Monster Girls Redux

Each member of the senate, composed entirely of high-ranking priests and aristocrats said to hold the most sway in Lescatie, had its own order of knights to their name in order to flaunt their own authority and power. The one formed by Father Noscrim, considered to be the most powerful man among them, was Lescatie’s Knights of the Holy Ice Flower. The name “Ice Flower” derives from both the origins of the Noscrim family as a clan from the frozen north, and Lady Wilmarina’s command of ice magic.

Back then, being so full of heroes, beings who were the very essence of godly favor and military force, the Holy Ice Flower was practically shorthand for tremendous political power. The order, gathering under the banner of Lady Wilmarina Noscrim, the young mistress of House Noscrim renowned as Lescatie’s mightiest hero, was made up of talented heroes and knights that Father Noscrim had discovered through his own unique and furtive means. Moreover, there were many who were eager to get closer to the powerful Father Noscrim— aristocrats and other ambitious families rushed to enlist their gifted sons and daughters into the Knights of the Holy Ice Flower, and the order gradually became another setting for the nation’s political warfare.

Nominally, they pledged their allegiance to Lescatie and worked alongside the nation’s army to protect and serve it, but in actuality, they were almost entirely at the beck and call of the Order of the Chief God, as well as the anti-monster states affiliated with it. While obviously they were coveted for the purpose of either suppressing or deterring the presence of monsters, it wasn’t uncommon, outside of these mostly unsuccessful campaigns against monsters, for them to be pressed into service for wars between human nations as well.

The hero Wilmarina stands with the enemy. With just those words, monsters would flee before there could be any conflict whatsoever; the opposition in a war would raise the white flag without a single battle. It didn’t matter what price was to be paid— the voices that called out in need of Lady Wilmarina’s power and the order that she commanded never ceased. Naturally, that high price led to great power consolidating within the Order of the Chief God, and riches beyond even that of the nation of Lescatie itself.

Regardless of their stated pretense, that they were simply yet another arm of Lescatie’s military forces, the bounties that they reaped lined the pocketbooks of those who allied themselves with House Noscrim rather than the country’s people; they even extended their reach beyond Lescatie’s borders into other countries. Perhaps it can be said that the prosperity of the Lescatie of the past was not the nation’s, but rather, those connected to the Holy Ice Flower.

Before long, Lescatie would fall to the monsters led by Lady Druella, and with the disappearance of Father Noscrim, the former Knights of the Holy Ice Flower, now commanded by Lady Wilmarina, became the Knights of the Dark Ice Flower. By rooting out the powerful individuals who turned the knight’s order into a battlefield in and of itself, the Dark Ice Flower cut their connections with the Order and the nations that forced them into battles. With Wilmarina’s declaration that her and her husband had no need for stuffy formalities, the group seems to have done away with not just their warring ways, but any sense of discipline at all.

Lady Wilmarina, now a monster, takes little interest in the affairs of her own order— the heroes and knights affiliated with the Dark Ice Flower were to focus on finding a spouse and living whichever way they please, and it doesn’t really matter to their leader whether or not they continue to use their facilities and lodging as they had been. This is, of course, what Lady Wilmarina has said, but perhaps because of her virtues from when she was a human hero, the knights of Lescatie continue to run fairly smoothly by the efforts of those who have sworn her their fealty. It seems that she continues to be held as the commander of the Knights of the Dark Ice Flower despite it all.

These days, the Knights of the Dark Ice Flower only mobilize extremely rarely, and only upon orders from Lady Druella herself, but in becoming a monster army1, they now boast more military might than ever before. They are known and feared for showing no mercy whatsoever to Order nations, transforming them into mamono realms with smiles as cold and brilliant as ice. However, the faces that the men who are taken away by the Dark Ice Flower’s knights as their husbands during these conflicts see as they lay in bed are quite different from what they remember from the battlefront. Because all of them flush and struggle to keep a dignified face around their spouses and lovers, those who are aware of the stark difference between the two states will make fun of these feared fighters as “the Knights of the Thawing Flower”.

Translation Notes:
1: To be 100% clear, in text, this is just a monster army, not the Mamono Lord's Army, like it was in the original translation. They are not affiliated as far as I can tell.