Even though it was now peacetime, various things would still happen. My headaches weren't limited only to Mefuri trying to isolate herself from everyone.
"Eliza-sama, a letter has arrived from Claudia-sama's family."
"…I'll read it."
Just as I was finishing up the office work for this morning, Mrs. Marshan who was in charge of Tira, Reka, and Ratoka's studies brought a letter to me.
This is the second time that I've received a sealed letter from the Rolentsor family since returning from the battlefield.
Of course, the content was about the only point of contact I had with them – it was with regards to finding a marriage for Claudia.
Claudia who's ten years older than me will be turning 24 years old on her next birthday which is in the summer.
…As for the age of 24, even in the royal capital which is more lax on marriageable age, it's considered to be nearing the end of an appropriate age to get married in this country. Since we were in a rural domain like Kaldia with mostly only commoners, I had been putting this off… but in my defense, there was nobody I could think of in this domain that I could put together with her in a "marriage."
Ever since she successfully became a knight before the age of twenty so that she wouldn't have to obey her parents and get married to whoever they wanted, she herself has probably never even thought about the concept of marriage since then.
But in the end, she was still a noble daughter herself, and there will still be people interested in getting married to her.
After I returned from the battlefield at the end of autumn, I had written a letter to Claudia's father. I asked him if he had any ideas about helping Claudia to get married.
However, what Claudia's father believed was that I, since Claudia was a knight now officially serving me, or Earl Terejia since that was who she was serving on the surface, should take the responsibility for her marriage issue.
Unlike the case of where noble daughters would often temporarily work as maids in other noble households, Claudia working as a knight for me was probably a job she viewed as permanent in nature, completely leaving her home.
The ranked knights of personal or national knight orders are considered to be permanent jobs unless they withdraw of their own volition. Since these knights will receive titles of their own, they can be thought of as new heads of their own branch families.
But even so, they still have parents. As for Claudia's parents, when Baron Rolentsor saw that the war was over and peace had arrived, he wanted Claudia to settle down and get married so that she could enjoy the "average" happiness of life.
His letter to me even included veiled criticisms of the fact that Claudia had gotten both of her hands injured while fighting for me. If it wasn't for the fact that she had succeeded in becoming a knight, I was certain that he would have loudly protested because of the custom about how unmarried girls shouldn't have their bodies blemished or something like that.
…Even though I'm someone who personally killed her entire family with her own hands, I can still understand the happiness of having your own family that you can spend time with.
The girl from my previous life was able to spend her last days before death peacefully thanks to her own family. Even if I didn't have the exact same feelings as that girl, I understood that she had what was considered an ideal family. That's why I also hoped to give my citizens the same type of peaceful family lives.
While Claudia technically wasn't one of my domain's citizens, she was one of my closest aides that served me faithfully. I was filled with conflicting feelings of just allowing Claudia to continue down her favorite lifestyle of hot-blooded battles, but also wanting her to be able to enjoy a peaceful life.
That's why I now had the urgent matter of thinking about how to have my upcoming discussion with Claudia.
"Anyways…… sigh. For the time being, I should hear what she thinks first."
As I finished reading Baron Rolentsor's letter and folded it up neatly, I couldn't help but let a sigh escape from me.
Did Claudia herself want to get married? I was quite doubtful of it.
And if she told me that she was willing to get married, just who should I help her get married to?
Of course, she would have to get married to a noble that was approximately equal to her in status.
On top of that, she probably wouldn't want to end up leaving Kaldia, it was impossible for her to act like a typical noblewoman and settle down at home, and due to the fact that her personal combat prowess was astonishing, it would have to be an individual who wouldn't have a complex about most likely being weaker than she was.
And as for my personal wish, I hoped that whoever she got married to would be able to rein her in to a certain extent. And I needed a person who wouldn't mind having to move to the Kaldia domain.
Not to mention, it needed to be a person who didn't have any conflicts with the most important families connected to me, the Terejia, Einsbark, my own Kaldia, or the Genas (my most important neighbor) families.
Even if all of the above was satisfied, there was one biggest problem of all remaining – honestly I wasn't even sure if this problem was surmountable – Claudia herself would have to be willing to marry this person.
…Was there even a single unmarried male in this world that managed to fulfill all of these conditions simultaneously?
"Mrs. Marshan, could you please pass along a message to Claudia for me, please? I would like to have lunch together with her today."
Even though all these things were weighing on my mind, I decided to set up a time to discuss this with Claudia and deal with this issue.
Mrs. Marshan agreed to pass my message along. Now then, let's finish off the last bit of my work and get ready for lunch.
There was only one final stack of documents remaining, and I unrolled the papers as I prepared my stamp.
These were a rare type of document, being marriage notifications regarding my citizens that were planning on getting married for this year's spring.
Spring always had the most marriage applications, which made me wonder if it was because they had the most time to prepare to get married in winter. This year, it seemed that there were twenty-six couples planning on getting married.
The first time that I stamped my approval for the citizens' marriage applications was when I was seven years old. Compared to then, my citizens are getting married at a much higher rate than before.
And so, I stamped my approval on each marriage application that the villages had mailed to me.
That's when…
"…Hmm? …………Ehhh?"
My hand couldn't help but stop when I suddenly saw the name "Gunther Pavel" written on one of the marriage documents.
……What, what was this?
Gunther was getting married? That guy didn't mention anything on this topic at all while he was at Fort Jugfena with me! Even the other Kaldia army members didn't bring this topic up at all!