I'm The Beautiful But Evil Space Princess Who Rules A Galactic Empire, But Really Wants To Leave People Ruthlessly Alone!
Japanese Title
私は、銀河帝国を統治する美しくも邪悪な宇宙の王女。でも本当は、人々を容赦なく放っておきたがる！ (WATASHI WA, GINGA TEIKOKU O TŌCHI SURU UTSUKUSHIKU MO JAAKUNA UCHŪ NO ŌJO. DEMO HONTŌHA, HITOBITO O YŌSHANAKU HANATTE OKITA GARU!)
Synopsis
Alice is the Imperial Princess Regnant of the Galactic Empire. At 22, she has been thrust into power after her father (the Emperor) and her two older brothers have all died in various ways. Her Imperial Chancellor, Lord Rupert, does everything he can to support her, but has somewhat different ideas about how the Empire should be run than did his late Emperor.
Alice has one major problem: She cannot be crowned Empress Regnant until she marries and produces an heir. (In fairness, it's the same way for the male heirs who succeed the throne while unmarried; they remain Princes Regnant until they marry and produce heirs.)
But Alice, being kept busy three days a week by interminable audiences with petitioners, and the rest of the week with what she terms "mostly busy work", has no real way to meet boys -- well, reasonably eligible boys, anyway, and of her own age -- with whom she might eventually take up and form a household. And she chafes at the necessity of trying to rule, hands-on, an Empire so huge it cannot be truly ruled by any one person to begin with.
Literally, she just wants to leave people alone, as her father and his predecessors did for centuries.
Then, into her life walks the Crown Prince of a planet many, many parsecs away from the Capital Planet...and her life begins to take on a life of its own...
The Empire is the end result of a war between Earth colonies, approximately 20,000 years before the story's present. There were about a hundred human colonies at that point, many of them barely self-sufficient. During this war, most ships were lost or heavily damaged, and the vast majority of cities were destroyed, meaning a lot of information effectively went up in smoke -- including navigational data that would have included the location of Earth.
By the time of the war, pretty much everyone who had ever had any intent to migrate away from the mother world had done so. Those who were left were effectively sneered at and belittled as cowards and home-bodies clinging to Earth like little babies cling to their mothers. It is perhaps no surprise that Earth was not caught up in the colonial war, and even less surprise that after it was over, nobody from Earth came around to find out what had happened. Thus, Earth was forgotten and lost, until centuries had passed and the new Empire, with its seat on the planet unimaginatively named Capital, was established to prevent another war between the colonies. It was also intended to promote the expansion of humanity into the rest of the Galaxy, and in furtherance of that mission, began to amass fragments of the lost history of the original loose confederation of colonial worlds.
As Alice explains it to Daniel:
"We know so little about what happened on Earth, after the Great Dispersal."
Daniel snorted. "Left all the people behind who had no sense of adventure, and nobody bothered to go back to check up on them," he said, dismissively. "And then eventually, nobody remembered where it was."
"There was a reason for that," she replied. "A major war broke out between colonies, with a lot of destruction on all sides. Space travel and trade stopped for a long time while the colonies rebuilt, and by the time they did, they'd lost a lot of navigational data. Today's galactic map is centered on Capital, not on Terra, for that reason." She sighed, heavily. "And we still have no idea where Terra is, and they probably have no interest in finding us, for the very reason you suggested. They were the stay-at-homes."
"I'm surprised," said Daniel, slowly, "you know so much about them, and about the wars and such. Because, to be honest, we really know very little at all of them, back home."
Alice smiled. "Most of the records that were salvaged were brought here," she explained. "And I got a crash course in what we know about Galactic history when I was put on the throne, six months ago."
There are hints, however, that not everything was lost. Alice drinks Azure Mountain coffee from New Jamaica, for instance. In Timelines, New Jamaica is one of the first ten human colonies. If in fact this novel is set in the Timelines universe (which I have not decided at this point), that would be a major clue for someone who was aware of how old the colony on New Jamaica is that it must be rather close to the location of Earth. But that still would only get you somewhere inside the 100 light year sphere where most of the oldest colonies were. And a 100 light year sphere is a lot of volume to search...especially if what you are looking for isn't readily visible. Yes, I have thoughts on that; Earth isn't hiding...it's just...leveled up.
Dramatis Personae
Alice, Imperial Princess Regnant (22)
Rupert, Imperial Lord Chancellor (in his 50's)
Daniel, Crown Prince of Xeros and Ounes (20)
Alouette, Princess of Xeros and Ounes (10)
Alice's Maids: (all around 27)
- Janelle (Majordomo of the Household and head maid): "She was a petite little thing, with ever-so-slightly slanted eyes, and a skin tone Alice had heard was "peachy". Like a china doll, some people said – whatever a china doll was. Her hair was dark, long, straight, and lustrous; she obviously took good care of both her skin and hair[.]"
- Kaylie (Wardrobe): "slender, tall, dusky-skinned, dark-eyed"
- Giana (Bath): "another dark-eyed beauty with an olive complexion and long black hair"
- Jaslyn (Bedchamber): "another cute blonde, but this one with green eyes"
- Elisabeth (Meals): "blonde, blue-eyed". Soft-spoken.
The maids, in addition to being Alice's primary caretakers, are also supervisors of the various areas noted. They are backed up by a staff of, eh, probably around 50, who handle things behind the scenes like laundry, the actual cooking of food, cleaning, and so forth. This staff was expanded significantly after Alice became Princess Regnant; previously there were only five or six staff assisting the five maids. A number of the current staff were brought over from her brothers' establishments. Others were seconded to the Empress Dowager's staff.
It should be noted that even the Imperial Chancellor is outranked (unofficially) by Alice's maids. This is something he doesn't realize until it's too late.
Maids
This was head-canoned out in a set of Discord posts on a certain server (not mine) on 14 Sep 2025.
I was thinking about the maids last night. I think what the maids are, is members of a special Order. Not nuns, though they tend not to marry, or at least are celibate until they do. But they are trained to carry forward certain philosophies through the succeeding generations of the Imperial House. They are about five years older than the children they are chosen to serve. So if Alice was provided with maids at about four years of age, her maids were nine-ish, and already had been in training for four or five years by their Order. Of course what the Order cherishes and teaches are what we might call USAian tenets. Competence. Self-sufficiency. Care for others' welfare. Strong belief in Deity. An understanding of history and philosophy that informs how an educated and enlightened ruler should behave toward his or her subjects. So in many ways, Alice (and her brothers, and her father and mother before her, etc.) are programmed to believe in libertarian principles of governance. She already is uncomfortable with the idea that she should lord it over her subjects. And her ultimate attitude of "I just want to leave them alone!" will grow from that. ...I have a feeling that Alice's Empire is the end state of the human government in Timeline Zero, but I'm not saying so specifically. There are hints that it occupies the same universe, though.
And that's why Rupert, who is an old-school monarchist, is not going to succeed in what he's trying to do -- well-intentioned as it may or may not be.
Oh, and the boy children get female maids, as well, but in that case there is a male butler/majordomo over them who has also gone through similar training by the Order. So both of her brothers had maids and a butler. The butler's job is to train the boys to be men, and in many cases the butler has later gone on to become the Emperor's Chancellor.
The butler's job is ALSO to beat the crap out of the boy if he starts coming on to the maids, though because of the way the maids are trained, that's not a likely scenario (they'd probably beat it out of him first).
Also, to be honest, the maids and the butler stress chivalry and the art of manliness, so it really should never be an issue.
All that being said, it's not impossible that a maid and her prince could fall in love and later marry...and there have been Empresses who started out as maids.
The Planet Capital
The capital of the Milky Way Star Empire is, rather unimaginatively, called "Capital." It is a lovely, Earth-like world, with similar specifications (about 1G, 70% oceans, a decent mixture of different landforms, no large or even middle-sized fauna (the largest mammal is something like a chipmunk and there are a number of species of small bird-like creatures, and there are fish in the seas, but nothing else), and an abundance of flora -- trees, flowers, grasses, you name it, Capital has it. As a replacement for Terra, it's not bad at all.
Capital circles a G3V star out around the M2 globular cluster, so it's about 50,000 light years from Terra in the constellation Aquarius (not that they know this; Terra is lost due to the war that led to the Great Dispersal, and for reasons that will become evident in the story, there's no real way to find it even if you have the coordinates). This places it in the (old, in the galactic map centered on Sol) 1st Galactic Quadrant, and because it's the capital, it's now the center of the new mapping system, which is 90 degrees rotated clockwise from the old system, with the 1st Galactic Quadrant now to its galactic north-east, the 2nd to its galactic north-west, the third to its galactic south-west, and the fourth to its galactic south-east. The cardinal directions did not change, as it was still known that the Magellanic Clouds were in the galactic east, and they also knew the Great Attractor was in the galactic north-east.
Status
In progress.