Author's Starting Note:

This holiday Alan/OG!Katarina fic was written for my brilliant readers and friends Lutka and Palhinhaea. Lutka wanted to see Alan and Katarina start a certain enterprise together, while Palhinhaea wrote a *brilliant* Alan/OG!Katarina holiday one-shot (titled Time after Time) that absolutely needed to be responded to in fic form. And since this fandom has a dire shortage of fic starring Best Boy Alan being happy with OG!Katarina, this was the end-result.

And for any other readers following this tale... thank you again for your support and I hope you enjoy reading more about this sadly rare pairing.

The Phantom of the Palace - Chapter 1

Prince Alan Stuart had sailed through eighteen years of his life with nothing but the winds of misfortune at his back. Hideous, useless, untalented, sickly, and largely unknown to anyone outside of his circle of immediate family and morose servants, he had lived the sincere (and correct) conviction that he was one of the most unfortunate men to have ever been born. Indeed, so great was his misfortune that though his own twin brother, Jeord, had been born the healthy, brilliant, handsome, and perfect son of their family, he had entered the world a sickly infant unlikely to even see the completion of his first year.

And even as Jeord had thrived into being a child prodigy that everyone spoke of as the possible future king of Sorcier, Alan had remained in such fragile health that his parents despaired of his living even beyond infancy. Thus, for the first decade of his life, Alan had been barred from seeing anyone more than immediate family and his usual entourage of physicians and nurses or stepping beyond carefully cleared sections of the royal palace. Indeed, mostof Alan's earliest memories were of him staring at Jeord as Jeord had calmly and smugly impressed his parents and elder brothers and sword masters and other teachers while Alan lay around awkwardly, cursing himself for not even being able toattempt such deeds.

Even now, Alan remained in fragile health and was prone to coming down with a fever should someone so much as sneeze in his direction. Thus, even as Jeord had gone onto strength after strength, peak after peak, Alan had remained sequestered in his bubble of sickness and shriveled helplessness. Indeed, after so much time away from the public gaze, Alan found himself suffering from fits of intense panic and anxiety every time his parents asked him to make an appearance anywhere other than secluded sectors of the palace… and given their understandable concern for his health and fragile nerves, it was eventually decided that even as Jeord sailed off to the Academy of Magic for Fine Young Lords and Ladies, Alan would stay behind in his very own wing of the palace for private tutoring.

And so, by the age of eighteen, Prince Alan Stuart had resigned himself to being a complete and utter recluse from all of polite society, unknown to anyone but his close family, physicians, and servants. No more than a dozen people even knew what he looked or sounded like, let alone what his personality was. And he certainly was not expected to ever get engaged or married, have children, gain any appreciable power, or do more than flit around the palace like a gray ghost, occasionally haunting the other inhabitants with his dreary music. In that, Alan was rather like his poor mad uncle who had been locked up in his own corner of the palace, one of the few survivors of the royal massacre of said uncle's generation.

So suffice to say that when his mother, the gracious and terrifying Queen of Sorcier, had summoned him to let him know that he was – after so many years thinking he would forever be a bachelor and likely die a virgin – engaged, he was baffled by her decision.

"Excuse me?" Alan managed, his face even paler than it was normally, which was truly something given his usual pallor. "I happen to be what now?! Explain again, mother – please!"

"You," his gracious queen mother said in the sort of sweetly steely tones that showed there was no way to shake her resolve, "are going to get engaged at last. Your brothers were engaged from an early age – never mind that not even one of them managed to wed any of the excellent women that I paired them with – and I have been remiss all these years to not do the same for you. After all, you cannot be a bachelor forever."

"Yes, I can!" Alan protested, panic already starting to claw at him. "Mother, you know I am untalented and hideous and sickly and –"

"Oh, please spare me," his mother said with a decided lack of empathy that was new, given how gently she had always treated him. "I love you, my dear Alan, I truly do – but I can see now that by coddling you, I have helped you develop all of these… neuroses that do not make sense in the least. And since you will not listen to what I have to say about yourself, I am pairing you up with a woman who will sing of your wonders so loudly even you will have to hear it."

Even as a curious chill of anticipation ran up Alan's spine at the thought of who she might be – and how pleasant it would be to have an actual woman who was not related or nursing him speak to him – he had to ask: "Who… who is this poor unfortunate soul that you are pairing with me then?"

And that was when his mother gave her most wicked smile and said: "Lady Katarina Claes, the once-heiress of the mighty Claes Duchy. You remember her, don't you, my dear?"

Alan's mouth dropped at the same time his heart fluttered and his stomach tied itself into a dozen tidy knots.

"Lady… Lady Katarina? Of the Claes Duchy? Isn't she engaged to Jeord?!"

"She certainly used to be," his queen mother said, cold displeasure flashing through her face. "And what a dynastic prize she is indeed… for as the once-heiress of House Claes, the grand-daughter of House Ames, she happens to have ties to the two most influential ducal families of Sorcier. Any child of hers has an excellent claim to heading both duchies eventually, especially since both houses are now nominally headed by bastard children picked up from God knows where. But of course, we cannot expect dear Jeord to realize as much, would we?"

"Uhm," said Alan, perplexed by the thought that his perfect brother might somehow be missing out on vital information. "I guess that's a no?"

"Unfortunately," his queen mother responded, mouth set in a grim line, "that is a no. For dear Jeord, as brilliant as he supposedly is, apparently has the political skills of a dead stoat. Instead of marrying Lady Katarina and reaping all the wealth and power and influence she and her future children would bring, he instead threw her over for… for…"

"Nicol Ascart?" Alan guessed, from the bafflement on his mother's face. "You never did like him, mother, that I remember. Or maybe an actual stoat?"

"Even worse," his mother hissed, her fingers turning into claws in her fury as Alan shrank back. "A bloody commoner. One with a fortune and familial connections that would rival said stoat!"

"Oh dear," Alan said. For while he had never been introduced to an engagement himself – he being so sickly that no high-ranking family wanted to tie their valuable daughters to him, while the low-ranking families were far beneath him – he knew how important building ties to other families through marriage was. After all, given the slaughter perpetuated by the siblings of the Stuart Dynasty within their last generation, they counted only seven people – including their mad shut-in uncle – in their line. And furthermore, the Stuart Dynasty had more than enough enemies and rivals among the noble families that they needed all the support they could get to continue in future generations.

Thus, Alan's brilliant queen mother and ambitious king father had made sure to engage all of their promising sons at an early age to the highest born bachelorettes in the kingdom – with First Prince Geoffrey being engaged to the daughter of Duke Randall, Second Prince Ian being engaged to the daughter of Duke Burke, and Third Prince Jeord being engaged to the daughter of Duke Claes. Their parents had dearly hoped that as soon as the princes had hit their age of majority, they would wed their carefully chosen brides and begin tying those powerful ducal families to their dynasty, thus giving the Stuart Dynasty some much-needed allies.

Unfortunately, Geoffrey was about as straight as a circle and had a strange fixation on his younger brothers, Ian seemed peculiarly unable to make any sort of romantic gesture toward his perpetually shy and anxious fiancée, and Jeord –

Well, Alan thought with a sudden burst of terrible satisfaction that was beneath him. It turns out there is something that Jeord does not excel at after all.

But then Alan's face paled as the realization hit that if Jeord was not so good at marrying a duke's daughter in order to make her powerful and well-connected noble family happy with the Stuart Dynasty, Alan might have to take his place at the altar.

And when his queen mother, who knew him best of anyone in the world, looked at him, she smiled.

And it was a most terrible and knowing smile indeed.

"Oh yes, my sweet Alan," she sweetly said. "You have always complained about how Jeord is allowed to do what you are not fit to – so lets us finally give you the satisfaction of overcoming him. So show me, my dear, that you can finally do what he could not – and that is to wed and bed Lady Katarina, and keep her happy within the bosom of our family."

And while that was theoretically an amazing goal, and one that some part of Alan burned to achieve, he still had to make one last protest over his inadequacy.

"I," he managed at last, feeling a veritable frog in his throat and a storm in his heart, "wish I could do what you are asking me to, mother. I… I have been lonely all of this years. And from what little I know of Lady Katarina, she is… quite the fine lady indeed. But if she has spent a decade by Jeord's side, how could she possibly go from him to me? He is everything I am not and –"

"And that," his mother interrupted, laying her hand gently on his cheek, "is precisely why she is perfect for you, as you are perfect for her. So please, Alan, do as I ask and at least try to make a marriage to Lady Katarina work. If you two cannot be happy together within a year, I promise that I will release you both from the trial engagement. But until then…"

His mother sighed, releasing her shaking breath, and Alan just looked at her for a minute.

It struck him, for perhaps the first time, that at nearly fifty, his mother was not the vigorous and hearty woman that he had been able to rely upon for all of these years. As age and trauma from participating in his siblings' deaths had taken its toll on his father, his mother had had to take the burden of ruling more and more upon herself… and while she was surely as sharp and brilliant as ever, the cost of doing so surely weighed heavily on her.

And it certainly did not help that all of her "brilliant" sons seemed hell-bent on disappointing her either.

Well, Alan was certainly not brilliant. He was not even sure he was up to being average, given how stunted and sickly he happened to be. But if his mother, his family, and perhaps even his kingdom needed him to woo Lady Katarina Claes and make her his bride by the end of the year…

And if it would show his constantly smug twin brother Jeord that Alan could do something even their "perfect family genius" could not achieve…

Then by god, Alan thought, he would do it. He would pull it off. He would romance Lady Katarina Claes until she wanted nothing more than to marry him eventually!

And though he was not quite sure how he was going to pull it off while pretending he wasn't as ugly and talentless and stupid as he really was, by God, he was going to try it regardless.

At the very least, Alan was not about to leave Lady Katarina to go marry some penniless commoner. After all, Alan did not even know any commoners, as even his personal staff was at least lower-ranked nobility! Surely this would endear him just a little to her!

…Maybe?

And so, Alan took a deep breath and made as manly and reassuring a nod as he could to his mother.

"Then I swear I will do my best," he swore, even as his mother beamed and looked at him with a pride that he did not know he deserved. "I will… I will work as hard as I can to woo and win over Lady Katarina and make her a part of our family. And I swear, mother, by this year's end, you will have a daughter-in-law at long last!"

And then, just as his mother was sighing in relief, Alan added: "Also, do you happen to have some sort of large mask that I could borrow to hide my hideous face from her view? I wouldn't want to scare her off before she realizes just what a terrible bargain that she has made in exchange for leaving Jeord!"

And then his mother sighed, though it sounded less in relief and more in exasperation.

"Oh Alan," she said, and then put her hands over her face. "If nothing else, at least the year ahead of us will be very good for the theatrics to come."

"That's it!" Alan said in response, enlightenment dawning on him. "I will woo Lady Katarina with the power of music and long-form opera! Though my face may be hideous, and my brain deformed, that is how she will be mine eventually!"

Not taking her hands off his face, his mother muttered: "And for the laughs. For at least that will be better than weeping in despair over my inability to breed sons with any common sense."

End Notes:

As always, reviews, comments, and questions from my dear readers are always heartily appreciated. Additionally, I hope you enjoy the twists that I put into Alan's eventual courting of Katarina! Since Alan's backstory of being "sickly" in his youth was so glossed over by the canon Hamefura series (even in the darker Fortune Lover timeline), I wanted to play around with what would have happened if he truly *remained* sick over time, to the point where he was well and truly outshone by Jeord. I promise that this story will have a happy ending... but Alan will have to go through quite a bit of character development in order to reach it first!

As for Lady Katarina Claes... I promise you, she will make her debut on the stage in the very next chapter and hopefully intrigue you all with her unfolding story. Suffice to say that she hasn't exactly had an easy time of things either. Suffice to say that Jeord isn't exactly the most loving or easy-going of fiancés... but then, that just makes her all the more open to a new partner, eccentric as he might be!

Finally, all the information in this story about the strange backstory of the Stuart Royal Family and the slaughter that Jeord and Alan's father committed against all of his bastard half-siblings comes straight from the Hamefura canon! You can read all the details/spoilers in this public post. But in short, in the 6th volume of the My Next Life as a Villainess light novels, Jeord reveals that his randy king grandfather's constant philandering and creation of a ton of illegitimate children nearly lead to civil war as said children ended up slaughtering each other to become the next ruler of Sorcier. At the end of this family war, only Jeord's father (an actual secret baby *and* the current king) and a young half-brother were left alive... and the Stuart Royal Family was left in a presumably fragile condition, which might explain why they engaged their sons as quickly as possible to the highest-ranking noble-born ladies of the land.

So in other words, Jeord throwing off the high-born Lady Katarina Claes for a very magically talented but ultimately penniless, landless, and politically impotent commoner girl was... er... probably not the best exchange imaginable from a political POV, which explains why his mother, Queen Stuart, is so angry with him. But this finally gives the long-dormant Alan a chance to prove himself in a most unorthodox manner... so let's see how that works out!