Turn 3 Flavor
“…she’d thought up an idea for sneaking the good wine out of the cellar. It wasn’t a revolutionary plan - knock over a torch to distract the guard, sneak into the cellar, grab the wine, and sneak out - and she’d skipped the part where she actually confirmed that every part (or any part) would be suitable or viable, but far more than the wine, that girl needed a victory over her grandfather for once. So began her desperate act of rebellion.
“It immediately fell apart when she knocked over the torch and accidentally set fire to her dress. And after the guard hurried her into a fountain, she was brought before her grandfather to explain why in the world she’d attempted ‘such a stupid plan for such a stupid thing’. He was mad enough about the incident that he had two of the guards bring his infamous chair - that gnarled entanglement of wood, hacked from the Great Deku Tree itself by an ancestor of his - to scream at her from.
“That girl is strong, but the old man is stronger and far more used to being a monster than she is to dealing with monsters. We were made to stand in that room for hours upon hours, watching his tirade of insults and cruelty and anger crash upon the girl’s stone-cold face, slowly eroding it away piece by piece, ounce by ounce, until every bit of her self-worth was crushed to dust upon the stone floor. And even then, that man wasn’t satisfied with his power trip. He got up from his chair and, without laying a finger on her, tore her apart like a wolf seizing upon fresh meat. It was miserable to watch; it must have been infinitely more miserable to endure.
“At some point, as his back was turned, one of my guards secretly snuck over and cut the wooden support for that chair. We did not stop him. And once that old man finally finished with his granddaughter, he sat back down on the chair, and it cracked, snapped, crumbled from underneath him. The most powerful man in Hyrule was sent tumbling to the ground.
“I took the brunt of his fury as the man who helped him back to his chambers - it’s my duty as head of the Royal Guard to not let that ire to fall upon anyone else - and was thus privy to all the nasty things he’d somehow ‘held back on’. It is not my place to say that he needed to be taken down a peg, but he certainly wrote a strong argument.
“As I left with him that night, in a final glance back, I saw the girl’s eyes shine for the first time in potentially ever, starstruck by the guard that did what she could not. I believe that switching out her knight to being that guard would do a great deal for her morale. Given the importance of the princess’ well-being to the survival of Hyrule, I do feel it necessary that she feels that she has an ally in her corner. I will raise the idea with Wilia tonight.”
- Excerpt from the diary of Teponas
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