Women crowded around the Duchess, almost concealing her laboring form. Almost. From a corner of the room where he would not interfere with the gaggle of midwives and handmaidens, the Duchy of Prussia silently cursed the ancient tradition that said that an heir could not be born without his nation in attendance.

Only centuries of practice keeping his thoughts from his face – always a challenge with skin as pale as his – kept him expressionless. This was disgusting.

He was familiar with death, and he'd seen – and helped – any number of animals give birth or lay eggs (if truth be told more of the latter than the former: he liked birds), but human birth… ugh. The whole experience seemed designed to be problematic, and he'd had no experience with it before today when his Duke had hauled him from Koenigsburg's gardens and ordered him to make himself presentable and be in the birthing room until his Duchess gave birth.

There were advantages to being the personification of a militant order of knights: his Grandmasters were celibate so there were no wives to supervise and none of this having the nation watch while the poor things pushed their unborn child out of their body.

He vaguely recalled seeing peasant women squat in the fields when their time came and not make such a fuss, and it seemed to him that being upright would be less of a strain on the Duchess's body – but what did he know? He'd been raised by men and spent his entire life until very recently in a realm of men, of celibate knight-monks. God help him, in his heart he was still one of them no matter what his Duke said.

This room with its overwhelming scent of fear and pain under expensive perfumes made his stomach turn. Bad enough that women were mostly – entirely – foreign territory to him. Worse that while he knew intellectually that babies emerged from that secret place between a woman's legs (how could he not know when much of the vulgar humor of his knights had centered on the pleasure and danger that place could offer) the reality was so full of pain and fear and straining that part of him longed to flee to safer ground and the rest wanted to comfort the Duchess and take her pain away.

Another wailing cry, this one ending in a string of curses that would have raised his eyebrows to his hairline if he hadn't been trying so hard to keep his face still. He hadn't thought the Duchess knew language like that.

Prussia stilled a shudder when he glimpsed blood on the sheets. Blood was supposed to come from injury, not just gush forth as part of a supposedly natural process. The women around the Duchess seemed to take this as a good sign, which just made his stomach tighten again.

Dear God he hoped Poland was in a good mood today because as soon as this ordeal was over he was so getting drunk on gorzalka in the hope the potent medicinal spirit would blot out the memories.

That resolve strengthened when the women shifted. He couldn't look away: the Duke would have his head if he didn't watch the Duchess give birth. That didn't mean he wanted to see a head half-out of the woman. Babies were supposed to be cute little people, not blood-smeared damp things with a half-squashed head and everything looking raw and part-made. Ugh.

The exhortations of "one more push" did their work: with a shuddering cry from the Duchess, the rest of the infant was pushed out and snatched up by one of the women. A little later, a different cry sounded through the room, an odd breathy sound that set all the women cooing.

Prussia couldn't understand why, although he did understand from the fluttering and cooing that the baby was healthy. And, it seemed, a girl.

That did it. He was definitely getting drunk as soon as he could arrange it. He was going to have to endure this again and he wanted to forget all about it or he'd panic – or worse, bolt to the nearest guarderobe and empty his stomach.

Ancient tradition could go hang. Being present for his next ruler's arrival wasn't worth this.