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The assumption always was that since she was the kind of a girl who wore trousers and cut off her braids, and spent her childhood climbing trees and chasing frogs and begging her tutors for tales of knights and dragons, that she would be martially inclined.
Alas, she was more the type to get stuck in trees and fail at the frog catching, and she also enjoyed watching the stick fights, not participating in them. Swords were right out, and she was no better with a bow even as she grew from a little princess to the proper heir to the kingdom; still a princess through and through, despite some delicate inquiries to the matter since the trousers and short hair didn't go away as she got older.
These days, she also wears snazzy jackets with swoosh sashes, and watches tournaments instead of a bunch of kids bashing each other over the head with pieces of wood.
(She also enjoys the occasional incognito foray to a bareknuckle fighting pit but no one is supposed to know that.)
The sun is patching hot over the tourney grounds, a great excuse to drink good ale rather than heavy wine, and to don the smoked glass lenses she picked up on a little foray to town a few weeks ago. The lenses dull the gleam of armor only marginally, the silver and gold laid in burnished steel glittering but for a short while before dust and worse decorated the combatants.
Ostensibly, these tournaments are to parade eligible noblemen for her perusal, to find her a suitor. In practise, everyone knows her little brothers will dominate the fighting and have the kids she will one day name heirs. Not like its urgent - her parents are not old, and there is peace.
One particular knight keeps catching her eye. Tall and broad, with armor inscribed with vines but not inlaid with a precious metal, the knight keeps utterly dominating her matches, with meticulous precision that almost looks like brutality.
She is not surprised when the knight is facing the eldest of her brothers for the final bout; he doesn't have her favour, no, that's with her youngest brother who got his ass kicked six ways from Sunday I the opening round, but he is the best of them.
This is going to be great.
It never enters her mind that the knight might win; her brothers do not lose. But the longer the bout goes on, the more dust billows in the air, the louder the cheers, the more parched her throat, the less certain the outcome seems.
When her brother goes down, she jumps up and screams, surging forward to lean over the barrier.
Her brother is -
Her brother is swearing like a sailor with the knight's knee pressed to his back, her sword inches from his throat. His bare throat, his helmet wobbling back and forth on the ground.
“Dost thou yield?” The knight speaks and oh that is a woman's voice, clear even past the accent.
Her brother says a few more unknightly, unprincely things and admits his loss, yields. In the blink of an eye the knight stands up, offering him a hand up from the packed earth.
The banner under her hands creaks, and she slowly tries to relax her grip as the master of ceremonies comes up to hail the victor.
“Now if the champion would please remove her helmet…”
Oh. Oh. Ohhhhhhhhhh fuck she's-
The helmet comes off and the sun gleams across sweaty golden locks. Whatever ribbon held them has failed, the riotous curls tumbling over broad shoulders to frame a beautiful visage of an angel.
She can't tear her eyes away from the knight, from her lush mouth or flushed cheeks, from the arch of her brows over startlingly green eyes. She is so pretty and so hot.
Oh, wow. Wow wow wow.
Distantly, the voice of her mother the queen barely registers. “Honey, I think we found her a suitor.”
Wow.