"Growing up in this palace was not what people assume it was from the outside. People see the wealth and the title of the king's son, and they project a certain idea onto it. The reality of being a bastard in the Lamorian royal palace was considerably less comfortable than that."
He said it without a trace of self-pity. He stated it with the same calm detachment he might have used to discuss military reports.
"Nheera despised me from the first day she laid eyes on me. She did not bother hiding it, not in public, not in front of her sons, and not in front of the servants who understood exactly how she felt about me. I was evidence of her husband's infidelity, and she wanted me to know exactly what that made me. Which, in her eyes, was nothing. I was filth. A child undeserving of love. In her view, which was also the view she ensured was shared by most people, I was an inconvenience that the king foolishly allowed to live under the same roof as his legitimate children."
