The invitation had been hand delivered by a boy in royal livery. Rey's Guardian, Baronet Plutt, had practically been salivating on the envelope as he got his flabby mitts on it. Although she knew it wasn't news for her she hung around anyway, wondering what extra work would inevitably come of it.
There was to be a royal ball. All ladies of noble birth between the ages of 16 and 30 were to attend. The Prince wished to meet the eligible ladies of Alderaan with the intention of marrying.
The Prince was approaching thirty and the only male heir of the Skywalker-Organa line. Whoever married the Prince would be Queen one day, and their father would become a powerful man.
The house was in uproar. Plutt was ambitious and exceptionally unhappy that his late wife had only produced daughters. This was their chance. Play things right, one of them could be a princess. Fortunately for them, they had taken after their mother in their looks but were very much as their father in attitude. Talia and Asajj were already barking orders at Rey to take an order to the dressmaker, immediately.
Plutt had been a merchant in the backwater of Jakku before being elevated to the rank of minor nobility. Rey was surprised that he didn't go on about how he achieved this, given how much he liked to brag about his Baronetcy, but all he would say was he had been a loyal servant to the previous regime. Although there was the fact that the previous regime had been King Vader, puppet of the Palpatine Empire, which in retrospect had not been good for all involved. Rey suspected that if Plutt had been of service to King Vader then it had likely been in some shady deed he wouldn't want made public. Not very 'noble'.
What Rey had learned from talking to Finn, another servant she bumped into once at the market after thinking he was trying to steal from her, was that King Vader was an Alpha, a particularly vicious one. The ancient rule was that a king (usually an Alpha like most highborn males) must marry a highborn Omega, to ensure the purity of the line and the optimum fertility so the Queen would provide lots of heirs. Given that Omegas were all but extinct this aspect had been relaxed, but the law that the father of the royal bride was expected to take up a position on the King's Council, meant that the bride being from the nobility was still very much in place.
Plutt clearly wanted this badly. As pretty as Asajj and Talia were, Rey hoped that the groom's side of the future family were vetting the brides family very closely! Plutt was foul, uncouth, essentially still a swindler, mean and had never done an honest day's work in all of his life. His associates regularly came in and out of the Manor House and this was how Rey had learned not to engage with strangers. A few black eyes for eavesdropping had been a painful lesson. Once she had even had a knife held to her throat during a deal gone wrong. She had been surprised that Plutt had actually bargained for her release, rather than let her be killed where she stood. His resentment towards her afterwards soon dashed any notion that he did give a damn about her. Her workload increased tenfold when he sacked the cook and his daughter's maid.
However, Finn was servant to Lady Phasma, who was friends with General Hux of the royal army, and it seemed to Rey that the future groom didn't sound like much of a catch either.
Queen Amidala had given King Vader a twin son and daughter but died in child birth herself. Some said that this had driven King Vader into madness and under the control of the Queen's father, Emperor Palpatine. There had been a bloody war and people said it was a fearful time. Jakku had the honour of being one of the final battlegrounds of the Great War and Rey could still see the scars on the landscape, abandoned siege equipment and burned villages. War was not good for the people.
Finn had said that because Queen Amidala had been an Alpha herself, this messed up how things usually worked and the future King Luke was a common beta, just like the regular population. It was his sister, Princess Leia who had gotten the Alpha genes.
Regardless of his beta designation, Prince Luke had won the throne from his father and had expelled the Emperor from Alderaan, leaving him a cripple. King Luke's rule had been peaceful and you had to be grateful for that. Maybe all kings should be betas from now on, Rey thought?
Apparently, King Luke had fallen in love with someone connected to Palpatine and until her suspicious death, had kept her as a mistress. He had never married and there was no queen and no princes from him. Princess Leia however had married a commoner, allowed seeing as the Alderaan line of succession went on males only, so there was no law against her marrying outside of the elite. As a result their only child, Prince Benjamin, was next in line to the throne
Finn was not at all complementary about Prince Benjamin. He said he had met him while he had been attending upon Lady Phasma once and he was bad tempered, aggressive and had the patience of a toddler. That was something for the country to look forward to. Finn and Rey, whenever they managed to sneak an ale together, always drank to King Luke's good health and longevity!
Ah well, maybe the Crown Prince deserved a spoiled, petty wife and a nightmare like Plutt for a father in law. Although Rey hoped that wasn't the case as she wondered where that would put her in all of this. She doubted that Plutt would release her from his service, nor was Rey under the impression that she was fancy enough to be a royal servant. Would she want to be if she might have to be in the vicinity of the charming Prince Benjamin? Nope, she would not.
With any luck she would be asked to keep ramshackle old Niima House running while Plutt and his daughters went off to Court. It was exhausting work keeping the crumbling hovel going when Plutt was too busy doing dodgy deals or indulging his daughters to spend money on essential works, for example the wagon in the yard was rotting away, along with a lot of the woodwork in the house itself, and Beebee the carthorse was getting old; the stonework in the courtyard was cracking and subsiding and the windows in the servants' quarters were broken, amongst many others.
Yet Rey found herself walking into town with a list of sumptuous fabrics and instructions as to the latest styles that Asajj and Talia preferred. And for ribbons, and to head to the cobblers for all three.
Musing on the way there, Rey wondered what it must be like to be King Luke, having found someone you wanted to spend your life with and not be able to marry them because of their family? She wondered what that woman had felt in return. Did she love King Luke too and were they prevented from being together, or was she simply dragged into the situation against her will because she caught the attention of someone powerful enough to take what they wanted? How do you say no to a king? Royal mistress or not, there was a stigma to...relations outside of marriage.
Rey had thought that she would marry Finn once; it seemed natural seeing that he was the only person she knew outside of Plutt's household and his associates, who she would definitely not want to attract the attention of. Not that that was likely, Rey thought. She was usually covered in a layer of ground in dust and sand, both on her skin and on the rags she wore. Living on the edge of exhaustion and starvation she had none of the shape men seemed to like.
Her thoughts of Finn being her future ticket away from Plutt had been dashed when he admitted that he had grown a crush on a knight in the Royal Cavalry, Sir Poe Dameron. They had met in the stables at the Palace and bumped into each other now and again. She was sad for herself at having her hopes of escaping Plutt dashed but glad he had found someone that made him happy. Finn was a good person, and he deserved it. And by the sounds of it Lady Phasma was just as difficult to work for as Plutt, albeit Finn was always better fed than Rey was.