First son: died four days after birth. First daughter is born 1873, is sick often, it’s been told that she died at the age of 222 days. Second son born three years later, survives, but is unhealthy and gets sick all the time. A year later third son is born, but dies at the age of three. Only one son survived to adult hood, but even he had to fight through sickness. The daughter… never died. The mother decided to give the daughter to one of her maids, because she despised her husband and was also worried something bad might happen to the daughter. It was her way to protect her daughter. The maid was not allowed to speak about the matter, so only her and the queen would know the truth, and later the daughter as well once she would be enough old. The daughter was named Min Sae Ra at first, Min being the mother’s last name, but was changed to Yang Nyu Ri after the maid took her as her own.
But who was her mother exactly? She was the first (and last) empress of Korea,
Empress Myeongseong. She was sixteen years old when she married the seventeen year old king, although neither really cared for each other. The king’s father chose her as his wife, because she was of noble blood, but also because she was an orphan (no relatives to try take control of the throne that way). After losing her first child everyone believed she wouldn’t be able to bear a healthy child, so the king’s father chose a royal concubine to give birth to the next heir and indeed she gave birth to a healthy crown prince (in 1868). The empress felt humiliated by this, so she decided to concentrate what she found interesting; politics. She got a lot of help and people beside her who trusted in her and found that she was a great leader. This way they came up a plan to get rid of the king’s father, so that he wouldn’t be able to make any such decision anymore. And they brought him down. He had no say anymore how things went and the empress got complete control of her court again, thus banished the royal concubine and her son (who died soon after) from the capital city. This proved to people that she was the one in full control and was able to take the lead, seeing as her husband had no interest in politics or any business matters anyway; he only enjoyed drinking and being entertained. She did all the work.
Way too many things happened during the time she ruled, but to put it simple; she made Korea a better place and gave permission for other religions to come to the country as well as wanted to build the whole country new. Before her Korea was staying far behind from evolving. It seemed ancient compared to all the other countries. She also wanted an English school, not to mention an all-girls school for poor girls (who weren’t allowed to get any education before) to be able to get educated, fed and clothed. She was one great woman. Japan didn’t like it that she was friendly with Russian and China though, because Japan wanted to control Korea themselves. Therefore they sent almost sixty assassins to kill her… who succeeded too. She was brutally, cruelly murdered along with her many maids and royal guards. The assassins were extremely skilled wizards that were part of a bigger clan who served the purpose of only using dark magic. You see, they had found out she was no ordinary muggle woman, but had succubus demon blood in her. Therefore no normal muggle assassins could have killed her.
Only during the later years she and her husband started getting along when he was forced to start taking part of the country’s politics which is when he sought her help and he was amazed how smart she was and fell in love. Only then did they learn to really cherish for each other. Therefore after she died he lost completely hope and refused to do anything. Japan had used him before to secretly sign contacts with them without the Empress knowing, but now the Emperor refused to sign anything and said he would “rather slit his wrists and let them bleed than disgrace the woman who saved this kingdom”.
But what happened to Nyu Ri? During the time her mother lived she was taken care by her a lot whenever she could (she was a busy woman after all). The empress loved her very dearly and Nyu Ri knew she was her real mother, but was enough smart not to let anyone know. She loved her mother more than anyone and knew the empress would get in trouble if found out about hiding her. Nyu Ri despised the emperor for treating her mother so horrible; she would often see him with royal concubines and even with just normal entertainers while drinking and not doing any work. He left all that to the empress. Needless to say he had a lot of children, but she only thought one of them as her real sibling who was the second son to be born and would most likely be taking the throne after their father. He was her real sibling after all. Same mother, same father. Not that even he ever found out that she was really his sister, but they did play a lot when they were just kids.
After turning fifteen though the empress became worried about a lot of things and decided that Nyu Ri had to leave for her own safety. Leave the capital and run away. Without a doubt she trusted in her mother and did so, although it the goodbyes were heartbreaking for both of them. The maid who had taken care of her took her away, further away from Seoul. For over a year and a half they lived together and were able to stay alive while trying to find out news about the empress and of her plans. But the maid fell sick and died a month later which why Nyu was left alone. She was miserable. But knew she couldn’t go back to Seoul, because if it would be safe her mother would have sent someone to find her. When she turned seventeen in 1890 she wandered pretty much all over Korea, not really knowing where to go or what to do. She was sure death would soon come to her… and so it did.
Calcifer found something charming about Nyu Ri and felt as she would become a strong vampire, especially when adding the succubus side in her. Therefore he turned her, but she was willing too, because she didn’t really have anything left; eternal life sounded extremely tempting at that time. For a year they stayed in Korea as he taught her how to hunt and how to control herself. Secretly she would try to keep informed about her family; she hadn’t told Calcifer a thing about her past, she wasn’t allowed. It was a promise made to her mother. She just told him his mother had died, the maid, and therefore she had ended up all alone.
She had a good-heart still and even as a vampire she tried her best to avoid hurting anyone and was kind. She would kill her victim as fast as possible without any pain or then she would let them live, and she wouldn’t drink from children either. With her succubus powers she was able to be quite persuasive for people to just willingly let her drink their blood and they would enjoy it. Later they moved to Japan with Calcifer. Who knew why Japan was so tempting to him, but she followed him; she was supposed to obey him, because he was her master, or so she thought. She had read books about vampires before and for some reason Calcifer didn’t even bother to tell her that she didn’t need to call him master. The two weren’t a couple, but they did often feed together, especially in the beginning. For her it was like finding an older brother, someone to rely on and someone to look up to.
A bit later the two didn’t spend that much time together and started drifting away, mostly because they enjoyed different kind of meals. Calcifer very much preferred geishas’ and temple maidens' present and found their blood quite tasty and while Nyu Ri enjoyed how beautiful geishas were she still preferred to go after imperial soldiers, especially the young and handsome ones. That way she was able to feed her succubus self as well. Two dinners from one, perfect. She never killed them, but made them forget that she ever fed on them. At times she would feed from the same person a few times in a month if she found them very tasty.
Knowing that Calcifer was still in Japan as well she still went down her own paths in order to secretly study what was going on in her old kingdom. While now she would be eternally seventeen she still counted her birthdays and in 1895 only after a month she had celebrated her 22nd birthday she found out terrible news. She was in the northern Japan, enjoying her time when she heard people talking how the Korean empress had been killed by Japanese assassins and how proud the people were of the assassins. One even said “Finally got rid of her”. Everything went blur and she just stood still, shocked. She was unable to think, unable to even cry. Fury and misery were mixed inside her during the next three hour she killed more than 40 Japanese villagers; men, women and children. Only after did she decide to seek out for more information and see if it even was true at all. Sadly, her mother really had been murdered. After that she didn’t really care about her Japanese victims, but killed them without mercy. Nyu Ri decided to stay in Japan until she would find out what would happen to the men who killed her mother. They were brought to Japanese court which decided that there was not enough evidence of them being there during the Empress’s murder which why they got away. They were extremely powerful dark wizards with a lot of dark allies and therefore there was no easy way to get her revenge on them.
What softened her heart a bit was about the news that her father was deeply affected by the empress’s death and he refused to leave his room. It also turned out that he refused to sign any contracts with the Japanese anymore and refused to listen to his father.
To be continued...
MORE TO BE ADDED LATER!
