Long May We Reign
*Author's Note: I actually wrote this piece before season two aired…before the twins joined the cast. Therefore all references to other royal children (names, causes of death, etc) are based on historical record and not on the show's bible.*
"The King is Dead! Long live the King!"
This phrase echoes and eddies through the stone walls of the castle, in various dialects, tones, timbres, and emotions—some are happy, some are mournful, some are apprehensive, some are tired and unaffected.
As for myself, I keep walking. Moving, moving, through hallways and rooms, across floors of stone and wood, across rushes and carpets, up stairs and down them again. It does not matter where—I am a survivor, you see, and moving is what we do. It is how we survive.
Perhaps I am trying to outrun my thoughts. Little success on that front, sadly.
A splinter. A damned piece of wood. Something so insignificant, yet it changes an entire nation. It changes the course of history (though for the better or the worse, I cannot say).
I wish that I could lament how it changes a family, but whatever we are, family does not seem to be the best description.
I love my son. I love all my children. The blood and tears and screaming fears required to bring every single one of them into this world ensured that I would treasure them as fiercely as I do—I know the agony of trying to beget a son, I know the pain of losing a babe before it is fully formed, I know the heavy weight of a stillborn gingerly settled into my shaking hands, and I know the sadness that comes from birthing a daughter, knowing she will never be valued and adored like her male siblings, though you find her just as perfect and precious as her brothers.
Ten children I birthed, and six survived past infancy. I have known women who have birthed more and buried more, so I suppose I should be grateful to God for such favor.
I think of sweet Louis—the fourth to be born, the first to be lost. Sweet boy. Just two weeks shy of his first year of life. He'd begun to walk, with the reckless toddling that all children have. He always tried to climb things—boxes, hassocks, chairs—and gave the nursery maids such frights with his daringness.
In my memories, his eyes are brown, Medici brown. But it has been so long that I cannot truly recall.
A mother should remember these things, I suppose. But then again, being a mother has not always been my primary function. My destiny, yes, but one shared with the fate of being the Queen of France—two paths that did not always run side by side, unfortunately.
To choose my children would have been weakness—a weakness I have succumbed to, from time to time, but one of which I try to rid myself, nonetheless. In some twisted way, you could say that makes me a martyr, though I doubt the priests will be placing my effigy on stained glass windows anytime soon.
I wonder how they will carve Henry's likeness, when it comes time to make his sarcophagus. Will it look anything like him? Will it even come close to capturing any aspect of his whirlwind personality?
To love a king is to love a force of nature. That is a lesson I most dutifully learned, many times over many years in many ways, all painful and equally surprising.
I learned it for the final time this very night. In another moment of weakness—whether brought on by regret, sheer emotion, or even pity for the man dying before me—I confessed my love again. I told him that he was the love of my life. Even now, I'm not entirely sure it is true. However, it can be said that he was the only man whom I loved who also stayed in my life, so surely that counts for something.
And in his final breaths, he spoke her name again. Bid me to show kindness to her.
Diane.
Even now, even in the last moment on this earth with my husband, she is there, even if only in thought.
Must I open my heart to her again? I opened my heart many times to Henry, only to have Diane's slender, pale hand drive yet another dagger into it, shredding it to a bloody, unrecognizable pulp. I endured her cruelty, her inability to give my husband and I any chance at happiness—I did it for France, for the Medici family honor, for my own head (which I preferred to keep attached to my neck), and later for my children. But must I make myself a martyr for a man who never could see just how deeply he wounded me with every indiscretion? Must I be the selfless one in all of this—caught between two selfish people, one a dead lunatic and the other a treasonous whore?
There it is, then. A promise to a dying man, a mad king. A covenant to protect a venomous bitch who'd sown insurrection and turned a nation upside down, who had threatened the very survival of my children, after I'd borne her bastard's presence without complaint for years.
And that is the love of my life. No grand sweeping love story. Just jealousy and hurt and promises broken before they were even fully uttered.
It was not always this way.
We were married at fourteen. I do not remember the words or any part of the ceremony, other than my hands were shaking with fear. I did not fear becoming a princess, or a wife, or a mother. No. I feared that soon, that very night, Henry would learn the truth—he would know that I had not been able to maintain my virtue against the soldiers who seized the castle at Florence, and he would cast me aside.
If he noticed, he never said so. And I never had the courage to confess, or to ask.
There were ten years of barrenness, and every day I felt the blade come closer to my neck. I berated myself for not fighting harder, for not protecting my virtue to the death, for lying to my husband and bringing more sin upon my head. Henry stayed by my side, but I pulled away. I have often wondered how things would have changed for us, if I had shown him all my scars—the ones left in the head and heart.
Too late now. But that is one thing I do not regret. Henry could be cruel, just as easily as he could be kind. Words spoken in loving confidence could easily be sharpened and honed into weapons in the future—another lesson I learned from him, in exquisitely painful detail.
That was the kind of things wives shared with their husbands. I was his queen, and I was the mother of his shining legitimate heirs. But I was never his wife. Not truly, not in the ways that count.
Then, I suppose, he was never my husband, either. We always were well matched.
I am now in the eastern corridor of the castle—in the colder months, we always shut off this section, for the rooms are older and more given to drafts and leaks. Still, I know these halls. During our time as a mere prince and his bride (before the death of his elder brother, the true Dauphin), our chambers had been here.
I find the door that seems so much smaller, less imposing than it did so many years ago—it is heavy and groans in protest at being opened after so many years of disuse. I glance down the hall, to the darkened door that was once the entrance to Henry's chambers. We had separate quarters, as most royals do, but we spent most of our nights together in here, in mine.
The room is empty, drafty as usual, devoid of light, save what enters through the window.
An apt depiction of what our final relationship looked like.
I move to the center of the chamber, into the alcove where our bed once stood. My footsteps echo eerily in the emptiness—I stop, allowing the quietness to take over once more as I recall the memories contained within these stone walls.
Our first night as husband and wife. The room was filled with light and heat and strangers, and my fear only increased. Henry thought it was shyness, brought on by natural womanly virtues. He had been kind, his hands soft and warm and nothing like those animals who'd pawed at me, clutching at me like thorns in a briar. The next morning, we'd awoken, truly alone for the first time, shy smiles and shining cheeks.
We are going to be very happy, dear wife. He'd caressed my face, and a calm certainty had bubbled in my chest at his words. I believed him then. I would later realize that was the first of many mistakes.
The night Henry's elder brother died. One would expect mourning and grief, but Henry never did fall into most people's expectations. We had spent much time in prayer and tears for the Dauphin, but once he passed, reality settled onto Henry's shoulders.
I am going to be the next king of France. He'd uttered this phrase, over and over again, like some pagan mantra, each repetition giving more vigor to the thrust of his hips (not that he ever needed more encouragement in that department). I remember digging my fingers into his shoulder blades, willing each push to deliver me a son, because I understood exactly what this new title meant for me—either I gave the throne an heir, or I gave my head to the pike. His intensity had been frightening, and exhilarating, two things that would always characterize both Henry's flights of euphoria and his worst tantrums. We did not sleep that night, and though my main intent was to procure a son, I cannot say that I did not find a measure of pleasure in it.
I don't remember him ever being more passionate—perhaps he was, the night he was crowned king. I wouldn't know. He was with Diane that night.
We left those chambers, shortly after that. It wouldn't do, to have the Dauphin and Dauphine in such small quarters. I remember being awed by how much more spacious our new rooms had been—little did I know, the splendor and majesty came with a weighty price. Yet another lesson to be learned, at the expense of my poor heart.
It was during those years, the years after we left these rooms, that we splintered apart. There were still some moments of warmth—the births of our children (except for our last, the twins, for little Joan came out stillborn and Victoria only survived a fortnight), various victories in realms of politics and war, times when we were not in love but at least at peace. It was during our move into those new chambers that Sebastian was born, and Diane became a permanent fixture in our lives—and that happy young couple who seemed so destined for love died a quiet and ignoble death.
We became a king and queen, and our chambers moved once again—grander rooms, further apart, greater pains and less artful lies.
Like our wedding, my memory of the coronation is blurred by nerves and adrenaline. My clearest recollection is standing behind Henry, at the entrance to the cathedral—the crowd cheering for him, loving him with that fervent adoration which he sought in every arena of his life, my knees locked to keep from shaking. Henry reached back for my hand, smiling at me as the sun glinted off his crown, a blinding vision that made the world stand still. He was a lion, a king, the man who made my heart tremble in helpless hopeless longing, and he shared his glory with me—he pulled me to his side, smiling back out at the cheering throng, as if so utterly proud to call me his queen.
It had been not even six months since the birth of Louis, our second son and fourth child, and we knew there would be many more to come. The future was bright and impenetrable—and ours.
Long live the king! Long live the king! The chants had been deafening, as steady and assured as a heartbeat.
All I could see was him—my Henry, bathed in sunlight, young and fervent and beloved. That moment seemed to last an eternity, suspended in a world where we were protected from everything, where we alone resided.
I also remember that night, when my young shining king did not come to my chambers, but spent the evening in the arms of Diane de Poitiers, who had been an honored guest at the coronation feast.
I feel the coldness of the room, and the sunny warmth of my memories dissipates, leaving me back in reality—a loveless widow in a dark and empty room.
A widow. Never a wife, and no longer a queen. I do not know which loss I feel more keenly.
We are going to be very happy, dear wife.
Something creeps down my neck—my fingers instinctively brush it away, and I am surprised to feel wetness. I am crying, though in my reverie I had not noticed the tears which now wash over my cheeks, down my chin and onto my neck.
It is hard to breathe. In hapless futility, I pull at my corset, trying to allow my lungs more room, but my fingers are frozen and useless. I feel caged, confined, bound by grief and regret, and I want to scream, to rage, to yell into heaven or hell or wherever he may be and curse him for leaving like this.
A splinter. A splinter from a pointless lance in one of his foolish, childish jousts.
"Why must you be such a stupid, posturing fool?" My own voice sounds foreign to my ears, ripping through my throat with impotent rage and howling grief as it echoes and resounds in the vacant room. I feel myself sinking to my knees, involuntarily, but I continue my tirade against the ghost of a man I once knew, "Why must you leave me here, like this? Why must you always be that stupid, stupid boy, always looking for applause and adoration?"
Whatever small measure of dignity and composure I may have had leaves me. I am lying on the floor now, the cool stone comforting to my hot tear-streaked face.
My first instinct is to curl inward, to collapse into myself, but my corset won't allow it. So instead, my gaze turns to the window—the moon is full, bright and unblinking. It seems so heartless, to not hide its face in the midst of this grief.
It witnesses everything—my heartache, my loss, my weakness.
There it is, then. The love of my life. No grand sweeping love story. No shining king and his beloved queen. Just a widow alone in an empty room, crying for a man who died many years ago.
From the courtyard below, I heard the cry, "The King is dead! Long live the King!"
The King. My son is now the King.
Perhaps something good did survive, amidst the ashes that we made of our marriage. Six children, all bright and beautiful and ready to rule the world. Surely they are not for naught.
My breathing steadies itself. The man I mourned was one who died many years ago, replaced by a man driven mad by lust and power. A man I myself tried to kill, on more than one occasion. A man who in turn tried to kill me, also on more than one occasion. Yes, we always were well matched.
There it is, then. The true love of my life. No grand sweeping love story. Just two souls who tortured one another for years, turning goodness into hatred. Political allies turned enemies, pitted in a match for the survival of a nation, the survival of a crown and its bloodline.
Only one of us survived.
The stronger one.
The winner.
I may surely burn in hell for the smile that blossoms across my face—though God knows, I shall dutifully confess and make my penance for it on the morrow.
But tonight, I merely enjoy the end of our reign.
The King is dead. Long live the King.