Welcome to the Odessa Dating Games, or at least, the pre-rounds. There will be a lot of choices to make about yourself, your future and of course, your love life. It's time for one of those choices now.

The Odessa Royal Family is full of attractive people, including the heir to the whole country.

Tell me, would you like to customize how the heir looks, or would you prefer their looks to be predetermined?
*fake_choice
    #I want to customize the way the heir looks.
        *set royal_looks "old"
        *achieve build
    #I want the heir's looks to be predetermined.
        *set royal_looks "default"
        *achieve statusquo

Alright! It's showtime. Hope you've practiced your best waltz.

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[b]Prologue[/b]

It's midnight. The hour of mischief. The hour where things go bump in the night. 

It's also the hour where the King of Odessa, Frederick Wyman, decides he should go re-open some old wounds. 

His wife is fast asleep in their massive bedchamber, too worried about keeping her skin wrinkle-free in her nighttime face mask to open her eyes even a fraction of an inch. His children were possibly asleep, or up to no good. The two of them always kept him on his toes, one more so than the other. 

The King glides down one of the many hallways of the Palace as a bell tolls tirelessly. There's nobody up at this hour, but if they were, they wouldn't dare look him in the eye. Despite this, the King's shoulders are draped with a rather long coat, which covers up his long-sleeved button down sleep shirt and matching pants. The coat glides behind him without a care in the world with each step he makes.

Even at night he couldn’t stop being the King.

*page_break

His mind’s been troubling him lately and he pretends it's foreign tensions or a lack of sleep, but he knows it's more. It's much more. 

King Frederick lets out a sigh and looks around at his surroundings. He’s wandered into the photo hallway without realizing. Along the walls were portraits and photos of Odessa’s greatest moments in history. 

The particular photo he is in front of is of a man that looks a lot like him. He’s holding Odessa’s flag on a pole in one hand and pointing towards the battlefield with the other.

"Dad," King Frederick whispers, before clearing his throat. "Father. I miss you."

The King feels his throat tighten as he swiftly moves on. He was barely given any time to grieve for his father before he became king, but war never stopped for death.

He presses on, towards another picture. He's in this one, hugging his wife while his two children hug both of their legs.

"The very definition of love. By Orion Wheeler," he reads aloud, though the word love gives him pause. 

The King’s heard that word plenty of times. His wife tells him that she loves him at least three times a day. His citizens tell him over and over again how much they love him, especially online.

But when he thinks about the first time he heard it as King, it always sends chills down his spine.

“May your eldest child never find love, Frederick! You will die before you ever see them happy! I don’t know when it will be or how long it will take, but believe me. We will get our revenge."

It was yelled to him on the battlefield, recorded by a senior guard member, but he was too busy laughing, watching the woods burn on a screen in front of him to care. His laughter so loud, it almost drowned out the screams.

He was told that decades ago and purple eyes have haunted him ever since. 

The King sighs, attention snapping back to the present. He figures there was just one more picture to look at while he was in the area. 

*page_break

The King was never really much of a reader, but every king had to have bookshelves full of books and a private library to house them in, if for nothing else other than to have a conversation starter when people visited. 

Bookshelves were also good for hiding things that really shouldn't exist in the first place.

Like a picture of him with the woman he betrayed. 

His smile. Her smile. Both burned into his mind. Both much younger than their current ages, though the difference would be much more evident if you looked at him now versus her. 

He almost smiles at the sight, but then he remembers she's the whole reason he's launching a dating website to find his eldest child love and it quickly withers off his face. 

He should rip up the picture, shred the pieces and burn them right after, but instead he places the photo right back inside of the book and slides it back in the shelf.

King Frederick turns his back to the bookshelf with renewed purpose. It was time to think about his future, Odessa’s future, not his past with a silly girl. 

For now, Odessa Dates is just a name, an idea hatched by himself, a handful of advisors and his web team. Tomorrow, it will be a website and the first step to finding his child a partner and maybe just saving all of Odessa.        
*page_break
*goto_scene chapter1