Chapter 675 The Ice Queen

Despite all her faults, and all the frustration she caused them both because of the trouble she stirred up and the potential they saw her wasting, most of the Tarnath Family actually adored Verena quite a lot.

She was bubbly, cheerful, friendly, kind, compassionate, and everything else you could possibly want in a family member.

On top of that, with her long, silky black hair, shimmering ice-blue eyes, youthful innocent face, and sinfully curvaceous body, Verena Tarnath was considered the most stunning woman in her kingdom, similar to how Cynthia was thought of in the Rockwell Kingdom.

The two women were actually considered the number 1 and number 2 beauties of the whole South-Central Region, the objects of adoration for both men and women alike.

As for who was number 1 and who was number 2, that was the subject of many drunken tavern debates.

Put simply, Verena was so easy to like that it was hard to stay mad at her for long.

She may have gotten on people’s nerves from time to time, but nobody ever thought Verena was being malicious and wicked, she simply loved life and wanted nothing to do with the ’boring’ responsibilities of being a ruler.

If she was offered the choice between becoming Queen of the Tarnath Dynasty or spending the rest of her days roaming around having fun, no one doubted Verena would choose the second option in a heartbeat.

Even outside the Tarnath Dynasty, Verena was very well liked.

There was one time that the young Tarnath Princess traveled incognito to the Rockwell Kingdom to meet her ’rival’.

That episode had resulted in her and the yet-to-be-married Cynthia Morgan running around together for several months, getting into all kinds of mischief and forming a fast friendship.

During that time, Verena had also met Celestina and even trained under her as a student for a while, an experience both women had found quite rewarding.

Of course, when her family found out she was pestering the powerful Marquess of a foreign nation to teach her how to use a spear, they had apologized profusely and scolded the princess quite harshly, but that had done little to dampen Verena’s spirits.

In summary, Verena was an innocent, outgoing, happy-go-lucky, somewhat spoiled royal princess whose only goal in life seemed to be to have as much fun as possible.

Ironically, it was her sense of wanderlust and avid avoidance of royal responsibilities that had saved Verena from being killed on that fateful day and ultimately led to her being crowned as Queen.

.....

When Verena returned from one of her long, unannounced trips to find the palace dark, all her family dead, and her kingdom on the brink of collapse, something snapped inside of her and from that day forth, she became a completely different person.

Gone was the cheerful princess, and in her place, the ’Ice Queen’ was born.

The moment the crown landed upon Verena’s head, she transformed into someone utterly unrecognizable to all who had known her before.

She became cold, calculating, and utterly ruthless, able to sentence whole noble houses to death for even thinking of betraying her, or to order the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians if that was what was necessary to save tens of thousands of others.

In a sense, almost overnight, Verena became the perfect ruler for the chaotic times the Tarnath Dynasty had been plunged into.

Where once she had been the one avoiding responsibly while looking for ways to slack off, now Verena pursued efficiency above all else, driven by an almost obsessive need to acquire strength and maintain order.

From her allies, she demanded total dedication and loyalty. Offer anything less, or come up wanting in ability, and you were summarily dismissed, regardless of who you were or what family you came from.

As for her opponents...

Verena was not intolerant of different opinions; in fact, she seemed to welcome them at first, as long as they were given respectfully and for a legitimate reason.

If someone believed that they had a better solution to a problem, or that she was making a mistake and could explain why, the new queen was willing to hear them out and consider alternative courses of action.

However, if someone was plotting against her, scheming to amass power for themselves, or to take away what rightfully belonged to her family, they were shown absolutely no mercy.

Heads rolled by the hundreds, and any sign of rebellion or defiance was brutally put down.

In Verena’s own words, "Enemies are not to be negotiated with, they are to be subjugated or destroyed."

No one knew if Verena had always possessed this kind of innate affinity for tyranny, or if losing her family had simply driven her mad, but the result was ultimately the same.

Funnily enough, 29 years into her reign, the coldly logical approach Verena had adopted to deal with the Tarnath Dynasty’s problems, doing what was necessary no matter who it offended, whose interests it interfered with, or who it required killing, actually earned her an enormous amount of trust and respect from the ordinary masses.

Make no mistake, the commoners still feared her and were terrified that one day they might become one of the ’necessary sacrifices’, but for a ruler trying to hold together a kingdom that could fracture at any moment all by herself, this fear was actually quite useful.

As for the nobles and privileged, while staunch allies of the Royal Family generally rejoiced at Verena’s unexpected competency, the overwhelming majority were either quietly fuming or cowering in fear.

The Tarnath Royal Family had always been an incredibly powerful force that had managed to largely centralize governing power in the dynasty over the course of its reign, so when they were wiped out by the previous Imperial Overseer, many noble houses felt that their time to rise had come.

Even if they couldn’t become the new rulers of the kingdom, the ambitious families thought that they would at least be able to secure more independence, wealth, and power for themselves.

Instead, they found themselves under even tighter control, with blades pressed against their backs, ready to stab them through the heart should they even think about stepping out of line.

Verena showed them none of the respect or deference her ancestors had, partly because they had made life hell for her during the early years of her reign, but also because she heavily suspected that they had played a role in her family’s extermination.

If she didn’t understand that running the Tarnath Dynasty would be all but impossible without keeping most of these treacherous nobles in place, Verena would probably have executed the whole lot of them by now.

It was an intolerable compromise for both sides, but what could they do?

They both needed each other, so they both agreed to this uneasy truce.

For now.