Eulogy for Rosamund

To my most noble and most foolish rose,

In the end, you tore down the golden walls your father built and fled into the cold embrace of a stone coffin. Was the so-called love you shared with that lowly servant truly more precious than your noble life?

I built this monastery to keep the filth of the world at bay, yet you cast yourself into that very filth and abandoned me in eternal hell. Only now do I realize that my desire to keep you from withering kept you from living a true life.

I resent you. I cannot forgive the daughter who forsook me, nor myself, the father who failed to protect you. If we were ever to meet again, I know I would still try to imprison you within this golden hell, just to keep you by my side.

So I beg you—wherever you are, may you never encounter even the shadow of this father of yours. My beautiful and cruel Rosamund.

The final words of Cassian Valerius, a father who wished to shield you from this world