After discovering that Ars could have brought her back a while ago, the 2 little girls refused to talk to him the whole day. But the next day with the coaxing from all the queens including their mother they forgave him.
That day was also the start of the festival, they were all preparing themselves to the festival, unlike the normal clothes they used pretty much everyday, during the first day where the royal family was the center of attention they needed to dress properly, so all the queens were getting helped by the maids choosing and putting the dresses, and a little bit of jewellery.
The princesses were in a similar situation, where they also needed to dress properly, but unlike the queens they weren't that willing to put on the clothes, that while not uncomfortable, compared to their everyday clothes almost seemed so. The maids were also having fun dressing them, almost like they were dolls. So the little girls were having a bad time.
Ars in the meantime, had chosen a black outfit with a navy blue shirt and a bit of gold colored accessories. After choosing it he quickly got dressed and went to choose his sword. For Ars the sword was the best accessory, and he always had at least one close to himself, he almost felt uncomfortable if he didn't have a weapon in his surroundings so bringing a sword with a beautiful sheath. At this point he had a small collection of both swords and sheaths, most of them made by the blacksmiths on the island.
Ars didn't realize it, but because of his obsession with strength, everyone who was over a certain age in the kingdom always had a weapon on them. In fact nobody in the entire kingdom had realized this fact or the fact that everyone in the kingdom, from the youngest children that were starting to be able to walk to the oldest, would practice fighting and train at least 1 hour a day.
Ars had installed some sort of den den mushi megaphone that Rook bought while traveling outside the kingdom, all over the villages and the other city, so we wouldn't need to make the same speech twice. Once he was ready he got outside and started moving to meet the queens and the princesses but one of the more recent maids that they hired, to help take care of the palace, was waiting for him, the moment he got out she pulled him to a room, where someone else was waiting for him with a chair.
The maid got him to sit down and the other person started to prepare to cut his hair.
The person in charge of cutting his hair and shaving his beard properly for today had been a quick hire by Elia and Olivia along with some hairdressers for them, just for today to style their hair. In the case of Ars it was a barber, who couldn't help but complain, when he saw Ars hair,
"Your majesty, it will be a pleasure to work with you, and it's a huge honor to meet you but your majesty really needs to care about your presentation on days like these a bit better, allow me to show you my magic!"
Ars laughed, smiled a friendly smile and replied amused.
"Amaze me, and make me a diva!"
Both the barber and the maid laughed when they heard that, and the barber replied.
"It will be my pleasure!"
Then Ars let the man do his work while they talked a bit about random stuff back and forth.
"Do you have a lot of clients??"
"I have a good amount, since there aren't that many barbers in the city yet."
"Married?"
"Not yet, but dating and I plan to propose soon!"
"How has life been treating you in the kingdom?"
"Honestly couldn't be better, when i came here i was skeptical, about the truth of the claims made by the people inviting us to come, what they described was almost to good to be true and even in my dreams was a bit far-fetched, but when I started to live here, I realized that, not only did they not exaggerate, but they didn't even say everything. So nowadays, me and my future wife have been living in what we feel is a huge dream. I mean we were quite poor before, so any improvement would be welcomed… But there are no words to describe how much we have grown to love this kingdom. For me currently life is better than a dream."
"I'm happy to hear that. But do you have anything in mind that the kingdom doesn't have and would be nice to have?"
"Not really… Like I said before, I was poor and when you go from being poor to living a good life in this short amount of time, it takes a bit of time to adjust. Maybe in the future I will have something but for now I have nothing."
All this time while they talked Ars always had a genuine smile on his face, he was happy that his citizens were doing fine and were happy with their lives.
Shortly after his hair was done and he looked at the barber and said calmly.
"Thank you for the help and I hope you keep living well and happy."
The barber smiled and nodded.
Ars then left and moved towards the queens' rooms, but on the way there he changed directions to go to the princesses room.
The little girls should be about ready by now, he could take them with him.
He arrived and the little girls were still getting their hair done, but they were almost finished. The maids seeing him enter quickly greeted him.
"Your majesty!"
Ars looked at the little girls and praised them.
"Aren't you 2 extra cute today!"
They were wearing a children's dress with baby blue adornments. He looked at the maids and asked.
"How long until they have their hair done?"
The maids looked at each other and one of them responded a bit nervously.
"If they don't try to run and let us do their hair it will be finished in around 15 minutes or so."
Ars nodded but the 2 little girls were not having it, they went to hide behind him and Rika complained.
"Tired, don't want to stay here…"
Ars looked at the maids and they instantly confessed.
"We might have changed their clothes a few too many times, to make sure they were wearing the cutest dresses today, so they might be a bit tired of us."
Ars laughed a bit awkwardly but then warned them.
"Next time just ask the mothers what clothes they will wear, and let them decide, these 2 little babies are gonna arrive exhausted at the speech…"
Ars then crouched in front of the 2 little girls and asked.
"Can the maids make your hair pretty, it will be fast."
Risa pouted a bit but nodded and RIka followed her example.
Not even 5 minutes later, the oldest started complaining.
"Can we go now?"
Ars smiled but shook his head, before replying.
"Not yet, you still have half of your hair to be done."
She showed an annoyed expression. But waited another 5 minutes before complaining again.
"Is it over?"
The maids had basically finished, and one of them took a small ribbon and put it on Risa. And then said with a smile.
"There, ready for the day!"
Ars nodded and praised her.
"There, it wasn't that bad was it? You did amazing!"
He was about to pet her head when the maids cleared her throat and looked at Ars with a cold smile that screamed, if you mess her hair up I'm complaining to ALL of your wifes.
Ars froze, it was indeed a bad idea to mess the little girl's hair, he cleared his throat and looked to the other maids that were about to finish with Rika, and asked.
"How much longer?"
One of the maids replied without even paying attention.
"One more minute!"
A minute later they were done, and Ars picked them both on to his arms. They both had braided crowns with small ribbons matching their clothes.
Ars looked at them and quickly praised them.
"You both did amazing, I'm sure your mothers will be proud!"
They both smiled but said nothing, the youngest was still basically half asleep and the oldest was still pouting because she got forced to sit that whole time.
Ars smiled and kissed their foreheads. Behind him the maids were showing a bit of envious expressions. They were a bit resentful, because they wanted to be the ones to take the children, it was normally the queens who took the children and the maids rarely had that opportunity, so, today they thought they had the opportunity to have the little cute princesses on their arms, since the queens themselves were taking their time getting ready, but that opportunity, got stolen by Ars.
Ars noticed they were holding a grudge and asked one of the maids that just had an amused face.
"What's wrong with them?"
She smiled and explained.
"They always love to pamper the princesses but they rarely have the reason to pick them up and hug them, and they believed that today they would have the chance, but your majesty got ready sooner than expected, so they lost that chance and now they are a bit resentful about that."
Ars looked at them, laughed at them and then criticized them.
"If you ladies wanted to be the ones to take the children in your arms, you should have hurried up dressing them, and not waste time using them almost as dolls changing their dresses several times, just an idea! Clearly they were uncomfortable! And you guys chose to ignore it to satisfy your minds…"
They just lowered their heads and one replied.
"We simply wanted them to be as cute as possible!"
Ars sighed and smiled, a bit calmer.
"I know but you can't really be resentful at me for not taking a whole 2 hours to get ready."
They nodded and didn't reply anymore.
Then they got to the queens' communal room, normally each of them had their own room but today they were getting ready all in the communal room. This room was created by the queens for the queens, so they would have an extra large room where they all normally could sleep when they didn't feel like sleeping in their rooms by themselves
When Ars entered they were still getting their hair done, and Ars laughed at their dresses, they were all the same dress but with different colors.
It was obvious what he was laughing about, Reiju smiled at him and explained.
"We could have gotten different dresses, but this year we all decided to take the same dress but with a different color scheme, this way no one will complain about liking a dress more or that a dress is more comfortable."
Ars looked at them and was a bit shocked by the silly reason.
"You serious?"
She nodded and Ars sighed and complained.
"You know that you can wear anything and look beautiful anyway, who cares about others preferences, you aren't other people, you are all yourselves, and if you're happy as you are, nobody will say anything, and if they do, they can go screw themselves."
All the queens smiled sweetly, and then Ars commented.
"You thought I was gonna say that they can go fu–?"
One of the maids hit him on the back of the neck and admonished him.
"Your majesty! The children are in your arms! Be more careful with what you say!"
The queens smiled and nodded.
Since he had to wait, he sat down with the 2 little girls in his arms. Rika was already back to sleep. And Risa looked at Ars and requested full of hope.
"Can I play in the room please?"
Ars nodded and signaled the maids to keep an eye on her. They nodded back. And Ars let Risa go play around in the room.
Ars also used the off time to close his eyes and rest his eyes, while he waited.
The first queen to finish was surprisingly Reiju.
Ars was expecting Elia to be the first, since normally she was the one who got up the earliest and was already almost done since he arrived. He looked back at her and she was helping Rachel with her chosen accessories, like all queens she chose a necklace and earrings, with Olivia and Bell-mere having an extra accessory, a hair clip.
All the accessories were made of rare harmless metals and decorated beautifully with precious stones.
And the dresses were quite simple but they amplified the queens' beauty.
The dresses were long cut dresses, sleeveless, with a single slit on the side up to right above the knee and with a V cut on the cleavage. With each dress having one uniform color.