In the universe of the Lovely Princess where the poisoning had been an actual historic event, I wouldn't be surprised if wmmap historicans would collapse two characters into one and assume Athanasia was Diana and Jennette was Penelope. As a criminal who dared to commit the greatest sin: the sin of (attempted) kinslaying and that of black magic usage, her treatment would have been the same as Anastacius', all records of Athanasia's existence would have been purged, her name would have been erased from history. I imagine this would create a great confusion about who she really was, among modern historicans who are researching that turbulent period of the Empire.
LP Athy grew up in the Ruby Palace, never had been engaged or wedded and possessed no magic. Had lp Lucas really consumed her mana, she would have lost the jewel eyes that distinguished her from the common folk as a member of the royal family. Had Diana sealed away her magic, it should have had the same effect. What we are left with, is an ordinary girl with no special features and no magical talent, that had lived in the concubine palace languishing for the Emperor's presence. Claude had no known lovers throughout the fourteen years that would follow the Massacre of the Ruby Palace. According to the payroll provided by the imperial treasury, there had lived only one person in the Ruby Palace with no listed occupation who had been receiving huge sums of money monthly. A sum that seems too high for a scullery maid and too low for a princess. There is thus reason to presume that lp Athy had been Claude's concubine and not his daughter. It is hardly believable that a man who owned enough concubines to fill an entire palace would suddenly decide to abstain from sex.
Ambassadors will report there had been a Siodonnian beauty that the Emperor had used to highly cherish exactly one year before the Massacre of the Ruby Palace. Imagine: There is no marked grave of Diana. There are no birth records of Athanasia. This means Diana never died officially and Athanasia was never born. Athanasia could have been easily confused with Diana. Sketches of her at her trial might have survived that would match with the ambassadors' description of Diana.
We have a similar situation with Jennette: The official story is that Claude's fiancee had angered him somehow and that she had fled from him. The pregnancy was a well-kept secret. Her father would have ordered a quiet and small funeral to minimize the shame his daughter bought upon her family. Just like Athy, Jennette's childhood would pass by largely undocumented. She lived as if she had never existed and materialized out of the thin air at a ball when she was of age. To historicans it must look like Penelope had faked her death and simply came out of her hiding. Remember, Jennette was raised outside the palace under the name Margarita without jewel eyes and was only married after Claude's death. Had she really been a product of black magic, her children (if she was not infertile) might have been born without jewel eyes. It appears as if she had no relation to the de Alger Obelia family. Had she really been the Emperor's firstborn, she would have been granted a name that means immortality. Jennette marrying Ijekiel only after Claude's passing, suggests Claude was her first partner and Ijekiel her second.
So we have Athanasia, whose name appears as a fat black stroke throughout the chronicles and Jennette who changes her names like bonnets. I could mention it's not uncommon for some rulers to rename their lover, for example Sultan Suleiman renamed Alexandra Hürrem (the one who makes me laugh). Judith's daughter going from Penelope to Jennette (god is gracious) to the Lovely Princess could be interpreted as Claude giving her a title that shows his love for her. Wheras Diana and Athy could be seen as the bastardizations of a Siodonnian name that has been translated differently into the Obelian tongue.
The conflict of two daughters vying for their father's love would be mistakenly read as that of two women fighting over a man's love. It is a story everybody knows, a tale lifted straight off the pages of a romance novel. The brunette vs the blonde, the childhood sweetheart or the temptress, the lady and the whore. the angel against the witch. The nobility would love this kind of romance, wouldn't they? The girl raised in the holy halls of Alpheus rising to the position of Empress wheras the lowly dancer of foreign blood who forgot her place and dared to crawl out of off the slums of the red light district into the Emperor's bed, received her due reward at the hands of the executioner'. It's a classist and racist story that serves as a cautionary tale against the ambitious peasantry.
Just imagine how much the truth would have been distorted! The young prince exiled his first love, who retreated to the estate of her cousin and would remain faithful to him for 14 years while praying for his forgiveness. The prince cannot forget her and still keeps her painting, but he is too prideful to admit his mistake and surrounds himself with whores, hoping their company will chase away his loneliness. During that time the Prince now Emperor is caught in the thrall by a foreigner witch. Under the influence of her black magic, he commits various crimes and becomes a much feared tyrant. The lady sets out to save him and melts his frozen heart. The witch retaliates, she poisons the lady but her foul ploy is discovered and she is bought to justice. The lady then becomes an Empress and lives happily ever after together with the Emperor. It bears no actual resemblance to the reality. But it seems like a story historicans would construct with the few pieces they have and the unrelieable sources that had survived the fall of Obelia.
Sure the fusion of Diana and Athy would create some confusion as to why the dancer who enjoyed the Emperor's attention suddenly fell into disfavour, but if the timeline were traced back to the past it would end at the massacre of the Ruby Palace, which seems like a good enough reason. Scholars who generally accept Claude's reputation as a Saviour of the Nation, would be quick to blame Diana for the slaughter. Diana's knowledge of foreign herbs in the side stories and donghua lp Athy's confession of having spiked the chocolate with a love potion, would be taken as evidence that Diana must have had bewitched Claude. She must have orchestrated the deaths of her love rivals, because she wanted to be the only woman in Claude's life and this violent display of her twisted love must have bought him to his senses.
Jennette and Athy lived and died like love rivals and Claude never even viewed them as his daughters but as ghosts of the past, why wouldn't the people 2000 years later not think the same? That Jennette was Penelope? That Athy was Diana? That this was not an unrequited father-daughter relationship but the sequel to a romantic love triangle that had outlived its heroines?
I find this possibility so interesting. Whether it's wmmap or the lp verse, Athanasia will always merge with her mother. Claude had his hearts desire and made it so that she never existed.
