[dahl_moon]

Spoiler for Random tidbits from the novel regarding Serenity:

The novel itself is also pretty sparse on details. Marika (and the readers) are not told the full story, so I'm still quite confused about the political background. But here are a few things that the anime omits:

• Serenity is considered a poor and backwater state, but its royal family is considered very old and prestigious.
• Serenity is consisted of three star systems with seven habitable planets. The Golden Ghost Ship had brought the first humans to the tri-system. But they aren't able to invent FTL travel on their own.
• After submitting to the galactic empire, Serenity's royal family finds it increasingly difficult to maintain unity. Many call for independence (although still within the galactic empire). Tensions flare up and settle down repeatedly over the course of history, and recently the royalists are again at the defensive.
• The technology to reproduce the "Fountain of the Rose" is already common knowledge, but the symbolism is not. Serenity's royal family has been maintaining the illusion that the family is "natural born," not "engineered." Hilde (and many other royalists, I assume) want to continue that. Gruier (and her grandfather, the grand duke, who sent her on this mission), want to accept the flow of history.
• After the ghost ship's return, the Serenity people, being staunch traditionalists and still having a lot of affinity for their founding myth, rally around the royal family anyway.
• Gruier in the novels is a lot more talented than depicted in the anime. She actually helps out analyzing the sensor data by using analytics software, which is pretty damn impressive for a middle schooler

Spoiler:

I don't think the princesses are necessarily clones; just genetically altered. Remember that the last time Serenity sent out a task force was before Gruier's birth. I think the Rose has more to do with legitimacy than anything else.
And another thing, in the novels Marika didn't negotiate with Yotov beforehand; she negotiated through lip-talking on the spot instead.