Chapter Text
Once upon a time, in a far-off kingdom, the wind was crying. Blood soaked the ground below, and as the wind sobbed, and sobbed, and sobbed, it wished to be better--faster--more true--capable of returning things to as they were, to healing them and fixing what was broken in this world.
When the wind’s tears had all sunk into the ground, it left, but in the blood- and tear-soaked ground where it had rested, a beautiful flower grew. The flower shone with the light of the stars and, as an old, defeated witch named Decarabian learned when he was on death’s bed, had the power to heal the sick and injured, and rewind old age into youth.
And as he hoarded the flower’s power, returning to it every six years to refresh himself, the wind who thought him dead settled in a tiny village, which grew into a town, which grew into a prosperous, bustling kingdom known as Mondstadt.
And of course, as kingdoms were wont to do, it had a king and a queen, and as married couples were wont to do, they got pregnant.
And then everything went very, very wrong.
At the beginning of the pregnancy, the castle rejoiced. The wind sang lullabies outside the windows as the king and queen’s advisor, Lord Crepus Ragnvidr, whose own wife had died in childbirth the year before, worked tirelessly to make sure the queen’s pregnancy went as smoothly and easily as possible. The king and queen prepared the castle for the new heir, and the kingdom rejoiced.
And then the queen fell ill.
All the healers in the land could find no cure for her, so as the king began to look into ancient legends of a flower with the ability to heal any injury, Lord Crepus left to search for other healers, in other kingdoms, leaving his infant son in the arms of his trusted servant, Adelinde. And as the king searched and eventually found the beautiful flower near a cottage owned by a strange hermit, Crepus struck a bargain with a mysterious organization known as the Fatui: they would preserve the lives of the queen and her child, and, in exchange, they would one day take a Ragnvidr life.
And so the princess was born, a healthy baby girl named Jean with the most beautiful blonde hair, the color of the sun itself. She was the light of her parents’ lives, and the one-year-old Diluc Ragnvidr adored his new playmate. Five years later, life at the palace was filled with even more joy, when Crepus Ragnvidr found a young boy named Kaeya abandoned on the side of the road and brought him back to be a younger brother for Diluc and a playmate for Jean, each child nearly exactly a year apart.
And then, on the princess’s sixth birthday, when she was having a sleepover in her nursery with the seven-year-old Diluc and five-year-old Kaeya, disaster struck.
Decarabian, who had discovered with shocked horror the fate of his precious flower, had been plotting for years how to reclaim it–or, more specifically, how to reclaim the child who now housed its power. And now, mere weeks before he needed to refresh his youth, he crept into the castle in the middle of the night, snatching the sleeping princess as she lay asleep with her two friends, and swept her away without a trace to a place where not even the wind could reach her.
All was not lost, however: the wind itself had seen this, and, furious over the reemergence of its ancient enemy: made a promise to the king and queen: before the princess’s twentieth birthday, her crown would find its way to her head, she would be reunited with the sons of Crepus Ragnvidr, and a floating lantern would be drawn to her and burst into fireworks once she was found.
Meanwhile, in a tower across the kingdom, the young princess learned of her powers of healing and, as her previous life slipped away like a dream, began imagining a world outside of her tower, dreaming of the day she’d finally be able to experience the world.