As special thanks to Maz (Marie) I have named one of the Robin/Marian children after them. This, the funeral speech thing… eulogy… that's the word, of Robin Hood.
"Somebody once said to me, 'You'll be married to him, you wait and see' and all I could do was laugh. Robert of Locksley was the best friend that I had ever had, and I did not ever see it in any other way. At the age of nine it seemed completely preposterous to even be considering marriage, especially to somebody so close. It wasn't until four years later when I was informed I didn't have any choice in the matter, that I was somehow forced to look at it in another light.
"For three blissfully happy years, Robin and I found our relationship reaching new heights. We'd laugh and play, do all the things we normally did. What interest would a sixteen-year-old boy have in a child? Barely a teenager. But then there were all these new feelings and emotions that neither of us had ever felt before. He was all I had ever known, from the days where I would use him as target practise with my wooden horses and when I would come home with blood stained, ripped dresses to how it changed; we grew ever closer and on the eve of my fifteenth birthday, he finally decided to show me how much.
"That was when our marriage was confirmed. It was announced to the hordes at my birthday dinner. As the Sheriff's daughter nobody could be more pleased, it was quite sickening actually. We lived another year just the two of us, well, and Much, who had become a great friend in the 5 years he had been working with Robin. We did all the things we used to do, we got ourselves stuck in trees, paddled in the stream, shot arrows and lived our lives care free.
"But then it all changed. He went to fulfil his 'duty'. He went to fight in King Richard's Holy War. What is ever holy in war? The day he left was a day I never want to see again. He broke my heart and I never thought I would live to see his return, nor him for that matter. It was war, not many returned. Each night I would beg for him to walk down the road to Knighton, that he would return to me, but after three years of wishing my mind gave upon the matter. But my heart never did.
"The day of his return, just over five years of absence, I could have shot him down. I held an arrow to his chest and told him to leave. He only did when my father and I went back inside out house. But we were watched, always watched. That's the only reason my father sent him away. At that moment, I had no desire to see him. He left me broken, and never once tried to tell me he was still alive. And then he took to the forest. The idiot he was, but he was helping people, doing what I had already been doing for three years, and taking all the credit, and only because he flouted the Sheriff publicly and I did not.
"He always made a show of it as well. And he was good. He was very good. From time to time he would nearly be killed in his fight, his own personal war, but he always came through. He went on to fight the Sheriff until the King returned after five years of living in that god forsaken forest, and all was put right. In a matter of weeks the Sheriff was ousted and the Outlaws rightfully put in their homes. The taxes erased and Prince John was never heard of again. My father would have been made Sheriff again, but he was taken ill, too ill. So his near passing put Robin at the helm of it. And Will Scarlett at Locksley.
"After those five years, all bad feelings between us had gone, after my own 'death', he nearly lost me all over again to Gisbourne, of all people, and Much; god bless you. And once again, Robin had made a show of it, fancy leaning on a horse indeed, just to kiss 'his girl'. And then to hang the Sheriff by his shoe in his own court, that I shall never forget. A few weeks after the King returned, when everything was right that's when Locksley got its long awaited wedding. Everything was how it should have been. Only ten years later.
"At the age of twenty-nine and twenty-six we took on Nottingham, together. We both made decisions for the good of the people and all his actions went by me. We had always said I would have made a better Sheriff than him, and I really was. Not that anybody would ever know it. Behind the scenes of his façade, his wife ran it. And on we lived in the same pattern for another thirty years. Our children had grown up, taken on lands of their own, Edward, Marie and Daniel; they made his world complete.
"You were a lot like us as children; doing all the things we did, chasing poor old Much. But one thing he would never be more proud of was how you had taken the initiative to learn how to use a bow and arrow. Just remember, using each other as target practise, is never a good idea. But you all pulled through in the end, and you gave us eight wonderful grandchildren. To see them all reach their teens would have been a blessing for him. I know now he will be looking down on us all, watching us and keeping us safe.
"He was always my guardian angel, even when I could not see him, I could feel him. His love, it's like the wind, and even though I can not see it, I could always feel it; even when he was at war. And now I look back, I don't look back in anger, I look back in love.
"My dearest Robin, you made my world complete."
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