THE RINGSTETTEN SAGA XIV: LIFE GOES ON AND ON AND ON

Previously on the Ringstetten Saga:

The independent and self-reliant tomboy queen (traumatized by her mother's fate, she declines to marry not to feel sorrow or have her wings clipped by love and/or obedience: "Free was I born, free I live, and free I shall die") feels the weight of the crown heavy upon her head. She came to visit the La Gardies as an excuse to inform them of her upcoming abdication, having already appointed the successor who will rule in her stead as she seeks adventure and thrills across Europe.

So, the next day, it's time to say farewell to the Queen, who has to inform her mother and courtiers of such a relevant decision. Later on, in mid-December, Liselotte and her children have been preparing the welcoming of another Eleonora: Alois's and Hedwig's daughter, who arrives three days later from Dalecarlia to marry her childhood friend Hermann and live with her in-laws. The betrothal is celebrated on New Year's Day.

However, Gerhard acts coldly towards his daughter-in-law and prefers to keep on writing his memoirs, having consecrated a room in the estate to his weapons and to the medal that Her Majesty gave him. The young lieutenant who fought so gallantly for the Protestant cause revives in the prose that graces his library, upon reaching the part of his life when he met the Swedish royals. Thus, Gerhard keeps on writing more and more passionately for each day... and even more upon realising that Liselotte, just like the Queen, has always looked and acted like Gustavus Adolphus… since, unknown to her, the Hero King of Lützen is her birth father, making her a legitimized royal bastard. At their next family Christmas, the memoirs writer finally discloses this under the influence, yet, surprisingly, no one is upset, and Liselotte herself remarks that she looked and acted like the late king more than like Colonel von Tarlenheim, while also realising why she was made a ward of the Crown after her apparent father’s death. Which means the Ringstettens have got true royal blood running through their veins!

While his daughter-in-law is with child, girls from nearby farms and villages come to the estate as servants, and the French garden becomes more beautiful for every day in springtime. Annika, the favourite among all these maids, is the orphaned granddaughter of the local wise woman, Svarta Maja (Black Maya), who tends to the Ringstettens as well as any qualified physician. The Walloons (Protestant Walloons in Sweden!) from a nearby iron foundry also become their friends and partners: the nobles come to the foundry where they live for Christmas, and the Walloons come to visit the estate in midsummer.

As Eleonora finds out, by midsummer, that she is with child (she was not sure until then), Gerhard reaches the part of his memoirs when he comes to Sweden and has a conversation with the Queen, commenting on the impression that she made. In early winter, the next generation of Ringstettens is kickstarted with Hermann's and Eleonora's eldest child: a premature little girl, that is christened Christina in the parish church. Sadly, such a joyful event is to be associated with a dramatic one: as the first snowdrops of spring appear in the French garden, the veteran officer is found unconscious in the library, before his desk, as he reached the account of his eldest grandchild's birth in the memoirs. Gerhard is strangely pale and cold, unable to breathe. He reacts upon being given water and brandy to drink, but his heartbeat has weakened to a flutter. The bullet in his chest, after being lodged in his left lung for decades, causes the searing pain and weakness that he is experiencing.
At dusk, the same evening, the flutter of his heart is finally silenced. It is up to Liselotte to finish his memoirs with the account of her beloved spouse's death and obsequies.
The next day, Gerhard receives his eternal rest in between the nearby church and the French garden, in a baroque shrine where Ringstettens of upcoming generations will follow him. On a wall of the shrine, Liselotte has the poem that her husband wrote at the start of his memoirs written (here is a translation of the full inscription, the original being in German and Swedish):

HERE LIETH

COUNT GERHARD WILHELM VON RINGSTETTEN

BORN IN 1615 - DIED IN 1654

LIEUTENANT IN THE FRENCH ARMY

LIEUTENANT IN THE SWEDISH ARMY

LORD OF THE RINGSTETTEN ESTATE

KÜSTRIN HAD THE HONOUR OF BEING HIS BIRTHPLACE.

HE CAME OF AGE IN CAMPS, TO SERVE A GREAT LEADER

IN THE GREATEST WAR OF HIS DAY

FOR THE HIGHEST CAUSE OF HIS DAY.

HE FREQUENTED MANY LANDS AND NATIONS.

SUCCEEDED WHEN TRIED,

SUCCEEDED IN LOVE,

SUCCEEDED IN LIFE.

"NO CHALLENGE WAS TOO HARD: I STROVE TOWARDS THE LIGHT.

YET I CAN'T COMPREHEND THAT I'LL BE OUT OF SIGHT"

The whole Ringstetten shire is in mourning, and the Tarlenheims come over from Dalecarlia. The Walloons and Black Maya are consternated as well. Yet even more misfortunes await the Ringstetten clan: it'll take a decade for an exhausted Eleonora to conceive another child, much to her mother-in-law's chagrin, and Queen Christina's successor dies in 1660, to be succeeded by his only son, Charles XI. 
One only cloud looms above them: the current master Hermann, Liselotte's and Gerhard's eldest son, is not able to leave for any war due to his brittle state of health, leaving his younger brother Konrad, the spare, in charge of the foreign campaigns.
Life has gone on in the shire without any trouble except that. Christina von Ringstetten has become a lonely and thoughtful child, with the maids and Etienne van der Heide, the steel mill owner's ten year older only son, for playmates. Though the green-eyed and strawberry blond little girl, educated by the local Reverend, also likes reading books, especially myths and war chronicles.
In the 1670s, catastrophes pile upon each other: royal officials scour the estate to give three quarters of the clan's lands to the Crown, and the King himself is coming to Värmland for a moose hunt (Charles XI having started an absolutist regime); Etienne has left for Uppsala University, leaving Christina on her own with her books; large patches of heartsease that cover the plains predict that it will be an unusually dry summer for that part of Sweden; and Eleonora, who happens to be expecting her third child and hopes that it will be a blond male (after her red-haired daughters, Christina and Ilse) to appease her stern mother-in-law... develops an unexpected craving for wild strawberries. 
An agreement with the Sidhe, the spirit of the woods, will solve all those issues... or not?