Adolphine

* Adult
* RAS1

*See Drewanchel Family Tree.*

**Adolphine** (アドルフィーネ, *Adorufiine*) is an archduke candidate from Drewanchel, who currently attends the Royal Academy.

She is the older sister of Ortwin and a friend of Eglantine. After her graduation, she is expected to marry Prince Sigiswald.

# Personality

Adolphine cultivates an image of a serious, trustworthy, and diligent person. In private, however, she is far more selfish and unreasonable. This is a side she only ever shows to her close family, like her brother Ortwin. She is very passionate about fashion and beauty to the point where she occasionally talks her brother's ear off about it.

Adolphine is quite fond of playing Gewinnen and is quite good in it, better than her younger brother in fact. However, she hasn't been playing much lately due to having more important priorities to worry about.

She has a tendency to twist her hair with a finger when she is annoyed.

# History

Before her marriage was decided, Adolphine had ambitions to become the next Aub. However, without even being consulted about her future husband, it was decided that she would marry either Prince Sigiswald or his younger brother Prince Anastasius, with her not even being able to choose which one, since as the noble from the higher ranking duchy Lady Eglantine had first choice, and it was assumed that whoever Eglantine chose would become king. To have no say in her future and be destined to marry the prince that failed to become king lay heavy on her conscious. After she was informed of this, she had a private tea-party with her brother, where she cried bitterly over having her future snatched away from her.

With her own fate sealed, she put a lot of effort into making sure that Ortwin would become the next archduke, regardless of his own wishes on the matter. She also wished for him to marry Hannelore of Dunkelfelger. For this purpose, she pushed him to study hard so he would have better grades than Hannelore, to improve his position for the marriage proposal. Both of them expected that Hannelore would be the best student in their grade and thus getting better grades than her would mean coming in as first-in-class. She also teased Ortwin about not losing to Rozemyne of Ehrenfest, but only to tease him. Neither of them takes the girl from the mere thirteenth duchy, who lost two years to sleep in a jureve as serious competition.

# Story

## Part 4 Volume 3

Much to Adolphine's surprise, Rozemyne of Ehrenfest is able to finish all her classes in record time, and through contacts among the professors, she learns that Rozemyne was not only fast, but also impeccable when it came to grades. As a result, Adolphine changes her opinion on her brother's marriage and pushes him to marry Rozemyne instead... something which Ortwin is less than thrilled about. She urges Ortwin to befriend Rozemyne rather than her brother Wilfried, with whom Ortwin has struck up a quick friendship despite having had only few interactions so far.

In order to convince Ortwin, she points out that Rozemyne would be far better suited a partner for Ortwin's passion of research, but between him finding the girl creepy and having already heard about Rozemyne's tendency to stumble into trouble, or cause it, from Wilfried, Ortwin is vehemently opposed to marrying her.

After Rozemyne's return to the Royal Academy, Ehrenfest sends out invitations to all duchies for a final tea party before the Interduchy Tournament. Due to a limit on the number of people they can accommodate, they ask that each duchy only send one person (and their retainers) to attend.

Adolphine’s younger brother Ortwin wants to attend, but Adolphine is eager to meet Rozemyne after hearing about her from their mutual friend Eglantine, and claims the spot for herself.

At the tea party, Adolphine compliments Rozemyne on achieving such high grades despite spending two full years asleep in a jureve. She also praises the taste of the new sweets invented in Ehrenfest and takes home a small jar of rinsham as a gift from Rozemyne.

## Part 4 Volume 5

After Prince Anastasius managed to secure his engagement with Eglantine and Prince Sigiswald withdrawing his proposal to her, Sigiswald instead proposes to Adolphine, and the two are now engaged to be married.

When Adolphine returns to the Royal Academy the next year, her hair is considerably more shiny and glossy, but not to the full extend of what rinsham can achieve. From this Rozemyne suspects that rather than using it for herself, Adolphine allowed her sample of rinsham to be examined by researchers from her home and that they successfully managed to make a version of their own. Though judging by the looks of Adolphine's hair, their product has yet to reach the level of quality of Ehrenfest rinsham.

At their greeting, she also lightly tries to pry information regarding the verification paper utilized for merchant's permits from Rozemyne, calling it a magic tool, which hints that so far their researchers have not yet been able to crack its secrets.

## Part 4 Volume 6

Despite her status, her skills at whirling, and being engaged to the successor of the king, Adolphine surprisingly is not the one to perform the role of the Goddess of Light during her graduation ceremony, but rather the role of Schutzaria. In a talk with Lady Rozemyne during a shared whirling lesson, she states that in her mind only Eglantine is fit to dance the part. This, combined with Adolphine's skills in Dedication Whirl being very obviously above those of the girl chosen to dance the part of the Goddess of Light, makes it very likely she turned down the chance for the more prestigious role of her own accord.

## Part 4 Volume 7

As a gift for her graduation ceremony, Prince Sigiswald orders a hairpin from Ehrenfest. When Rozemyne informs Drewanchel that she is able to deliver it during the main socializing season at the Royal Academy, Adolphine invites her and her sister Charlotte to a tea party that, other than the two girls from Ehrenfest, has only guests of the highest ranking duchies with representatives from the first six duchies. At the tea party, Rozemyne hands over Sigiswald's present to the delight of all the girls present.

Despite being able to hide her feelings very well, Rozemyne still senses Adolphine's insecurity over being compared to Eglantine and is able to reassure her that she does not fall short.

When Detlinde tries to pressure Rozemyne to help her get a hairpin of her own for her graduation, Adolphine steps in and puts down the Ahrensbach girl rather savagely. Thankfully, Charlotte is able to diffuse the tension right away allowing the tea party to transition to more pleasant topics, mainly focusing on romance stories from there on. Adolphine also arranges to exchange books with Ehrenfest and requests that Wilfried lend her brother a book about knight's stories.

## Part 5 Volume 5

Due to Nehalache having given birth relatively shortly before the date of Adolphine's marriage with Prince Sigiswald, she is informed that any intimacy between them will be postponed until it no longer endangers the development of the child due to mana mixing. However due to the dire mana situation the royal family is currently in, they are unwilling to delay the marriage, as is both courteous and traditional in such cases. This disrespectful behaviour only exacerbates Adolphine's misgivings for this marriage and makes her determined to only do the absolute minimum of what is expected of her in her marriage.

To quell the voices that call for Anastasius or Detlinde to become the next Zent, the royal family pressures Lady Rozemyne into performing the Starbind Ceremony at his and Adolphne's wedding, to provide them with a true blessing. The Sovereign Temple uses this opportunity to promote themselves, by providing Rozemyne with instructions on how to perform the ancient form of the ceremony with the Divine Instruments of the God of Darkness and Goddess of Light, resulting in a rather spectacular ceremony, stunning all the onlookers. In addition to the blessings for the couples, during the ceremony, magic circles appear similar in appearance to the one that was seen in Detlinde's Dedication Whirl, on the stage beneath Sigiswald and Adolphine and rise into the air briefly, before dissipating again.

This is seen as a great boon to the royal family, since it proofs that Sigiswald is at the very least equally qualified in the eyes of the god as Detlinde.

The fantastic blessing she received from Rozemyne also serves to motivate Adolphine to dedicate herself to helping the country after all. However due to not being treated like a proper wife yet, she is loath to do "wifey" things like embroidering Sigiswald's cape just yet and instead opts to support him and the country by brewing rejuvenation potions for her husband. At the insistence of her retainers, to do something more marital in nature, she compromises by also crafting a charm dedicated to a deity for Sigiswald, so he is more likely to obtain additional divine protections, when he retakes the ritual. She also makes a charm to Jungereise for herself, to pray for be released from the terrible bounds of this unwanted marriage.

Initially she intends to brew a new recipe for Sigiswald, that primarily rejuvenates mana, with only little impact on stamina, like the one Lady Rozemyne distributed at the Dedication Ritual at the Royal Academy, earlier that year. While Adolphine's attempts to resulted in a supremely effective potion, to her frustration, she has yet to reach the same level as the one Rozemyne handed out. At the suggestion of Oderkunst - who is worried the royal family will work her all the harder, if they learned of her having such effective potions - Adolphine reconsiders and decides to keep the potions to herself and secret and making regular potions of a recipe learned at the academy to her husband. She does however share her developed recipe with her retainers, with the understanding that they are to keep it strictly amongst each other.

# Retainers

## Attendants

* **Lisbeth** - An attendant who served Adolphine even before her marriage to Sigiswald and accompanied her to the Sovereignty upon her engagement to the prince.

## Scholars

* **Oderkunst** - A sovereign scholar, formerly of Drewanchel, who was assigned as her retainer upon her marriage to Prince Sigiswald.

# Skills and Abilities

## Non-Magical

* **Research:** Unlike most other duchies, the archduke candidates of Drewanchel commonly do research of their own. Adolphine is quite skilled in developing and reverse engineering projects of other duchies. Among other things, she was able to create a new potion recipe with similar effects, albeit of lesser efficiency, as the rejuvenation potions given out by Rozemyne at the Dedication Ritual in a manner of weeks, despite having none of Rozemyne's potion to analyze.

# Trivia

* Adolphine is very skilled in Gewinnen, able to almost consistently beat her brother in the game.

# References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 Ascendance of a Bookworm. Part 5 Volume 5. Chapter 3: The Archduke Conference’s Starbinding
2. ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm. Part 5 Volume 7. Rozemyne’s Disappearance and Return
3. ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm. Part 4 Volume 3. The Blessing at the Graduation Ceremony
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Ascendance of a Bookworm. Part 4 Volume 5. Chapter 18: The Second-Year Fellowship Gathering
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 Ascendance of a Bookworm. Royal Academy Stories - First Year. Chapter 15: Ortwin - The Drewanchel Siblings
6. ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm. Part 4 Volume 3. Chapter 11: The Tea Party for All Duchies
7. ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm. Part 4 Volume 6. Chapter 9: Dedication Whirling and Ordonnanz Brewing
8. ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm. Part 4 Volume 7. Chapter 10: Tea Party with Drewanchel
9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 Ascendance of a Bookworm. Part 5 Volume 5. An Unwanted Marriage
10. ↑ Ascendance of a Bookworm. Part 5 Volume 5. Chapter 4: Work in the Underground Archive