The tale of Cinderella is one of regrets. In the songs she ends up with a happily ever after. But the true story is much darker. Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, the last a story not mine, are all fables, fairy-tales we can all relate to and hope to come true. For some of us they do, but only half of the story.
In the real story of Snow White, Snow is a spoiled woman, one ruled by her own ambitions who wants to depose her father's Queen and uses her sister and her knights through her false kindness and her true beaut for her means.
The end justifies the means. I whisper looking from the window. The are read.
"Are you afraid?" Someone asks, I can't remember her name. Nothing matters to me anymore, only two names do and one of them I am willing to go through any lengths to protect.
I shake my head. "No. Tomorrow you will see me up and raised as the most high." They look at each other, my lady Aunt shakes her head remarking to Lady Kingston I've gone mad. My laugh spooks them and they turn their heads.
I guess this is a fitting, as I am led to the scaffold. I, the most happy, will now become a figure of darkness, a figure of tragedy. I will become Immortal.
"My dear Christian people, I have come here to die ..." I start and end my speech with a solemn plea after I ask them to pray for my sovereign lord (my husband -I tell myself), "I ask that you pray for me ..." I kneel down and the people moved by my tears and m obedience. The obedience only a true subject of His Majesty can give, for only the King's true subject, his true family, his true lawful and *only* wife can deliver such beautiful lines. Because in truth I am the King's only wife, always have been, it is what I was born to do, to give him a son but God has willed it otherwise and turned his long-for-son into a Princess. She will be Queen someday. Unlike her bastard sister whose blood is royal, more royal than hers, she is half-Spanish and that is something that the English will never accept for England must be governed by English, trueborn, pure-blooded Englishmen and women.
I bow my head and spread my arms. Go now, I whisper and I do not know if the executioner has heard me but when I hear him yell at his servant to bring his sword, I turn to the servant boy. Then it all goes black ...