I couldn't be home, of course, the way I'd wished for, but I did, actually, receive a package from Greatfather Winter all the same.
The note said that he understood I missed my people and my home and the package was filled with things that the surviving Gilneans had left for me, at my grave. Notes, dried flowers, some drawings from some young ones...My favorite sweets from Tess, my sister, gloves that my mother knitted, and...a letter from my father thanking me for the service I'd rendered him.
Not too exciting the last until the bottom where he wrote the things I most needed to hear.
Gilneas still cares for me. I mattered to my father as more than his lost heir, but as my own person too, my mother and my sister remember me.
If I can't go home, at least I have ensured, through my own service, that my name stands as one who did his best for his people. I can be satisfied I was a prince like that.