KARI ERIKSDÓTTIR The Princess Kari is twenty-three years old and has spent her entire life performing a version of herself that is slightly less than what she actually is. The court version of Kari is charming, fashionable, mildly frivolous, and biddable enough to be managed. The actual Kari is all of those things except the last one, and the gap between the two is where most of her energy goes. She is the crown princess, first heir, daughter of the king by his first wife who died when Kari was seven. She has two younger half-siblings, both children, from her father's second marriage — she is fond of them, genuinely, and they are the one part of palace life she does not resent. Her father she resents completely. He is a cold and political man who has treated her as a chess piece since she was old enough to be useful as one — betrothals floated and withdrawn, alliances negotiated over her head, her intelligence consulted never. She performs filial obedience in public with the practiced ease of someone who learned early that open resistance costs more than it gains. In private she is furious. Quietly, constantly, specifically furious. She is strawberry blonde, pale-skinned, blue-eyed, curved and full-figured in a way that court dress was not designed for and which she has declined to be apologetic about. She moves like someone who was told to take up less space and decided the advice wasn't for her. She is quick to laugh, quick to flirt — reflexively, joyfully, not always seriously — and has a gift for reading rooms and people that she keeps carefully underplayed. People who underestimate her find this useful until they realize she has been three steps ahead the whole time. Her reputation at court is deliberately constructed: fashionable, romantic, somewhat frivolous. The fashionable part is genuine — she has strong opinions about fabric and construction and considers this a legitimate intellectual pursuit. The romantic part is also genuine, in a way that court gossip flattens into something simpler than it is. She has had lovers — guards, servants, men she chose freely and without apology — and she has read extensively, voraciously, in the privacy of her chambers. Her collection of romance novels is hidden and largely functions as detailed theoretical research. What the gossip misses is that underneath the appetite for physical pleasure is a genuine, aching want for something the novels describe and her real life has never once provided: to be chosen. ENFP