being a peasant to get by, El left the farm to find an adventure. The day she set out upon was a lovely day in the middle of April, one of those days that is just cool enough to make a long walk comfortable and just sunny enough to void the necessity of a sweater.
(Or any other sort of long-sleeved garment that might restrict the adventurous qualities of a young sixteen year old princess determined to find an adventure.)
She met many interesting people on her travels that I won't waste time describing, because they, like Becket and Dilly, do not enter into the story again. She also had several adventures which I will also not waste time describing because, though you may have thought otherwise, this story is not about El's adventures. It is, in fact, about what happens to El when she is not looking for an adventure. And that something is about to happen, so pay attention.
One of the first and most repeated lessons El learned on her escapades across Lemnor was that the weather was not always so solicitous toward princesses on adventures. In fact, oftentimes, it was downright uncharitable. This was how the princess found herself soaked to the skin and in a foul mood one late night, a locked gate away from any hope of dryness and warmth and a country away from anyone she knew.
El pounded on the gate, as any reasonably thinking princess would do, and waited for someone to brave the downpour to let her in to the castle. It was several minutes before a heavily cloaked man unlatched the gate and beckoned her in. El thanked the man and squished into the castle.
(Her shoes were, by this point, extremely wet and very close to being useless as anything more than tough sponges; this is why she squished instead of walked.)
The man who let her in was named Nicolas, and his name is important because he is one of the key characters in this story. When El told him who she was, he immediately took her sopping cloak and told her to wait there and dry herself by the fire while he talked to the Queen.
(Though this story is about El, she does nothing interesting during this next part, so we shall follow Nicolas instead, because he does something very interesting indeed.)
He scurried to the Queen's chambers and told her about the princess who had seemed to appear out of nowhere, then asked what should be done.
The Queen thought very hard, then asked Nicolas to do something so strange that I believe I should go backwards a little bit to explain why the Queen would ask Nicolas to do such a thing, before I tell you what she asked him to do.
The Queen (whose name is Mae, but that doesn't really matter) had a son who was also sixteen, and they had just returned from traveling themselves. They had searched the whole known world for a True Princess who would marry the Prince, but to no avail. After meeting every single princess that existed, the Queen and the Prince both agreed that they were all too wifty and delicate to be True Princesses.
(After all, princesses would, one day, become queens, and a scatterbrained queen is no good thing to have on the throne.)
On their way back from visiting the last princess, the Queen and Prince were so downcast that they began to do what many people do when they have lost much hope. They began to make fun of their predicament and suggest outlandish tests to discern a True Princess from a regular princess. One jest that the Prince had made stuck in the Queen's mind, and it was that test that she asked Nicolas to prepare for Princess El.
She ordered that a mattress, stuffed with goose-down and fluffed to perfection, be moved into the guest chamber. Underneath the mattress should be placed a simple dagger, one flat enough that it could not be felt through the bed. Then, after the princess was inside, he was to lock the door. Nicolas was confused, but he did as he was told, and after the room had been prepared, he showed the shivering princess into it and told her that she would meet the Queen and the Prince in the morning.
El thanked him, then undressed and clambered into the bed, expecting to fall asleep immediately on such a comfortable mattress. The hours crept by, however, and El hardly closed her eyes. There was something wrong, and she couldn't figure out what. Finally, she gave up trying to sleep and lit the lantern, taking a look around the room. Finding nothing out of place, she began searching around the bed for anything suspicious.
As you might imagine, she found the dagger. And, also as you might imagine, she was alarmed. She knew that not all kingdoms operated like Lemnor, but she was fairly certain that it was not common practice to store weapons of assassination underneath the beds of guests. When she had finished panicking, she decided to do what any sensible princess would do and escape before the plot could be completed.
She gathered her things as silently as possible and stuck the dagger in her belt, in case she needed it, then tried her doorknob, which was, as we know, locked. She also tried all the windows, but they were locked as well.
(El was definitely worried now, as I'm sure you would be in her situation. The fact that she had a dagger made her feel a little bit better, but not very.)
She decided that the only thing to do was to wait, so wait she did. She sat in the chair by the fire, dagger in hand, until a maid knocked on her door and told her that breakfast was in ten minutes. This knock startled her so in her jumpy state that she nearly put her own eye out, but thankfully for her, she did not.
(You see, the royal doctor was out of town on family business, and the next closest thing was the castle cook, who was very skilled at killing things, but not so at keeping them alive.)
She dressed hastily and concealed the dagger in her dress, then waited for Nicolas to arrive and escort her to breakfast. El arrived at the table fully expecting to be poisoned, but even before the food was brought out, the Queen asked her how she slept. El saw this as an opportunity to lay their plan bare and show them that she was not as simple as they thought her to be, so she did exactly that, drawing the dagger from her dress as proof, in case either of them tried to deny it.
The Prince began to laugh, and the Queen soon joined him. El did not laugh, for understandable reasons. After the Prince regained his composure, he explained exactly what his mother had done and why, which did wonders to set El's heart at ease. Neither of them seemed like the sort of people who wanted to kill defenseless princesses, so she had very little trouble forgiving them for scaring her.
(The Prince's name, by the way, was Ducat, but it's a little late for introductions now, as the story is almost over.)
Ducat then asked her to marry him, as she was the only True Princess he knew, and definitely the only princess worth marrying. El, who had seen her fair share of princes in her adventures, said that he seemed to be a unique sort of prince himself and agreed to marry him, on the condition that he would never call her Elissa or Lissa. He agreed, and promptly began calling her Iss. At first, El was annoyed, but then she grew fond of the nickname, and was henceforth known only as Iss, and everyone forgot that she had ever been called El at all.
They both lived happily ever after.
EDIT: Thank you, Ellsbeta, for pointing out my typo!