Francis was not his father. He had always wanted to be, as a child. Had thought that, if he was more like Henry, his father the King would love him the way he loved Bash.
It seemed, though, that with every step he took in that direction, Henry only seemed more indifferent to him.
Henry had told him, time and time again, had proved it in that awful "lesson" when he allowed Francis to send those troops for Mary, only to have them be slaughtered, that a King must not rule with their heart. That to do would only incite weakness.
And he had tried to follow that lesson, even though he knew his father was not the prime example for it, even in his adoration. Knew that Henry Valois allowed his heart, or perhaps more correctly, his lust, to influence almost every decision he made. Yet he was still a decent king, before the end, even if his carnal desires made life at French Court rather...chaotic. And Francis had no other examples to follow, after all.
And Francis had seen how this turned out, and promised himself that he would never become his father. That he would not rule with his heart, that he would rule with a sound mind and be a better king than his father could ever be.
And when Mary, his betrothed, arrived in the French Court, expecting so much from him, their alliance, a marriage, romance, he had panicked and spurned her attentions, thrown himself into bed with the nearest woman he could find so that he could forget her, because the moment he saw her again, he knew that his heart would always want her.
He was terrified that he would not be able to push those feelings aside, were they to actually marry.
He supposed, in retrospect, that running off after other women had not taught him the lesson he'd wanted, had not taught him not to think with his heart, but at the time, he had been very convinced that he was doing just that.
Because his heart could never belong to his Queen. And if he hadn't learned that from the Portuguese fiasco, he had learned it from the fiasco that was his parents' marriage. Henry had once thought with his heart, and, Francis was told, though he'd never seen it, that he had once loved his mother.
And while he lived, every decision Henry made about Catherine was born of his anger toward her, his indifference. His heart. But his decisions towards his country had not been influenced by his heart. Influenced by his anger, yes, and, later, by his madness, but never by his heart.
And Francis wanted only to follow in that example, if nothing else.
But then Mary had crept past the hastily erected defenses he had placed over that heart, slowly but surely. He knew, when he kissed her for the first time, that, should they marry, he would never be able to not love her.
But then she chose his half-brother over him, stole his inheritance and nearly had his mother executed.
He knew that she thought she was doing it for him, that somehow, stealing everything he'd ever known, his birthright, the one thing that had made him like his father, would save him from a young death, simply because Nostradamus believed it to be so.
But that was when the lesson truly sank in. She had done all this for him, changed the fates of nations for him, because she wanted to save him.
She had acted as a woman ruled by her heart, by her love for Francis. Not as a Queen.
It scared him, that they had fallen so in love with each other and become so oblivious to their own countries' needs that it had come to that. That he could not even blame her, beyond angry disbelief that she believed a prophecy from a seer, for what she had done.
Sleeping with Lola after leaving Court and his new position as a King's bastard, had been done out of his own self-pity more than anything. He hadn't thought of the consequences, hadn't thought of anything but his own predicament, and yes, his anger.
She had called him passionate, when they were done.
He was rather certain that she would have rather said angry, for though he had not been violent in his anger, it was clearly visible in their lovemaking.
Mary sent out the messengers. The messengers with the news that the King was mad, to get what she wanted from Catherine de Medici. He had thought it was a bluff, had thought it a very clever one, and wondered how she could keep such a straight face and lie so well to his mother, of all people.
She had not been lying. Because, though she did not give a damn about France when it came to protecting Francis' life, she gave a damn about Scotland. She told him this, though not so crassly; that she would always choose her country first.
It was a shock, at first. He could hardly reconcile the beautiful woman he had married with this woman of stone, willing to throw France into a civil war for her own purposes. For Scotland.
And Francis had vowed to himself that, even if he loved Mary until his dying breath, he would always put his country first. And she understood that, and all was well.
When he made the fateful decision to kill his father, he was not sure, in the heat of the moment, whether he was thinking with his heart or thinking of the good of France. he was too terrified of being found out, of actually lifting the lance against his own father, of using enough force that he knew it would kill him, to think about that.
But if it was the latter, Francis knew it was the first decision he had made entirely without his heart, the first decision he made entirely for the good of France. For some time, he stood in that tent after doing so, wondering how his heart could have blackened so completely that he was willing to kill his own father, his own blood.
Was this what it meant to be a king who ruled without a heart?
He didn't know.
When his father called to him, spoke his last words over his son and told him of his uncle, Francis, the boy who should have been king, who had died at Henry's own hand, Francis had finally felt the tears welling up at what he himself had done.
He had spent a lifetime trying to be his father, and yet, when he finally followed in the older man's footsteps, it was to do the one thing that King Henry regretted doing most of all.
It had terrified him into not doing so again for some time.
Choosing to keep his son, his bastard child, as Henry had done with Bash, to raise him at Court and to love him as his own, was not a decision Francis made lightly, as he was sure his father had done.
Indeed, he had gone out to find Lola and...his son, only with the intention of bringing them to safety, where they might die of the plague otherwise. He had resolved not to look at it anymore than he had to, especially after learning that it was a boy, a boy, if only it had been Mary's child.
But no. It was a bastard, and nothing more. He could not think of it as anything more, lest he risk losing his heart to the wrinkled little babe in Lola's arms.
He had known the moment he held the child in his own arms that he was a damned man. That he could never just give him up, like a sack of grain to be rid of when it is spoiled.
This was his son.
And he thought only with his heart as he brought his child back to the castle in his arms. And he knew that Mary, who could have chosen to resent the child as Catherine had Bash in his younger years, before she had a child of her own, only chose to embrace him as Francis' child because she loved him so much. Because she knew that he had chosen to keep his son not because he wished to hurt her, but because this was his child. His firstborn.
He didn't think his own father had ever imparted such knowledge to his mother.
It was just another reason why Francis loved Mary. Why he would never be able to stop loving her. Let the heavens fall.
His mother had advised, when Mary first began sleeping with Conde, that he find a woman, a mistress, to please him, as Conde so pleased Mary. He was pretty sure she was suggesting Lola, if not some highborn mistress sent to Court for that very purpose.
She could never understand how the words had so rankled Francis. That he couldn't bear the thought of taking another woman into his arms, that it would never be able to distract him from imagining Mary in Conde's arms. That having two women rule his heart, if indeed, he could ever find another woman like Mary, would kill him just as surely as Conde's coup might.
That he was not his father.
His advisors suggested something else, when the idea of a mistress did not sit well with Francis. Though Mary was doing reasonably well in hiding her affair with the Bourbon, his advisors had been chosen because they were shrewd, discrete men themselves, and if they'd had any true scrap of evidence of Mary's infidelity, he would not have been able to refuse them. They would never betray the confidences of their King, they said, but they counseled that he act before the situation grew out of hand.
Before he was made the laughingstock of Europe when the truth was outed, as it would most surely be, eventually. They did not say those words, but he heard them nonetheless.
Their counsel was brief, and he dismissed their words easily. Mary was faithful only to him. They no longer shared a bedchamber because the thought of never having a child disillusioned them, but she was not committing adultery with the Prince of Conde. The Prince of Conde was a loyal friend to the Crown.
Oh, how those words burned on his tongue. How he had hated saying them.
But his advisors did not cease in their counsel that day, nor any day since. And what they suggested he do, to assert himself as a proud Catholic King once more...
The very thought of it made him pale with dread, for the days of their reaching an annulment were long past. Too much had happened.
His father would have done it in a heartbeat. Had almost done so with his mother, and had only stopped because it suited him to do so with the threat of Elizabeth's reign looming.
He was not his father.
Francis wanted to be sick every time he saw Mary and Conde together. It was often a concentrated effort to sit on his throne and watch as Mary stood and rushed to Conde's side in front of the entire court, and not to stand as well, and reach for his sword. Or a crossbow. Or a guard, to throw Conde in the dungeons and have him tortured.
But he did not. He justified it, at first, with the thought that Mary had been through something horrible, and that she needed her space and was no longer the Mary he knew. That, even if he believed that Conde was manipulating her in her time of vulnerability, she wanted this. She wanted Conde, and not him. Their marriage was as his father and mother's had been: in name only.
And Henry had gotten on as a King just fine without a wife. Even if he'd had every other woman in France.
So it didn't matter to Francis what she did in her spare time, shouldn't matter. Even if some small part of him insisted that it did.
And he realized then, as he walked out into the gardens to think, to find some way of protecting Mary from his advisors' suspicions, as he went to the rose garden that had once been his and Mary's favorite place, and saw her lying in the grass with Conde, that he could never do it. He knew that he could never kill Mary for her adultery, even if the worst happened and she became pregnant with his cousin's child. Even if there was irrevocable evidence that she had committed her treason against him, for the whole world to see.
That he still loved her, despite everything, and that, even if that love killed him, he would die loving her. He would do anything to make sure that she didn't, though. That she lived, even if it meant protecting a man he would much rather stab in the heart and watch bleed out triumphantly.
His father had done that, to his mother's one-time lover, Francis heard, while he was gone from Court. The man who had sired Clarissa, the castle ghost.
He was not his father.
When he finally awoke from his illness, Francis was embarrassed to find that he had fainted upon hearing that Mary was betraying him, running off to Scotland. He had sent troops to help her people, even if he wanted nothing more than to keep them back.
Because while he was ill, he had realized one thing, and it was not what he told Mary.
His love for her had always been his weakness. Would always be his weakness.
Yet he could not find fault within himself for doing so, even after hearing that she would have left him in shambles to go back to Scotland with her lover.
Tonight, he watched as Mary fled to Conde in the night, even after he had told her that any protection he thought he could offer her would be of no use, that her life was more assuredly forfeit than his own. That Conde would not be able to save her from Elizabeth's wrath, for all knew how Elizabeth wanted Mary dead.
She went anyway, in the dead of night when she thought no one would see, when she thought Francis wouldn't see, after placating him with pretty words about what their future might have held, once.
He had almost been convinced.
And as she rode, he finally understood what it had taken him most of his life to learn.
Finally understood why King Henry had killed his brother, had, even in his madness, recognized the need to push Francis and Bash apart. Finally understood why Henry had not bothered to make an effort with his Medici bride.
Finally understood how he himself had been able to kill his own father, to blacken his heart so fully without losing the ability to use it.
Francis was only awake now, sitting on the windowsill in his chambers and watching Mary below, because this could very well be his last night on earth, and if he could not spend it with the woman he loved, then he was damn well going to spend it with a bottle of wine. Heaven knew his mother was currently busy with her newest bedmate, and Bash would need the sleep for the fight tomorrow, if he had a hope of surviving.
Mary's horse was stopped by Conde's men, but Francis knew that she, at least, was in no danger in that instant. Not from Conde.
And he knew that he had been a fool for far too long into his reign for it to be salvaged now. That he had begun his reign thinking with his heart, thinking of his child and his wife and his guilt, and that foolish practice would damn them all now.
He was not his father.
But he was, in the end, his son.