this was originally supposed to be a oneshot but it became monolithic and i decided that would be cruel.
also im not finished yet and needed to post it for st. george's day so breaking what i have into chapters is my way of buying myself time. ;.
Cymry/Cymru - Wales,
Caledonii - Scotland,
Eire/Eriu - Ireland,
Gallia - France
/
The sound of the sea, and the scent of death.
The two of them mixed together, pushing and pulling like the ebb and flow of the tide. This is where his memories begin. The salt of the ocean and the salt of blood. Coppery and metallic, brine and sand. Together, loud and overwhelming, before he's even opened his eyes.
When he is born, the smell of rot hangs heavy in the air. Decay, and the pungent odor of corpses, accented by the ceaseless movement of humming flies and writhing maggots. Sounds and smells.
The sound of the waves rolling against the shoreline is the only thing louder than the buzzing of the carrion eaters. Salt the only smell stronger than that of decay. Smells and sounds.
Death and the sea; those are his first memories.
And the touch of his mother's hand.
His mother was once very beautiful, he's been told. The epitome of a Celtic Goddess; of power and ruthlessness and beauty. But he remembers her only as he saw her. The first sight of his newly opened eyes. Her red-gold hair falling off her head in clumps, taking chunks of dead skin with it. A bitter, unkind smile that makes her brittle face crack, gums blackened and teeth stained red. The source of the scent of death. The source of the sounds of decay.
Her hand is wizened, ripened and wrinkled with rot, stained and discoloured. Nails dirty and broken, and skin sagging where there's any skin at all. Bone peeks through holes in her flesh, and it is this that he feels first. The first caress he's ever given, the touch of his mother's corpse on his cheek.
Beneath the folds of decaying skin, sloughing off her skull in lumps, her eyes glimmer, still bright green and clear. Neither hazy nor muddled with the weight of her age or the descending fog of death. She stares down at him, smiling, as her hand falls away from his cheek.
"You look nothing like him," she says, in a voice surprisingly clear, marred only by the rancid stench on her breath, "I don't hate you, I think."
The first words he ever hears. He remembers his hands clutching at the tattered remains of her dress, desperate to hear her voice again. Desperate for her to touch him again. He feels her dying. He feels her leaving. He is terrified of being left alone.
"Your brothers are probably going to try and kill you," she continues, in the same clear and curt tone of voice, "So do your best, and learn to die bravely."
His mother whispers no soft words of affirmation, nor affords him any tenderness beyond the cold touch of her rotting hand. She doesn't hate him- the kindest thing she could possibly say. For she hates his father, has always hated his father, and his birth has made her death imminent and unavoidable.
His mother dies there, minutes after his birth, and the last thing she tells him is to die bravely. Leaving him newborn and naked on the seashore, the smell of salt and brine the only thing stronger than the smell of death.
His name is not Arthur, nor England, nor even really Albion, yet. But this is where he is born, and these are the only words he ever hears from his mother.
The lingering sensation of her touch on his cheek fades away, and is replaced by another swelling feeling through his entire body. His heart thunders with a thousand beats that are not his own. His skin prickles, feeling fires and fights and joyous celebrations far away and close by and everywhere at once. His land, the people, his mother's people, his people.
He cannot stay here, on this beach, where his afterbirth, the fluids of rot seeping out of his mother's body, are staining the sand. But he is too afraid to leave. He does not want to leave her. He does not want to be alone.
He is not alone for long.
True to her words, one of his brothers appears. He feels familiar, with the same eyes as their dead mother. He is a boy, but a boy that is nearly a man, and he is painted up for war.
"It is you who is meant to be the new Albion?" sneers the boy, "We will never allow it. We will tear Mother's legacy out from the cavern of your chest before we let you, you Roman bastard, usurp her place."
The first sound he ever makes is a scream.
It doesn't do him any good, however. His brother, perhaps tempered by the fact that he is so young, does not carve a sword into his chest, but contents himself with stuffing him into a sack, tying it shut, and hurling him screaming into the sea.
And so, he dies for the first time shortly after he is first born. And then dies again. And again. And again. Trapped within the cloth confines of the sack, unable to claw his way out before water fills his lungs and his heart stops again.
The ones who free him are the Fair Folk. They cut away the ties of the bag and allow him to kick his way frantically to the surface, guiding him back towards his shoreline. Seasalt is crusted all over his skin, in his eyes and ears and mouth and under every nail. He heaves and heaves onto the sand, and still, feels like he is drowning. Still feels like he is being swallowed by the sea.
He senses it, then. He senses the land, the territory. His body. In a single moment of realization, he becomes aware of the fact that he is surrounded by water. The word comes to him immediately: Mori, in his mother's language, and Aqua in his father's. A word that makes him tremble in fear.
The faeries that saved him stay with him, lead him away from the shoreline, and into the forest. They tell him what he is, who he is (Albion, now. Taken from his mother), and of the brothers he must watch for. Caledonii to the north. Cymru to the west. Èriu further west, over the water. And, of course, his father Rome, who they are all frightened of.
They notice the way that he shivers when they mention water, and crowd around him, admonishing, tiny teeth bared and chattering in dissatisfaction.
You mustn't fear the ocean, Albion. They tell him. Your land was born from the water, and when you die, it is to the water you will return.
"I've already died in water," he says, shivering, and they all laugh. They laugh at him.
We mean your true death, Albion. They say. When your land and people are no more, it will be to the water, and nothing else. Born from water, and to the water you will return. It is in your blood. If you fear it, you will never be strong.
/
He stays in the company of the Fair Folk, because they favour him over his brothers and will not allow them near to harm him. He learns of the humans that make up his land, his mother's people and his people. He hears and feels them, and sees through their eyes and hurts through their skin. He feels pain and sorrow through them. And war and death. But he also feels warmth and kindness through their eyes and through their hands. He feels them embrace and he feels them whisper kind words and he feels their love and he hears them speak of love. Reverent and wistful and yearning.
He remembers the touch of his mother's hand, and her kindest words to him, 'I do not hate you'. And he remembers the rough, hate-filled hands of his brother before the world faded away into a coffin of cloth and brine.
There is meant to be love among families, he knows now, but he has felt none of that warmth and affection from his own. His only knowledge of that kind of warm feeling comes through echoes, reverberations he gets through the people in his land.
And the Fair Folk, of course, have no concept of love. Not even the fairies who weave flowers through his hair, or the Fae who teach him how to use a bow, or the unicorn who carries him about, or the ghosts who tell him the history of this world, and how he came to be. They are too far removed to feel or understand or yearn for it the way the humans do.
But he finds himself yearning for it as the humans do. He is still afraid to venture away from the Fair Folk, to go into the human towns and meet the people whose feelings echo through him. But he chases the sensation, closes his eyes and lies back and tries to feel it for himself. He doesn't know if he's doing it right, for the humans all seem to feel love for each other, while the best he can do is feel love for the forests that shelter him.
The child of Gaul, when they meet, will smile at him, face round and cherubic, eyes bluer than the sky, and laugh.
"My mother once told me that she loved me," he says, teeth bared in his facsimile of a grin, "But I think she just didn't want me to kill her. She didn't mean it. And I killed her anyways."
Gallia always smells of blood, and all the water of the channel that divides them cannot wash the smell out of his skin. Albion hates Gallia. He is the first other Nation that he's met properly, and he hates him so. Gallia is pretty but cruel. And he is older than Albion, which is an indignity that he's worried is going to become familiar as he meets other Nation-children. He's taller too, and already has crescents and spots of discoloured and puckered skin. War scars, for his land and for his people, a mark of growth. And, to add insult to injury, Gallia's met Albion's father. The Roman Empire.
"He's taking care of me right now," says Gallia, eyes glittering, "He's supposed to be taking care of you too, isn't he? But I guess he can't be bothered. You're so far away, and there's nothing on this silly little island except for pagans and rain. If you don't pull yourself together he'll never come to see you. He'll only come to stomp out what's left of your mother, and put something he prefers in her place."
Gallia preens for a moment, smile cruel as always.
"That's why I killed my mother," he continues, voice a bit feverish, "It was either her or-, Rome thinks I'm not his, that I'm Germania's, and I had to-,"
His nostrils flare, and his expression twists for a moment into something startlingly ugly.
"You don't know anything, on this island," Gallia sneers, "Hiding from your brothers. Hiding from everyone. You think there's something wrong with me. But that's because you don't know anything about Nations, Albion. Just you wait. When Rome comes, you'll see. Ask him if he loves you, since you're supposed to be his son. Do it! Tell me what happens."
Then he grins and tosses his hair, before heading back to his own lands. The lands that used to belong to his mother. The mother he killed.
Albion knows now, that he also killed his mother. But it's not like Gallia at all. Gallia has his own name- doesn't he? Gallia, not Gaul. He and his mother could have existed together, probably. Probably. Gallia killed her on purpose even though he didn't have to. Albion didn't mean to kill his mother. He didn't mean to. It just happened. He killed her by being born.
There is only one Fair Folk he is afraid of, and that is the unicorn that belongs to Caledonii. It's in that creature's eyes that Albion can understand a measure of the hate his brothers have for him. How much they loathe him for killing their mother. For taking her name.
So, in the end, it doesn't really matter whether he meant to do it or not.
/
The Fair Folk desert him, when his father arrives.
Perhaps desertion is too harsh a word. Too judgmental. But they do leave his side, fleeing to the pockets of magic that they call home. The Nation, the Empire terrifies them in ways they can't articulate in human language. And so, when he arrives, they leave.
Albion is not sure what he expected his father to look like, to be like. He is certainly tall, and muscular, and tall. And he looks nothing like Albion, just like his mother promised. He has dark hair and bronze skin and smiles all the time. He smiles but he doesn't smile like Gallia does, and he certainly doesn't smile like a human. His smile is not cruel, but it is not kind. There is no mercy in it. His eyes are mirthful, but not daft or silly. The light in his eyes, Albion learns, is a light that comes from constant victories on the battlefield. Constant wars won and a territory that seems without boundary. Of bloodshed and wealth and an impression of invincibility. The light of Empire.
Albion does not meet his eyes often. He is afraid to.
He spends a long time with Rome, and he learns many things. He learns how to wield a sword and shield, and how to squire a mounted warrior. He learns how to make war, and how to fight so that it is not man against man, but army against army.
He learns how to grow.
He learns how to make roads to connect his people. He learns how to make towns bigger and stronger and to make defenses that last. During the time he spends with Rome, he grows from a child into…a slightly larger child. Large enough that he doesn't think Caledonii would have an easy time of drowning him in a sack. Probably.
And in addition to the war, and the building, and the marching, when he's with Rome, Albion lives among humans. He does not know how it is with his brothers, or with Gallia, or how it was with his mother, but Albion has spent all his time in the forest, away from the villages and towns, away from his people. He was content to leave it as so. They were a part of him, but that just made them feel even more distant, more alienated. He'd grown used to keeping them at a distance.
Rome is not like that.
Rome loves his humans.
And it is love, Albion thinks, watching the Empire laugh and smile and dance and drink. It is sometimes gay and light, like skimming stones on the surface of a pond. Rome eating with them and drinking with them and lying with them. And it is sometimes deep and heavy, like a body sinking down into the depths of a bottomless lake. Rome adjusting their armour and sparring with them and kissing his commanders on the forehead and cheeks before they march to a battle. His eyes are always burning, then.
His eyes don't burn as he looks at Albion, however. They are mirthful, usually. A little fond, a little bemused. Occasionally proud, when Albion's managed to keep his stance proper and his hold tight during a round of sparring. But whatever Rome feels for him is too light to be love, Albion thinks. It is fondness, nothing more.
Sometimes the Roman soldiers feel like bugs on Albion's skin, irritating and prickling and sometimes painful. Other times, they feel like they belong. Like they're his as much as they are Rome's. And on those days, it hurts a little, that he once again has taken on the people of a parent, and received no affection for his efforts. Gallia's sneer always burns in his memory, on those days.
Sometimes, Albion feels as if he has very little for himself. He has his mother's things and people and he has his father's things and people and his mother's name and a new name given by his father and nothing, he thinks, which he calls his own. His Fair Folk were never his, he understands now. Caledonii's unicorn belongs to him, but the unicorn that Albion used to ride on was very much its own creature. There is nothing that Albion owns, and it's beginning to burn. It's beginning to feel shameful, and hurtful.
Somedays, he doesn't know for which he yearns more; something to call his own, or someone to love him.
The time with Rome is long, in human terms. And it seems longer for the amount that Albion grows during it. But the empire leaves, sooner than Albion would have thought. He sails back over the water, back to Gallia perhaps, or back to his homelands. Albion doesn't know. Rome doesn't tell him.
He misses him. And he hates that he does. He misses Rome, even as within him his natures war. The people that hated the Romans, the people that welcomed the Romans, the people who tolerated them and nothing more. And the Romans who have stayed, who live here now, who are his. Rome has left Albion with contradictions and fault lines, and they ache, every day.
But he also leaves Albion with a foundation to build on, and a knowledge on how to be strong, on how to grow more. An understanding of the power that can be gained in this world. Of what can be attained if you reach out and take it. If you fight. If you push beyond your borders. Across the lands on the distant continent. Across the ocean. Rome, and Gallia, and all the other Nations that they know and war with.
Albion is still a little afraid of the ocean, of the drowning death it holds, but he starts to look towards it all the time. Because on the other side of it is…everything. Things to be afraid of. Things to anticipate. Things to strive for. Rome.
He braves his fear so that he can sit by the sea and watch. Watch for Rome to come back. Watch for familiar ships to cross the channel. Wait and wait for years and years and years until the scent of the sea on the breeze soaks into his clothes and hair and skin.
Born from water, and to the water you will return. It is in your blood.
Albion thinks about building his own boats. He thinks about sailing across his channel on his own, but the thought of running into Gallia in Gallia's own territory is repulsive enough to make him reconsider.
And so, he continues to wait.
Rome does not come back.
Sometimes boats of his people, of his soldiers come. Fewer and fewer as time passes. But Rome himself does not come back. He does not come back.
What had Gallia said? A silly little island full of pagans and rain. Nothing worthwhile. Nothing worth coming back for. Nothing worth wanting.
Nations only grow if they're wanted.
Sitting by the shore, digging his feet into the sand, Albion does not feel very wanted.
Walking through the forest, searching for his Fair Folk friends, he does not feel very wanted.
Sleeping close to or in towns, trying to be closer to the people that are finally starting to feel like his own, he feels…He feels better, but still…
Lying in a pile of hay, eyes closed and listening to the warm thread of conversation outside the barn, Albion feels…he feels like…
"Ah- hey! That's where I sleep!"
He opens his eyes.
/
Love, Albion discovers, is nothing like the echoes he's felt from his people, over the centuries.
Love is different, he discovers, then what he saw in Rome's eyes as he oversaw his troops. Because what he saw was not what Rome was feeling, and Love is only a feeling. It is not something that can be seen. Not in its truest form.
Love, Albion discovers, is less of the feelings of affection and warmth and kindness he sought out and picked up on, and more like a red hot iron through his chest. It burns and it chokes him. It makes him cry when he's not expecting to. It overwhelms him and closes over his head, like a wave.
Love feels like a punch some days, and a gentle touch others. It's a kiss on the cheek, and a chaste kiss on the lips, and being more frightened than you've ever been before.
The feeling is so vivid, even when the memories aren't. And centuries later, more than a thousand years later, it will be the feeling that he holds onto. That feeling of loving and being loved, for the first time. He'll cling to them, when his memories betray him.
Because there was a boy, once, with hair the colour of straw, and eyes a colour like water and storm. Perhaps gray, perhaps blue, perhaps something darker, more akin to black.
But his memories fail him, as always. They may very well have been brown.
This boy would have been gangly, bruised and scratched, left to his own devices. Unacknowledged by a distant father and ignored by an uncle. This boy would have lived among the forest, seeking education among the leaves and between the roots. Walking with hay in his hair and dust on his feet. The shimmer in the air by his ears and shoulders reminiscent of the Fair Folk, enchanted by his presence, persuaded to give him their blessing.
Or, perhaps, he was blessed by a kindly wizard. Or, perhaps, he was not blessed at all.
His memory always fails him here, as well. Time is cruel, even to Nations.
But there was a boy once, and before he became a man, and a king, and a legend, he shared a bed of straw with a green-eyed child who felt fragmented and disjointed and displaced by the world around him. A child torn by war and invasion who, at the end of the day, just wanted a place to rest.
There was a boy, once, and before anyone knew who his parents were, he met his Nation, who was small, and scared, and alone, and glad for a friend who at least appeared to be his age.
Or, perhaps, everyone knew who his father was, and they met within a war, within a battle, without any hope of rest.
He doesn't know. His memory is fallible, and full of deceit and pain.
Perhaps, perhaps, the boys walked together, and play fought together, and conversed while the men around made talk of war. Both were children in their own ways, both naïve in their own ways. Perhaps they learned together, and grew together, as the world around shifted and took shape, the rumbles of battle and the shifting borders of nations and Nations fighting for their right to take up space, to exist.
Perhaps the boy became a man, and the Nation, still a child, felt for the first time what it was to be immortal, ageless, frozen while everyone around him moved and grew.
Perhaps the boy drew a sword and became a king, went to war and made the Nation understand, for the first time, the ghastly strokes of mortality, the fear of death, true death, the final death, and the weight of being an eternal witness to events you cannot directly change.
Perhaps the boy married, and the Nation felt the hot blade of jealousy, spite, irrational anger. Possessiveness. Sorrow. Pettiness.
Perhaps the boy taught the Nation what love is, better than his mother, or father, or brothers, ever could. Perhaps, in the quiet stillness of a darkened barn, in a pile of hay, with the lumbouring breaths of horses in the background, this boy gave this Nation his very first kiss, reeking of a truly human kind of innocence.
Perhaps, perhaps.
Perhaps this boy became a legend.
He does not know. Memory is a terrible, burdensome thing. And history seems determined to prove his memories, and the feelings attached to them, to be a fabrication.
But even so, there are things that he does know.
There is one name that he has always felt to be his own. Not Albion, which is his mother's name. Not Britannia, which is the name forced upon him by his father. Not even England, which is the name given to him after the Anglo-Saxons came, and everything within him changed for good.
There is one name that is his. The name that was given to him, that he took willingly, that he is holding onto and keeping safe for as long as he is permitted to have it. It is Arthur, and so it will be, until the name's original owner returns.
/
After the Anglo-Saxons come, and after the Vikings raid, and after he is united into something almost resembling a proper kingdom by the King in Wessex, Arthur begins to treat more with Gallia.
He is not afraid of the ocean anymore. He is not afraid of water at all. Drowning is not so scary, now that he knows the worse deaths available. Drowning is peaceful, in comparison. And water is too important to him. The rivers carry trade, the ocean carries in enemies and goods alike, the waters of a shimmering lake carried his king away from him, and one day, will carry him back.
So the channel of water between him and Gallia is neither intimidating nor troublesome. Arthur can swim it well enough now, though sometimes Gallia is feeling amiable enough to simply let him step into his land. Arthur does the same usually, allows Gallia to simply step through their borders. Making him swim the channel is never as satisfying as he'd like it to be. Arthur looks like a drowned rat when he's wet. Gallia, obnoxiously, still looks handsome with water dripping from his hair and body.
They have both grown considerably since the time of their first meeting, though Gallia is still infuriatingly taller. And still infuriatingly pretty. And still infuriating. But Gallia, or Francia as he goes by more often now, does seem like he's trying to be less cruel. Now that Rome is well and truly gone. Now that Germania is all but gone as well. Now that there is nothing left of either of them but the dozens of Nation-children they both left behind.
And Arthur has been alone for a long time. His brothers leave him be, now. For the most part. Sometimes they fight, but it's proper fighting. No more tying him up in sacks. They fight with men now, with armies. Rome is gone, his mother is gone, Germania is gone, and, for now, the previous owner of his human name is gone. The Fair Folk are his friends, but he is more aware of their cruelty now, of the distance between them and humanity, and he does not spend the time that he used to in their company.
Arthur would not admit to being lonesome, not to anyone, but he meets Francia on his shoreline, and on occasion, crosses the channel to meet Francia on his. And they talk.
The conversation is usually civil, though it can become scathing in the blink of an eye. Francia is haughty, and his mean streak runs deep, and Arthur is defensive when he is not abrasive. Arthur is fairly certain he hates Francia, and that Francia hates him back, but the feeling is so fervent and vibrant that neither of them can shy away from it. In the absence of love, in the absence of anything but each other and the invading nations that wish to tear them apart, hate is a good thing to fall back on.
There is a time, however, when Francia pushes him just a bit too far. It is a meeting that starts off well. Sitting by a river with relative civility, with little hair pulling and name calling. Arthur is feeling melancholic, lamenting the vestiges of Viking brutality still scattered about his land, and missing his favourite king. He makes the mistake of explaining this to Francia, who promptly bursts into laughter.
"Albion, you are joking, surely?" he asks, innocent face alight with a malicious delight. "Kings and rulers…for all their wealth and prestige, they are merely mortal. Humans come and go. Birthing and dying in the space it takes for us to blink. You must know that you're not to think too much of them. That you're to let them pass, and not get attached?"
"Rome didn't teach you that," Arthur says, teeth grit and eyes dewy, "Rome loved his humans."
Francia laughs again, a high-pitched, grating sound. For all he claims to be on the cusp of becoming a man, his voice is still as high as a child's.
"Rome loved all humans, and he wanted them all to love him," he sneers, angelic face made brutish by the pitiless expression, "Maman thought he was a fool. We are not meant to be loved, not in that sense. We are Gods, nothing less, and each prince and lord we have serves us, tries to make us stronger, make us great. And when they die it is the task of the next ruler to do the same."
He grins, his blue eyes fever bright, bare feet speckled with mud from the riverbank.
"Think of them as tools," he says, brushing fair hair away from his face, "A new one whenever the old one wears out. Don't get attached."
"He's not gone for good," Arthur says, hands clenched into fists at his side, "He promised he'd be back. And he's not- I don't understand- you can feel them, the people. The humans. How can you call them tools, and nothing else?"
"Yes," Francia agrees, and it sounds like hissing, his teeth clacking together, "And I can feel them die too. Each and every one. Like warts, popping on my skin. Dying and dying again and again." His face is ugly, for just a moment, his expression contorted into disgust, and Arthur turns away, eyes burning.
"If you had had someone like him," he says, his voice raspy, cracking, "If you had had someone to you like he was to me, you would understand."
"Understand what?" snorts Francia, "What love is? Now you begin to sound like Rome. Will you die like him too? Torn apart and spread to thin? Or will you drive yourself mad, holding on to those mortal lives, and crying when they slip through your fingers?"
He scoops some water out of the river, letting the liquid cup in his palms, and watching as it spills out over the sides and trickles through the cracks between his fingers.
"Just like this," says Francia smugly, "Albion, you really are a child, aren't you?"
Arthur goes home after that. Francia follows, mocking him the whole way. That old cruelty rearing its head shamelessly. Years later, tempered by time and age, Arthur will muse that Francia was probably just bored, and lonely, and desperate for attention. That he was willing to make Arthur despise him, if it only meant Arthur would keep him in his gaze.
But his Once and Future King was the wrong thing to mock.
Arthur has only killed humans, thus far. In battle. His own immortality giving him an advantage, despite his small size. He has never killed a Nation before.
Centuries and centuries later, he'll never know for certain whether or not Francis was his first. If, when Arthur had tired of his high, grating laughter and pushed him over the edge of the Dover cliffs, he'd been killed by the fall.
He hopes so.
He genuinely hopes so.
He doesn't see Francia again for over a century, after that.
And when he does see him again, it's at the head of a huge Norman force, trampling through Arthur's country with unrepentant glee.
"See yourself as him, do you?" Arthur snarls, blood in his hair and his eyes and everywhere he can think of. "As both of them. I suppose if no one knows which one fathered you, it just makes you a bastard twiceover, doesn't it?"
"You don't know how much I hate having to listen to you gargle at me in those barbaric heathen tongues," Francia sneers, swordpoint still at Arthur's throat, "I'm going to cut, and choke, and strangle all of those words out of you. You've always had the potential to be beautiful, barbaric brows nonwithstanding, and now I'm going to help you realize that potential. Aren't I being kind, Albion? Isn't that kind of me, England? We'll be together now. We'll have the same culture, and the same language, and neither of us will be alone. Aren't you happy? Aren't you pleased?"
Arthur is out of breath. The armour he's wearing is heavy, and too big for him and he is hot and aching and tired. It feels like something is being carved out of his chest and carved into his skin. Rome didn't feel like this. Germania felt a little like this, but not really, because his people came so slowly, so staggered, not as a singular invading force. Arthur has never felt this utterly broken, beaten down, and conquered.
"No," Arthur hisses, air rattling in his chest, "Because this isn't you."
Francia's smug, self-assured expression flickers.
"It is your men, and some of your people," Arthur continues, bloody smirk curling upwards, "But it is not you. It is not Francia conquering England. Or Gallia conquering Albion. It is some of your men taking power here. But it is not you conquering me. You will never conquer me, Gallia. I will never be yours."
Francia's expression is livid, the glow of victory fading to the ugliness of war. The sweat on his brow. The blood smeared across his cheek and chest. The steaming armour. The dirty point of the sword still at Arthur's throat.
"Maybe so," he spits, as furious as a raging cat, "But you'll have something of mine anyways. You will never be rid of me, I'll make sure of it."
When the blade cuts into Arthur's throat, it sings with a thousand French words, words that reverberate into his blood and his bones and all the places he can't reach to claw them out. He tries to scream, but the gash is too deep, nearly severing his head from his body.
So they're one to two, at this point. Arthur pushed Francia off a cliff, and Francia slit his throat and had his men take over Arthur's kingdom.
So England will have to invade Francia eventually, just to make it even.
It's taken centuries, but England finally understands the game Gallia's been playing since they first met. And he's ready to play it himself. And win.
/
He's patient about it.
If he can find anything decent about that bloody Norman conquest, it's that it finally teaches him how to be a proper Nation, at long last. He'd been a child for far, far too long, and it's that group of entitled, high-brow men who push him into an age old enough for his voice to drop.
He gains an appreciation, as well, for the games Nations play. Courts and kings, dynasties and honour. Territory lost and gained and wars for wars' sake. Sometimes it's for growth, sometimes it's for pride, sometimes it's for fun.
They're allowed to have fun with it; Nations. They're not human, so they won't die from petty border squabbles or the toppling of minor little kingdoms here and there. War is allowed to be fun. It's how they grow, it's how they clash, it's what they are.
He understands a little, now, why Francia was so contemptuous of him when they were children. Growing up on the continent, he was born and fostered in the care of constant war. He was surrounded by Nations on all sides. Full grown Nations. Ones who knew who they were and what they were for.
Albion really was a child, back then. Sheltered by the Fair Folk, secluded from the world. His brothers only hurt him or ignored him, and Rome taught him more about humans than he did their own kind; what had Albion known of how Nations lived? What had he known about anything?
He knows now.
He knows now, and Rome may be gone but his brothers- his brothers are still here. They still think they're better than him. They still hate him for killing their mother and taking her place. They still look down on him.
Rome never quite managed to get Eire. Too wily and wild as he is. Running around naked, battling barefoot, never having a proper kingship- when his King gets Papal permission to bludgeon Ireland into submission, England hops onto the first boat.
Eire is still taller than him, still older, with a beard and hairy chest and all. But it doesn't matter in the end. England may be a head and a half shorter, may still be on the younger end of adolescence, but King Henry's army is strong, and King Henry's Kingdom is strong, and they have the church on their side. Which, England has come to understand, is a useful thing to have.
He takes Cymry as well. Slowly and leniently at first, but then with a vicious efficiency, his Norman lords leaving castles and fortresses with each step to keep the wild Welsh from reclaiming their land. And when the last Prince of Wales falls, when England's King Edward stakes his claim for good, Cymry stares at him, sullen, and spits out a single curse in the language they used to share. England delights in responding in Latin and his Anglicized French and his appropriated Saxon. He'd never admit it, but he loves how much more refined than his brothers he sounds. He's the one who is better then them, now. And there's nothing they can do about it. He's too strong.
Caledonii is…he is still a dangerous, oppressive presence looming over England's north. Even Rome- or, at least, Rome's people, were scared of Caledonii's people. They made the conscious decision to not continue exploring and expanding upwards into that territory, instead building a huge wall across England's mass, from sea to sea, to keep Caledonii out. But England is not so scared of Caledonii as he once was. He has beaten his other brothers, and so too will he beat the last.
Scotland remains stubbornly resilient, stubbornly resistant to outright invasion and attack. But England's learning how to be patient. Learning how to…squeeze. Just tight enough for him to know who's in control here. Who it is that holds the name of their shared island. And he does it, he seizes Scotland, under his thumb and rule and name, for years, for decades, until the wretch wrests himself free again. It's enough to drive England mad. Being so close to having them all, to fulfilling his destiny as heir of the entire island. Albion proper once more. A united Britain, under one king, as it should be. A dream close enough to taste.
Something boils in his blood when France signs a treaty with Scotland. England is not certain if it is a good boiling or a bad boiling, annoyance or bloodthirsty anticipation. It strengthens Scotland against him, but at the same time, the thought of bringing the two of them to heel together makes his body shudder with glee. His very essence yearns to do battle.
There is a weariness that sets into humans, when a war drags on. When resources are depleted and land is destroyed and money runs out. Particularly when the money runs out. The deaths, the destruction of villages, the razing of land, all seems inconsequential to monarchs, until the money runs out. Then they share the weariness of the lay people, and the entire kingdom laments the consequences of war.
England feels their pain. He feels their suffering. He feels it pinging on his skin, like needlepricks. He feels it as he bathes, he feels it as he pisses, he feels it as he occasionally tumbles with some miller's daughter or some stablehand in the dusty dark.
And he ignores it.
The war with France, the one that will one day be known as the Hundred Years' War, is exhausting on his nation. He feels a constant ache in his bones and a headache that never abides. But he is having fun. He invades France again and again, and takes land and loses land and takes land again. Treaties are made and treaties are broken and every time, he and France can't stop grinning at each other when they meet on the battlefield. Or baring their teeth at each other. For Nations, it tends to be the same thing.
It feels even better, a singing in his blood that howls, echoing down to the tips of his fingers, when he is clearly, and undeniably winning. When France is falling to him, folding beneath him like paper crumpling as it is consumed by fire.
A dual monarchy. Two kingdoms under the English crown. Four, if you include backwards Ireland and scrappy, wild Wales. France, beholden to him. Grinning, petty Gallia, forced to pay fealty to him, to little Arthur. Always smaller than everyone else. Always weaker. Always being invaded, never doing the invading.
He and Gallia are the same height, now. They stand eye to eye, when they meet. When they cross blades. When they stand beside their lords and sneer at one another. They're both Nations, proper. And they're both fighting to make something lasting, something powerful and expansive. When they face one another, the shadow of Rome and Germania hangs over them both, like an executioner's axe.
Ah, but that is not entirely accurate, is it? France is beginning to look a little stooped, a little worn. His pretty face is thin, his blonde hair scraggly, more like straw then spun gold. His armour is hanging off him heavily, like his body is wasting, and his clothes no longer fit.
France's demeanor is not quite so smug as it once was. It's delightful to see. Certainly, the back and forth of war is great fun, but England feels acutely that conquering France for good, once and for all, will bring a feeling of sheer joy and delight, the likes of which he has never before experienced. Better than taking Eire and Cymry. Comparable only, perhaps, to how it will feel when he has Caledonii for good.
It's irritating then, when that girl springs up.
When that girl stirs the defeated, sullen France into a religious fervor. When that girl pulls victories out of her pointed, wench ass. A banner-wielding maiden, in arms and leathers, riding in battle, and leaving a slew of French victories in her wake.
England is willing to ignore it, for awhile. Until she gets a French king coroneted. Until she gets a crown on Charles's head, and stabilizes what had previously been a deliciously unstable French state, ripe for the firm molding hand of an English king.
England makes it a special priority then, to see her captured, and killed, as theatrically as possible, just to get the point across.
Jeanne, the wench from Bar. She is a slight girl, though her eyes are startlingly piercing. She is unafraid of what is before her; that much is obvious. England doesn't like the look in her eyes. It reminds him of someone.
England sits at the back, during her trial. Approves of the double-edged, impossible questions she's asked. Is both irritated and grudgingly impressed when she escapes the more slippery word traps. He can afford her that begrudging regard since she'll die regardless- it is, after all, a fixed trial.
It is a fixed trial, the conclusion foregone, and so she's sentenced to death. A public burning, where all can see her punished for her crime. Officially, the crime of heresy. Truthfully, the crime of bringing hope to France.
They burn her at the stake, as is the custom for heresy, and England wonders if he feels it. The look in her eyes- it was familiar. The look of…importance. Of someone, of a human, with weight to them. King Alfred, the king in Wessex, had it. England's- the original owner of his name, had it. And when they had left him, he'd felt it, and it had hurt.
Burning this girl, quite possibly, is the most painful thing England has done to France over the course of this war.
France no longer grins at him over tables. France no longer looks at England with anything less than sheer, burning hatred. As bright as the fire that ate up his little maid-general until she was nothing but ash.
The most poignant point of it all, perhaps, is that England feels not a shred of regret for the actions he's taken. Neither remorse, nor guilt. He does not miss the shared bloodlust between him and France. He does not regret that they are no longer fighting for fun, against a backdrop of human death. He does not regret that they are now fighting for real, for themselves, their kingdoms and nations.
If he were human, England imagines he would miss France, and what they used to share, and regret their falling out. But he's not, and he doesn't.
And besides, France is being awfully hypocritical, isn't he? After all, wasn't he the one that said human lives were tools, warts, muddy river water? It'd be just like him to forget something he only said a few centuries ago, and get all bent out of shape because England had one little girl burnt alive. But well, it's likely France can't help it. He is French, after all, and there is none quite so duplicitous as they.
At the end of it all, a hundred and some bloody years, England no longer has the petty holdings on the continent he once had. But it may be for the better, he reasons. Those holdings, in French territory, were the reasons France looked down on him so much. That part of England's territory was territory that he was holding for France. That it was territory he had lordship over, under the overlordship of the French King. And to have that condescension cast off for good, England thinks, is worth the lost territory. Is worth being cut off from the continent entirely, existing as nothing but an island nation once more.
But, as so often occurs, what he feels as himself is not always how his people feel. Especially the rich people, who have lost money in the war and lost their means to earn back the money through the lost land. The war with France is over but there is still an agitation set deep under England's skin.
Civil War is very different when it's not a mess of quarreling factions, fighting over land an honour and sheep and cows. Civil War is very different when it's fought between lords and nobles. When it's fought over kingship.
He's had a few squabbles, insurrections, along similar lines. When a heir died aboard a vessel and succession was thrown into question, or when some Barons got uppity and decided to grab swords to let everyone know it. But it's been centuries since them, and even so, they pale in comparison to the War of the Roses.
In a Civil War, England's predilection is always to support the monarch. Monarchs are what make him strong and make him grow, after all. The common people may be a truer representation of himself, but when they rise up it weakens the state, the power of his king, and the king's ability to expand and make war on France and Scotland. And so even when his bones ache and his skin is dotted with bleeding red welts from a thousand injustices and breaches of liberty by the king, England stands by his monarch.
The War of the Roses, however, is such a genuine clusterfuck of dynastic succession and bloodlines that England can't be bothered with either the Lancastrians, or the Yorks. He has a headache, constantly, all of his favourite places to go riding smell like death, moreso than usual, and whoever wins each new round of the war is insufferable to be around for as long as it takes their opponent to depose them again.
By the time the last of the Lancastrian direct heirs are killed, and Edward IV looks like he's well and truly won the English crown for good, England has ultimately decided he's earned a nice, well-deserved break from court. And humanity.
Involved in his people as he's become, in their kings and courts and wars, it is has been a long time since England has visited the Fair Folk. They still live in his land, in the forest and deep in the hills. Though many of them have chosen to leave him and dwell beyond the Pale, amongst the rolling wild of Eire's territory. Perhaps the bitterest of the many, many betrayals he's lived through.
But the ones who remain in England have not forgotten him. They greet him by name, Albion, which sends a pleased shiver up his spine. Other greet him by what his kings would have him be, Britain, overlord, king, of the entire island. That name gives him mixed feelings. It is a name his kings wish him to have, to legitimize their takeover of Scotland and Wales. It is a name that means unity, supremacy, the English having control over everything, at last. It is also a name that belonged to Cymry's people first. A name that still, in their eyes, belongs to them. Before the Welsh were the Welsh they were called the Britons, the last of that people that survived the Romans and the Anglo-Saxons and the Vikings. And many of them hold to that ancient name still. It is not that England takes issue with taking things from Wales and making them his own, but if he starts calling his kingdom the British kingdom, and his throne the British throne, it just invites Wales to come in and start making snide comments about taking the island back from England and revoking his right to the name of Albion and blah blah blah everything he always goes on about whenever they cross paths or blades.
He complains about as much to the Fairies, as he sheds all his overcoats, his courtly attire, his iron weapons and armour, the glitterings and trappings of his alleged station in court, at the edge of the clearing. He sits down among them in his barest breeches, with his undershirt unlaced and loose, his hair already a mess of twigs and leaves. They welcome him, as usual.
It had been a fear of his, in his youth, that growing closer to his humans, his Kings, his purpose as a Nation, would mean distancing himself from his fairies, from the Fair Folk that raised him. But it hasn't been so. As he himself has become more comfortable with his role as a Nation, so too has he become less disconcerted with the Fae's childish, unthinking cruelty. Of the callous way they speak of mortal lives, and of the cold, unbiased view their longevity and foresight gives them. And so, as they weave flowers into his hair, dance between his fingers and rest on his shoulders, he sits still as they whisper secrets into his ear, of past and future. They still whisper of his death, of the ocean rising and reclaiming him. They whisper of his mother, of her power, and of her weakness. They whisper of Gallia, to whom he will be bound for an eternity. Whether enemies or allies, their fates will forever be intertwined. They laugh amongst themselves, of all the times little Albion will kill and be killed by little Gallia. And how many times little Gallia will kill and be killed in turn. They whisper, and laugh. They whisper of his brothers, how they will forever remain a bane, a scourge upon him. A trial that will never be overcome, and a sin that will never be forgiven. They laugh as they tell of his endless quest against his brothers, and how even when he wins, he will lose, because that is the nature of the conflict, and the foundation of the island which they all share. They laugh when he bristles a bit, because always, always, his brothers are a sore spot. But they bite his earlobes and bruise his cheeks with their pointed feet and continue to laugh. And he allows it, because that is simply how they are.
In time, the fairies flitter away, and England is treated to the company of the tamer sort of Fair Folk. He has not seen a unicorn in a long, long time, but the forest brownies, the nymphs and spirits, exist still. He allows himself to bask in the warmth of their company, free of the riddling prophecies of the fairies, free of the serpentry of the court. Free, if for only an instant, from the troubles of his nation.
It is easy to pass into the Fae's realm without meaning to, to lose oneself in the timelessness of it, and when England emerges, steels himself to deal with his court and king once more, it is to the news that King Edward IV is dead.
That news almost has England scurrying back to the fairies. He's only just been through a civil war, and now there'll be another, because Edward's sons are children, and no one can abide a child monarch, especially not when there are still Lancastrians with boiling blood hiding and biding their time.
Perhaps he has spent too long with his fairies. With other beings of immortal nature, with even less of a grasp of human morality than he himself has. Because when the late king's brother seizes power, when he confines his nephews, the rightful heirs, to the Tower, England cannot find it in himself to protest, to be ill at ease, to be as unsettled and outraged as his people seem to be. The young Prince Edward may be the rightful King, and his younger brother the rightful heir, but they are children, and England is too familiar with the troubles child monarchs bring. And Richard might be sly but he is battle-proven and a capable leader and tactician, above all else.
He never met Edward's children, having been vacationing away from the world of men as he was, but he knows them. Of course he does. He knows they are both fair headed, and intelligent, raised by the Queen's clever and canny family. He knows the younger is quiet, and the older is savvy and well aware of the likelihood of his own death at the hands of his uncle. That- he can feel that clearer than anything else. Prince Edward's torn feelings- between hope for rebellion and rescue, or less realistically, hope for mercy. And above all else, feelings of utter resignation.
England tries not to dwell on it, because if he dwells on it, he hears Edward tell stories of bravery and hope to his younger brother, to send him to sleep. He hears Edward pray to his Christian God for righteousness and justice to win. For his mother's family to stir and right what has been wronged. He hears him mourn their late father, and all that could have been had he lived.
England tries not to dwell on the princes in the Tower, because they are children, and incapable of properly serving him, their Nation, in his greater purpose. To grow, to make war and conquer. To expand and be dominate, in his land and on his island. And, one day, across the channel, where France continues to stew in his own contempt. Child-kings are no good at making war, except internal ones. Richard III may be untrusted, and regarded with suspicion, but he is a man, and he is battle tested, and England bends his knee to him when he is coroneted, and says nothing of his deposed nephews.
He feels it of course, when they 'disappear'.
He feels when they draw their last breaths, the oldest, then the youngest. He feels them pass, out of this world and out of his history, and he wakes, sits up, and flinches back.
The two princes are at the foot of his bed, staring.
"England," says the oldest boy, his face pale and lips blue, eyes sunken in death. "We were your princes, we were yours. Our father loved you. Did you not love us? Your word holds weight, you could have swayed the people in our favour. You could have rallied them. You could have saved us."
The younger boy is silent. He holds onto his brother's nightshirt and stares forward blankly. There is no breath left in him, and he doesn't make a sound when his eyes redden with unshed tears.
"You must have known," continues the older boy, "You must have felt them creeping up the stairs, you must have felt them come into our room. You know, you always know, but you say nothing. You say nothing at all." His shaking voice echoes around England's empty chamber. The air is cold. "England, did you hold no love for us at all? Your princes? Yours to serve, and be served by?"
His face is nearly featureless in death. He is a spirit, like so many others. A dead human, like so many others. A youth cut down in his prime, a monarch deposed by a rival, a boy who will never be king.
"Love?" England says, and he hates, hates, that his voice is hoarse, ragged, when it has no right to be. "Love? No, of course not."
He turns from them, the lost children, the Princes in the Tower.
"Princes come and go," he says shortly, voice clipped, "It's all the same to me."
For some reason he can't quite articulate, England can't be around King Richard III after that. The sight of the man turns his stomach. For some reason. The sour taste in his mouth worsens when civil war breaks out anyways, despite having an adult King on the throne. England is tempted to retreat back into his forests, but something in his gut tells him to stay. And so he does. In London. He does not step on to the battlefield, when Henry Tewdwr, a Lancastrian with Welsh roots and a tenuous claim to royal lineage, challenges King Richard for the throne.
England stays in London. He stays there, and is there when news arrives of Richard's death in battle.
And so begins the reign of the Tudors.