I was sired because the former king of Roland kidnapped and raped a commoner woman, though he then discarded her when she became pregnant. Because of this my mother and I were constantly harassed and tormented by the princes, nobles, and their lackeys, called "low-born dogs" and other derogatory names. I was often beaten on any pretext, and didn't dare fight back lest my half-brothers begin to take me seriously enough to kill me for being a threat. My mother was the only person I could rely on as a child, but even back then I never understood how she could claim to be happy to have me, when were it not for my existence her life wouldn't have been such a living hell. Eventually, however, the torment was too much for her and drove her to take her own life when I was still young. Immediately following that, one of my half-brothers sent me a package containing a dead dog and a note stating that low-born dogs deserved to die.

Even that didn't end the harassment, however; the first time I began to see and go out with a young woman, again, my brothers had her killed. Since then I've never dared allow anyone to have a close enough relationship to me as to be targeted, if I could help it.

By the time I was seventeen and enrolled in the military academy I was seen as a threat; assassins were sent after me, and nearly all my classmates were slaughtered before my eyes in an ambush set for me that I unwittingly led them into. Of the two who survived, one left the country, and my best friend was imprisoned. After this I helped lead a revolution to gain control of the kingdom, during which I had to confront and kill my half-brothers as well as my father, who was reduced to no more than a madman by the time I first laid eyes on him. To accomplish this I made a contract with a "demon" to obtain the powers of a "hero"; the price of which is constant agony in all of my being, having to fight to retain my own sanity and will against that of the "hero", and being slowly turned from being human into something not.

Even after becoming king, however, the problems didn't end. A young commoner I'd befriended and made my secretary was murdered by the nobles' agents while I was powerless to punish them for it; later they also attempted the same against my best friend, though they only succeeded in injuring him. I've had to continue in secret the horrific research and experiments that I'd forbidden when I took the throne, lest I and the country be crushed in the inevitable war stirred by the various monstrous "gods" behind the world. And to save the world, I may have to either consign my best friend to a fate worse than death, or kill him to spare him from it.

I'm called a "hero king", but I've lied, manipulated, blackmailed, cheated, murdered, backstabbed, tortured, sacrificed, slaughtered, committed all manner of atrocities against friends and foes alike all in the name of the "greater good". I live every moment, waking and sleeping alike, in constant agony as a price for power, and can only hope to succeed or be slain before I go mad and become an inhuman monster. In fact, death would probably be a welcome end, but one far more than I could hope for, at that.

*....he can't believe he just said all that......*