"A shrewd guess, but wrong. Contrary to what your sycophants may have been telling you, there is nothing ichor-like and certainly nothing divine about the contents of our veins. Our line does not endure because of eldritch contaminants in our blood, or anything else hereditary. It endures because I go for walks in my garden every day and talk to your sister and your future daughter-in-law, just as my mother, the Winter Queen, did with me. It endures because even in the fifteenth year of war I exchange letters almost every day with my niece Liselotte at Versailles. You may—if it pleases you—flatter your vanity by phant’sying that riding across the countryside in hot pursuit of vermin is a kingly pastime, and makes you fit to one day rule a dominion that stretches to Shahjahanabad and to Boston. I shall allow you that much folly. But never shall I suffer you to trespass upon what keeps our line alive down through plagues, wars, and revolutions. I say that you are guilty of such a trespass now. Get out of my garden. Never again interrupt us at our work."