Please forgive the oddity that is this fic. I'm still recovering from having four of my wisdom teeth removed, and laden with medicine at two-thirty in the morning, I'm not exactly very thoughtful.
I've found two translations for the title, both thunder rolls around the throne of kings and around the throne the thunder rolls. title from Sir Thomas Wyatt's "Innocentia Veritas Viat Fides Circumdederunt me inimici mei".
Habsburg fic.
Circa Regna Tonat
There was a crown dipped in gold that rested upon his head, its weight a familiar burden, its presence an imposing symbol. Far more than the sceptre in his hand it was what brought the tumultuous others under his reign, and it was what gave him the illusion of power, held so firmly in white-gloved hands—so firmly that when the control loosened, when the thunder of war rang in the sky, it took with it the glove, staining pale slender hands with the crimson splatters of God and glory and power.
Would be it that he were still a child, still a naïve thing under the protection of Switzerland, before the blind desire for estate drove him to become what he was now—a child, a man, and before anything else, a symbol. Perhaps, were he still a child, he would look upon what he was now with disbelief, this pretty thing trained and ready to pursue whatever was deemed necessary to keep hold of ambition's rewards, brought from the shadows and into the light by the grace of the fallen and the blood at his feet.
There was no such child standing there that day, though—only Austria.
So he stood silent and firm when Spain slipped the ring onto his finger (gold, gold like the crown, gold like the sceptre), little more than the stern expression of childhood lost on his face as they stood at the base of their new kingdom, their new throne, their hands clasped tentatively as they faced down the storm in front of them, kings of their new world, ready to lead it forward.
And all around them the thunder rolled, and rolled, and rolled.