Tales of Leo Attiel ~Portrait of the Headless Prince~

Hornet, rat, spider, bat.

...Now then, what does this sudden enumeration of creatures mean?

Answer: these are the animals featured as the motifs on the coat of arms of the various vassal lords of the Principality of Atall. Since they will be appearing in the actual story in future volumes, everyone, please be sure to remember them well...

Yeah, saying that would be an outright lie.

The real answer is that there were a lot of animals tormenting me just as I was writing this second volume of LeoDen.

Just what kind of wild and remote region does Sugihara even live in? – let us set aside the wonder that I’m sure you must all be feeling since, somehow or another, all of those obstacles (?) have been overcome and this second volume has safely been published. With feelings aplenty of gratitude and regret over life, let us raise our glasses and give a toast.

Even though it’s called ‘Tales of Leo Attiel’, Leo, the second-born prince, had a weak presence in the previous volume. However, this time, with the increase in the number of his appearances and him being placed at the centre of the story, has he, for now, lived up to expectations as the main character of this tale?

The main character, in other words ‘the hero’, is definitely Prince Leo but then, who on earth is the ‘heroine’ able to stand alongside him? When it comes to that...

Soon after I had finished writing the first volume, I had a telephone exchange with my editor.

“I’ve received the manuscript, so I’m thinking of having Okaya, the illustrator, start working on the full-scale illustrations soon.”

“Okay. Please give my regards to Mr Okaya. The character sketches that you emailed me before gave off a really good feeling.”

“Yeah. Since we have pictures of all the characters, I’d like to settle fairly soon on the design for the cover. Well, given the title, Leo’s presence is essential, but I’m not quite sure who else should be featured.”

“Line up Percy, Camus and Kuon one-by-one, and you’ll be on the easy road to the ‘young master and servants’ appeal, no? It’ll be out-and-out manly and tough, with muscles and sweat almost jumping out of the picture, and...” f𝗿e𝙚𝘸e𝐛𝚗𝐨𝙫𝚎𝙡.c𝒐𝐦

“The easy road to make a new publication appealing is to pretty it up with a cute female character, isn’t it?”

“That’s exactly right.”

“(The hell’s with this guy?) I have one question: who’s the heroine of the story?”

“Who... what do you mean?”

“Well, normally, you’d expect it to be Florrie, no?”

“Hmm, Florrie becomes Leo’s fiancée, after which (※Spoiler omitted)... so she does have that very important role, but as for appearances, yeah... Since I’m not planning for her to have all that many, it’s a little difficult to answer when you ask if she’s the story’s heroine.”

“Then, Sarah?”

“Sarah, well, she’ll start appearing more often but... (※Spoiler omitted)... So because of that, I can’t really say that she’s the heroine either.”

“...Er, so in other words, there isn’t any heroine?”

“I’m not saying there isn’t one. It’s not something I can decide unilaterally: whoever the readers think of as the heroine is the heroine. In the tale of real life, we all have our own heroines.”

“(Shaddup) So then, what are we doing about the cover?”

“Well if it comes down to it, we could have Florrie and Sarah stand on either side of Leo to make it look like there are double heroines and fool the readers.”

“Oi, oi.”

“For the advertising, we could have something like: ‘The timid Prince Leo Attiel was sent as a hostage to the powerful country of Allion. For he who doesn’t even know what might happen to him tomorrow, his meeting with Florrie, a sweet and charming young lady, and Sarah, a self-assured, gun-totting nun, will be the turning point of fate. Just then, trouble occurs between Allion and his native country, Atall, and...!?’, no?”

“...Well, it just barely manages to not be a lie, but I can feel the malice in that last ‘!?’.”

“It’s like how my friends say that being zapped by electricity is fun.”

“(Time to rethink my acquaintance with this guy.)”

Some time after that exchange, I received a draft in which Sarah was smiling enigmatically behind Prince Leo.

“So then, this time, for volume 2, it’ll be Florrie, right?” I thought, but I was in for a surprise when I saw the draft for the cover of volume 2, which arrived a little while ago.

It was actually Camus who got selected! No, well, thinking about the plot this time around, it wasn’t so strange, but... Had even the editorial side given up on using the ‘young girl’ appeal...?

Honestly, this is going to be trouble.

-- Sugihara Tomonori