Ancilla Lionheart

She was also a scion of a martial family. Her father, Count Caines, held an important position in the empire’s military. The reason why she, the daughter of Count Caines, had refused many good marriage offers and instead joined the Lionheart Family through the shameful path of becoming a concubine, was that Ancilla was obsessed with the prestige of the Lionheart name. Due to her being a Concubine, Ancilla had a fierce rivalry with her husband Gilead’s first wife, Tanis. And ironically and similarly to her, she constantly pushed and pressured her children, Cyan and Ciel to excel in everything (combat, education and politics) especially in matters regarding their elder half-brother Eward in order to discredit him as the next potential Patriarch of the Lionheart family in favor of her own son Cyan. This is seen where she would harshly scold and even physically punish Cyan if he does anything scandalous or make others regard him as a weakling, which in turn could damage her and her children’s standing in the Lionheart clan and can be used by Tanis to discredit her. However, after the consequences of Tanis’s parenting had negatively affected her son was revealed to the rest of the Lionheart family, Ancilla had undergone significant change and has now shifted her parenting from pressuring and forcing her children to further her own aspirations, to instead supporting them and allowing them to make their own choices in their lives. Ancilla herself has displayed regret after realizing and seeing how controlling she had been to her son.