It's the Rush That You Get

At the time, the taxes were so high that almost no one could pay it. And if you couldn’t pay it, then the King would send out soldiers, with the tax-collectors to point you out, to take the eldest son in the family. They would then be forced into the Militia, the ground-force, or the Armada, a fleet of warships.

If the family had an eldest daughter instead of son, the soldiers would take the girl and enslave her as a maid for the King in one of his many castles. Neither the boy nor girl would be heard from again. If it happened again where a family could not pay the taxes, the next eldest child would be taken.

With the taxes rising every year, families were thinning out fast, castles were filling to the brim with maids, and the Militia and Armada were booming in numbers.

But, of course, disease and starvation usually got to the families before the tax-collectors did. Many died before the tax-collectors got to them, from starvation to a disease.

Finally the King died, and his son, the heir, received the throne. He was a better King; he lessened the taxes considerably, also quit enslaving children and put the soldiers to better use finding thieves, robbers, gangs, and any criminals.

Soon jails began filling as the criminals came pouring in which led to the people being outside more, making crops grow, cattle being cared for, and life soon returned back to a peaceful town where murders were a shock and usually only one on the daily newspaper.

The people began returning to their trade instead of begging. Blacksmiths began making swords. Shoemakers began making shoes. Glassblowers began making new and inventive utensils, vases, and other many beautiful things.

People’s lives were prospering, finally. Many people tried the merchant trade. But with all of the ships to take care of, the changing of prices, and the education it required caused many people to lose heart in that trade except for a few.

One family of that few was Gwylan's family. Now, Gwylan was the only offspring of her father, Oistin Zitomira. Her mother had long since died from childbirth and Oistin never chose to marry again. Probably because he did not want to end up with another child quite like how he was when he was young.
True to Gwylan’s parentage, she was hard-headed, proud, out-spoken, and stone-faced. But from her mother, she received being passionate, patient, strategic, and Gwylan even had her blonde curly hair.
Gwylan and her father led a quiet, usually, uneventful life. Oistin had his daughter undertaking the normal ‘how-to-be-a-lady,’ ‘how-to-be-a-keeper-of-your-own-home,’ and ‘how-to-be-the-perfect-woman’ studies. But Gwylan, showing how stubborn she could be, ended up forcing him to let her take other lessons such as advanced mathematics, geography, inferential science, and several languages including French, German, Spanish, and Latin.

Oistin never regretted having a daughter as his heir to his well built up status as a merchant. Although some said he should try for another child, a boy preferably, he refused saying that “a boy would have been fine but I received a daughter who, to me, has a male mind in a female’s body.”

And this is the reason for Gwylan to not go to a girls’ boarding school to learn more intricate needlework, but lessons with her father’s chief navigator aboard his ships.

Gwylan loved the feeling of wind in her hair, sea spray in her face, ship bucking beneath her feet; and I suppose this is what most possessed her to make the decisions she made.