The Archduke Conference has come to an end, but Ehrenfest’s archducal family is still reeling from the troubles it brought. Rozemyne has one year before she must depart for the Sovereignty, and those in her service have an important choice to make.
I wonder why Rozemyne only considered getting Elvira to help Philine until her coming-of-age, but not her siblings. Melchior is too young to have much benefit of her working for him, apart from her being there in his first year at the academy... not much to go on. But Charlotte and Wilfried could have solved all the issues.
In favour of serving Wilfried would be that they are the same age and him wanting to be more involved in the printing industry, so they both have something to gain (not to mention that his current retainers do not seem particularly competent...), but the downside would be their gender differences, meaning he can't let her live with him in the northern building and thus would have to make different arrangements, but then so does Elvira, so not much of a downside. The bigger problem (for Philine anyway) would be that at least some, if not the majority, of his retainers would probably look down on her. Then again... in the former Veronica faction, the archnobles allowed themselves to be greatly influenced by mednobles, so maybe they would be willing to listen to a laynoble for the sake of improving themselves? I doubt it, but wouldn't rule it out completely.
We know they seem to have a propensity to treat commoners horribly, but I don't remember hearing anything about how the former Veronica faction treated laynobles off the top of my head.
Charlotte on the other hand would fit well for being the same gender, meaning they could have Philine live in one of the attendant rooms in the northern building, like she does with Rozemyne right now. Just like her brother, she is on a path to more involvement with the printing industry, so Philine's expertise in this regard would be benefitial to Charlotte and her other scholars. Philine is far more likely to be treated well under her care. The downside for Charlotte would be, that Philine is one year older, leaving her lady one scholar shorter in her final academy term. Then again, since Philine is an addition to her regular scholars, not a replacement, that shouldn't be an issue. In the meantime it gives her current scholars two years to learn from Philine, assuming they can overcome their pride and accept teaching from a laynoble.
Oh well, with her becoming orphanage director, this is just academic anyway. Theoretically Sylvester might forbid this, but I very doubt he will.
With what Philine said this release, I think any path of her getting engaged to Damuel prior to coming of age is closed off. Speaking of which:
Oh no... DO NOT EMULATE CLARISSA! Poor little Philine is being corrupted by that weirdo. Get her away from the sweet little girl!
But wait... doesn't that mean Philine will now become a blue shrine maiden, like how Hartmut and Melchior are blue priests? Otherwise, she wouldn't be able to have gray robe attendants, right?
Guess that means her chances to obtain more divine protections went up a bit more.
The situation for blue priests/shrine maidens seems to be somewhat fluid and there might be a bit of handwaving involved (unless Sensei has addressed this in an untranslated Q&A somewhere). There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with Philine taking the winter off from her temple duties in order to attend the RA, just as Rozemyne has been doing for the last three years. And blues can and do leave the temple to rejoin noble society and marry. So yes, construction on the good ship Damuel x Philine has begun and we can anticipate a successful launch.
Oh, with Rozemyne setting the precedence, I'm sure that it won't be a problem for a blue robe, who retained their noble status to be sent to the academy.
I wonder if we'll get a full scene of her fealty ceremony, or just a short mention, like with Melchior and former Veronica faction children.