Chapter 1289: Chapter 16 Annie de Vandom

—-This could be considered a pleasant surprise.

Aiwass never expected to learn the true identity of his biological mother so easily…

Annie de Vandom.

This should be Aiwass’s mother’s true name before she got married.

If Annie were still alive, she would probably be in her forties now.

Arsene is now about forty… and Angelique is eight years older than Arsene, which means she should be almost fifty. She should be Annie’s sister, in other words, Aiwass’s aunt.

The current Duke of Vandome is an old man. Aiwass doesn’t know exactly how old he is… But since Angelique is the second daughter, he should be at least seventy.

Yet the Abigail that Aiwass saw looks only about seventeen or eighteen!

“How many children does the Duke have?”

Aiwass couldn’t help but ask: “Generally speaking, shouldn’t the fertility of Upper Transcendents be weakened?”

“Yes, but the Duke himself is only at the Fourth Level, so the weakening isn’t too strong. And the blessing of the Path of Love allows him to have many children… He can afford them anyway.”

Arsene nodded: “The Duke has seventeen children in total. My wife Angelique is the second… And the Duke’s eldest son has already passed away due to illness. Because of this, I was able to become the son-in-law of the Vandom family… The Old Duke wants Angelique to inherit the family.”

“A Duchess?”

“Yes, Duchesses of the Iris Flower aren’t rare. It’s quite different from Avalon and Star Antimony.”

“Then what about Abigail? Which number is she?”

“The youngest one. She’s only sixteen this year, still in high school. That’s probably why Mia dreamed of her.”

So that means Abigail should be the Duke’s youngest daughter… in other words, Aiwass’s younger aunt?

Although in terms of seniority, she’s the younger aunt, she’s actually younger than Aiwass…

And Annie should be between Angelique and Abigail, it’s unclear which daughter she is. It’s surprising that the Duke of Vandome has so many children, which is rare for a Transcendent family.

With this in mind, Aiwass’s expression became a little subtle.

From this perspective… Arsene turns out to be Aiwass’s uncle?

At this thought, Aiwass recalled the content of the letter Sherlock sent him and suddenly understood:

[In the process of investigating this matter, I also inadvertently discovered a secret you absolutely cannot imagine yet is closely related to you. Here, forgive me for keeping a secret, for I am so eager to see the surprise and curiosity on the face of the respected God Slayer–]

Although Sherlock was under house arrest at the Duke of Vandome Mansion, he must have seen Arsene’s wife, Angelique de Vandom, or her other sisters. There’s even a good chance he saw past portraits of the “Vandome” family, which may have included Annie de Vandom.

And during the promotion ceremony where Sherlock first met Aiwass and Isabel, playing the Newsboy, he had already seen Isabel as Annie Alexander. In other words, he actually knew what Annie de Vandom looked like.

—-With Sherlock’s clever wisdom, upon seeing those other members of the Duke of Vandome, he should have already known Aiwass’s mother’s origins. This is the “hint” he wrote in the letter but did not explicitly reveal.

Because Sherlock simply couldn’t “keep it a secret”–once Aiwass reached the vicinity of the Duke of Vandome Mansion, he definitely would have found out. This was an inescapable fact. He didn’t mention this in the letter, which was also a hint that his current situation made it inconvenient for him to speak.

If Aiwass hadn’t met Arsene and didn’t know Sherlock was trapped in the Dream Realm… at least through this method, Aiwass would realize by the time he reached the Duke Mansion at the latest that Sherlock was unable to communicate or converse normally.

Luckily, he didn’t use his own appearance when interacting with Arsene, otherwise, he might have immediately guessed Aiwass’s background. This platinum hair of his is too distinctively recognizable… especially since he has interacted so much with the Vandom family.

But thinking about this, Aiwass keenly sensed a problem:

Why do Abigail and Annie look so alike?

If the Old Duke had multiple wives, the children should look quite different… But if he only had one wife, she should have gone through menopause already, and shouldn’t be able to give birth to Abigail.

With this in mind, Aiwass asked: “How many wives does the Old Duke have? Are they related by blood?”

“…How did you know? There have been three in total, but…”

Arsene was initially somewhat surprised, his expression becoming subtle: “They do indeed have some peripheral blood relations–because they all come from the Salzo family, with an age difference of about a dozen years. The second wife is the niece of the first, and the third is the niece of the second. There are two generations in between.

“But for Transcendents on the Path of Love, this isn’t considered too flamboyant… at least it’s not his own daughter. For the Iris Flower Nobility, this isn’t considered a taboo. Instead, it’s fashionable. It’s just that the Old Duke’s preference for women from the Salzo family is puzzling.”

…No.

Aiwass squinted slightly.