Brigitte

*See Ambros Family Tree.*

**Brigitte** (ブリギッテ, *Burigitte*) is a mednoble, who served Rozemyne as a guard knight. She is the younger sister of the current Giebe Ilgner.

After retiring from service, Brigitte returned to her home province with her new husband. She now helps manage the paper industry in Illgner.

# Appearance

Brigitte has dark red hair and amethyst eyes. She is tall and muscular, with broader shoulders than most noblewomen. Rozemyne thinks she has a sharp and refined expression.

# Personality

She is deeply loyal to her family and her home province. She took on the job of serving Rozemyne as a way to help with her family's influence with the Aub, despite knowing that Rozemyne would be working in the temple and that she may have to go to the lower city, both of which are looked down upon and despised by nobles.

# History

Brigitte was born in the small rural province of Illgner as the daughter of the then-Giebe Illgner. She is the younger sister of Helfried.

While growing up, she spent much time roaming around the fields and forests of her home, with some of the people of Illgner later saying that she was always more at home in the woods with a knife in hand than the etiquette course and outright calling her a tomboy.

She chose the Knight's Course in the Royal Academy because she believed that with her brother already being a scholar, she would be of more help to their homeland as a knight.

Brigitte's became engaged to Hassheit soon after her father died and Helfried became the next Giebe Illgner. However, Brigitte discovered that her fiancé and his family were plotting to have her brother eliminated after the wedding, so they could take over Illgner. Brigitte furiously cancelled the engagement of her own accord, without observing the proper protocols and manners expected. This brought much shame upon her and the entire province of Illgner, allowing Hassheit and his family to relentlessly mock and harass Brigitte at every opportunity. As a result, she was escorted by her brother during her graduation because she couldn't find another partner.

The scandal was bad enough that the majority of nobles in Illgner left the province, fostering a near self-sacrificial spirit in Brigitte, where she was ready to sacrifice her own happiness for the sake of her homeland. Her reputation was so maligned that she agreed to take on the task of serving as Rozemyne's guard knight even though it meant entering the temple and the lower city.

# Story

Brigitte begins serving as a guard knight for Rozemyne, when she is adopted by the archduke. Later, Rozemyne hears about Brigitte's family circumstances and thinks it's unfortunate that she has little hope of getting married. To help her show off her beauty, Rozemyne designs a new halter-top dress designed to suit Brigitte's well-built body type for the next Starbind Ceremony in hopes that she can find a new husband. The dress is part of Brigitte's reward for helping Angelica pass her studies from the Royal Academy.

As Rozemyne gathers ingredients for her jureve, Brigitte becomes closer with her other guard knight, Damuel. When the two of them next attend the Starbind Ceremony together, Brigitte is approached by her ex-fiancé Hassheit. He proposes to her mockingly, saying that she can't possibly hope to marry anyone else at this point. However, Damuel stands up for her and proposes himself, promising to raise his mana to the level expected of a mednoble. Brigitte interprets this offer as a kindhearted attempt to save her from humiliation, but to her surprise, Damuel later insists that he meant it and truly intends to propose.

Elvira invites Brigitte to her tea parties, which helps reduce some of the scorn other nobles show toward Brigitte. However, Elvira is unimpressed when Brigitte says she wants to go back to her Illgner once she is married, understanding that to mean that Rozemyne is secondary to Illgner.

Brigitte continues to help Rozemyne gather all the ingredients for her jureve, and later goes with Rozemyne to visit her home province of Illgner. She is delighted when Rozemyne says she intends to set up the paper-making industry there. However, Rozemyne warns her that the way the nobles and commoners interact in Illgner, with little to no formality, could cause trouble as more nobles visit the province. Brigitte thanks her for her warning and promises to help the citizens of Illgner prepare for the change.

## Part 3 Volume 5

While Rozemyne recovers from poisoning in her jureve, Brigitte and her other guard knights train under Bonifatius to improve their skills. As promised, Damuel works hard to increase his mana capacity and proposes to Brigitte at the next Starbind Ceremony. However, the two of them have very different expectations about what will happen after they marry. She expects to resign from service and return to Illgner, while Damuel expects to continue serving Rozemyne in the temple. Despite her brother specifically warning her of the possibility of Damuel being unwilling or unable to leave Rozemyne's service, Brigitte does not try to talk about this with Damuel and just lets events unfold as they would. As a result, Damuel ends up turning down the engagement with Brigitte. Brigitte is well aware of Damuel originally being assigned to guard Lady Rozemyne as punishment and the affront that leaving her service would entail, so she hold no hard feelings toward him and feels responsible for the situation escalating to the point it had in the first place. At Lady Elvira's suggestion, Brigitte resigns from Lady Rozemyne's service a few days later, supposedly to concentrate entirely on finding a suitable husband before she turns twenty, though in all due likelihood Brigitte would put her own need to help Illgner above the needs of Rozemyne proved her unsuitable to remain a guard knight for her daughter in Elvira's eyes.

To prevent Rozemyne from making rash decisions in order to support her knights' marriage, Elvira soon finds a suitable mednoble husband for Brigitte. After their marriage, she returns to support the paper-making industry in Illgner, while Rozemyne remains asleep.

## Part 5 Volume 8

In the autumn before Rozemyne's third year at the Royal Academy, Brigitte and Viktor are blessed with the birth of a healthy girl, they name Lilaroze.

When the girl is one and a half years old, Illgner is informed by Lady Florencia via letter of an impending invasion by Ahrensbach forces, led by Lady Georgine. Soon after, Brigitte receives an Ordonnanz by Rozemyne, giving more details. Somehow the archducal family learned that Lord Ferdinand was near fatally wounded in an assassination attempt and that Georigne and her forces are already arrayed somewhere near the border, making it extremely likely that they will invade within a day or two. Despite being retired, Brigitte joins the patrols and is there, when the first enemies are spotted. A group of four nobles wearing Ahrensback capes, uses black weapons to drain mana from Illgner's ground. The Illgner patrol launchers a couple of offensive magic tools at them, causing two of them to dispell their black weapons to defend the group with shields. Brigitte senses many other mana wielders hidden in the surrounding woods and thus orders a retreat. While still on their way back to the Giebe's mansion, they send warnings ahead of them via Ordonnanz.

At the meeting of Giebe Illgner and his advisors, Brigitte states that she will join the fighting. Viktor tries to make her reconsider, for the sake of their daughter, but Brigitte is adamant. Her brother, the giebe, reluctantly allows her to join their small corps of knights. While he too would like to keep his sister safe, with so few knights at his disposal, he just can not afford to let a trained knight stay on the side lines. Much to everyone's surprise, an Ordonnanz arrives informing them that reinforcements led by Lord Bonifatius will not be dispatched to arrive via highbeast, as they expected, which would have taken around a full day, but will arrive in a matter of minutes via teleportation.

As stated in the message, at exactly fifth bell, a contingent of about fifty knights is teleported in, along with a group of about a dozen scholars, who provide the majority of the mana for the teleportation and Aub Ehrenfest personally, since this kind of teleporter can apparently only be operated by the archduke himself. After some encouraging words and some final orders, Aub Ehrenfest teleports back to the capital.

The local knights join Bonifatius' force and quickly overwhelm the Ahrensbach attack force, capturing and killing many, and causing the others to scatter and flee. They also manage to capture the Small Chalice the enemy used to store the mana stolen from the province. The following day, the neighboring province Griebel also comes under attack and having blunted the attack on Illgner, Bonifatius moves on with most of his knights to fight there, leaving only a small contingent to bolster Illgner's defenses. As a parting gift, he and his knights send forth a volley of mana attacks, that cuts down all the trees on the short border between Illgner and Ahrensbach, to create open ground that won't allow the enemy to sneak in unnoticed or have any cover on their approach.

Over the course of the next few days, hostile forces repeatedly attack Illgner, but since they are made up of nobles of so little mana they don't even trigger the alarms of the border barrier, they are easily dispatched by the defenders. The frequency and weakness of these harassing attacks confirms Bonifatius theory, that Illgner was only attacked as a distraction, to draw away forces from the main front line, further to the east.

In the course of the defense, Illgner gets word from a commoner merchant, that he saw suspicious people, likely nobles, book passage on a boat to the capital. Brigitte prompty tries to inform Lady Rozemyne and her guard knights about this, but is unable to send any Ordonnanzes to her former lady, Cornelisu or Angelica. Only when she sends a message to Damuel does the spell take flight. After some tense messages, her fears of something bad having happened to Rozemyne are put to rest by her former colleague, who informs her that the Ordonnanzes didn't get through, because Lady Rozemyne and most of her guard knights are in Ahrensbach and that he has passed the message about the boat on to the archducal family.

# Magical Abilities

* **Mana Attributes:** Brigitte has elemental affinities for Earth and Fire.

# Trivia

* Brigitte is one of the very few nobles who finds Rozemyne's highbeast Lessy cute.
* Illgner is small, so it is not uncommon for nobles to eat and socialize with commoners. Some commoners even know some embarrassing stories from Brigitte's past, like her habit of running into the mountains with a knife to hunt.
* Brigitte becomes suspicious about Rozemyne on one occasion, on a visit to Hasse, Rozemyne is being friendly with Gunther, a commoner guard captain. Rozemyne covers it up telling her she knew the rest of the family (Tuuli and Effa) due to them making clothes and hair ornaments for her.
* Brigitte being escorted by a relative of similar age (Helfried) during her graduation is uncommon because he can look like a fiancé to bystanders, which could deter prospective partners.
* The name Brigitte is derived from the Irish name Brighid, meaning 'the high one' or 'strength.' Brighid is a mythological Celtic goddess of fire and poetry.
* The name of her daughter Lilaroze stemms from a combination of the German words Lila and Rose, meaning lilac and rose respectively.

# References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Ascendance of a Bookworm. Part 5 Volume 8. Brigitte - Illgner's Battle
2. ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm. Part 3 Volume 1. Chapter 10: Starbind Ceremony in the Noble’s Quarter
3. ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm. Part 3 Volume 1. Chapter 4: Adoption
4. ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm. Part 3 Volume 1. Chapter 7: How to Make Fluffy Bread
5. ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm. Part 3 Volume 4. Chapter 12: Heading to Illgner
6. ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm. Part 3 Volume 5. Two Marriages
7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Ascendance of a Bookworm. Part 3 Volume 2. Epilogue
8. ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm. Part 3 Volume 5. Two Marriages
9. ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm. Part 3 Volume 5. The Laynoble Guard Knight
10. ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm. Part 3 Volume 4. Chapter 6: Angelica's Manablade