Choice and Ceremony

by Trialia

Leila has never expected to be valued; she has never had the freedom to make her own choices. That doesn't mean she cannot think her own thoughts. (For Yuletide 2014)

Title: Choice and Ceremony

Author: Trialia

Fandom: Maleficent (2014)

Rating: Teen

Word Count: 1091

Genre(s): Gen/Character Study/Family/Drama/Angst

Character(s): Leila, mention of Aurora, Henry & Stefan

Beta(s): Elanya, with title and summary assistance from MadameHardy.

Warning(s): Canonical (minor) character death, period-typical sexism, chronic illness, mental instability

Notes: Written for billtheradish as a full-length Yuletide Madness 2014 treat.

Summary: Leila has never expected to be valued; she has never had the freedom to make her own choices. That doesn't mean she cannot think her own thoughts.

-[]-[]-

I've always known my marriage would be arranged by my father. As a royal princess and an only daughter, almost all my truly important choices have been taken away from me, right from my earliest childhood. I might outwardly accept it, and act as polite and demure as is expected of someone in my position, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. Nor do I have to believe that the choices made for me by the men in my life are the right ones, every time or any time. So many of them haven't been.

I am a princess. That doesn't seem to mean very much until someone offends my father by approaching me without consulting him first. I'm still treated like an object, a political pawn who cannot marry for love like the peasants do. I never thought I'd envy the peasantry, in all my life. I only know they marry for love because my childhood nanny told me so. No tutors, not for me. My brother, who died at fourteen, had tutors aplenty, on all subjects and sports, but I, I am merely a possession. Just a girl. No use to anyone beyond as a bargaining chip. It's a wonder I feel like a person at all. Of course, sometimes I do not.

I admit I do not care for my husband and his overweening self-confidence and ambition. I suppose I have no cause to like him; that was not in consideration when my old, dying father near-bartered me to him—as a reward, like an object, as so often seems to happen in my circle of acquaintance. We women are not at all valued beyond our needlework and childbearing, and even then, women of my rank are not expected to care for our own infants; they go to wet-nurses, nannies, and if girls, governesses and maids.

I have no close companions whom I trust, so cannot complain to anyone of my position. I know many people—people who do not understand how little freedom I am granted, and how little freedom I will ever be granted—would envy me. The filthiest, poorest whore in the kingdom has more freedom than I, in some ways.

I do so miss my daughter. Sweet Aurora was such a beautiful baby, and I'm sure she would have been a companion for her mother and the belle of every ball she attended, with the wishes for beauty and happiness granted her by the pixies. I always wanted a daughter of my own, a princess to raise with different ideas than the way I was raised myself, a little girl to whom I could give free rein within our apartments, to let her imagine all she liked, to play games of her own invention, to muddy her clothing without worry that she did not look regal enough for a princess at six years old. I know that sounds as though I would have lived the childhood I desired for myself through her, but I truly only wanted to make her happy.

I never truly had a chance to know her. I wish I could have done. She was taken from me long before she could even speak, six months old at her christening, and all the memories I have of her are of my agonising delivery, of holding my babe in my arms and feeling her swaddled warmth against my chest, and of her happy toothless smile and her beautiful blue eyes. My nanny tells me babies' eyes all start out blue, but I feel sure Aurora's will have stayed the colour of cornflowers, they were such a very deep shade. She was a beauty long before that fateful christening day. I no longer think of my child every day, but still, when I do, I wish her at my side.

I can never say a word of this to my husband. Once I tried, not long after he'd sent her away, but he got so furious so quickly that he threw a candlestick at the wall and almost set the sitting rooms aflame. He always seems too angry, on the rare occasions I see him, to truly discuss anything related to our daughter and that faery. Maleficent. I don't think I can ever forget that name.

I wish I could know what happened between them. I might be a sheltered child compared to most of my court, with minimal affection in my marriage to begin with and still less with the passing years, but even I know that such a depth of hatred could only be born from strong love turned sour.

And yet, perhaps I am better off in ignorance. I still wish, however, that she had chosen to take out her slighted frenzy upon my husband rather than my daughter. I had a hard delivery, so hard that I may never be capable of bearing again, and my husband has sent my only child away from me.

I may never see Aurora again. She will be fourteen years old this coming May, and I am thirty-four, becoming an old woman too quickly; every dreary winter I lie abed in my rooms for a time, fighting to breathe through the iron-clad weight on my chest and choking until my throat feels flayed inside. The physicians say that every year I am worn down a distance further, and although they will not voice it, I am certain that someday I shall lack the strength to endure another winter.

My husband hides himself away in his rooms, and the servants take him barrels of ale and food so that he may not surface for days. I rarely see him, and on the odd occasion that I do, I wonder at his sanity. More and more often, he speaks of nothing else than his enduring obsession. I know his chamberlain, who has been left to run the country, has had thoughts along such lines; I see it in the man's face.

I do not believe my father would have granted this man the throne, and my hand in marriage, had he anticipated such neglect of his kingdom. Yet, as a woman, I cannot assume the power he so easily discards on most occasions, though I would he did not ignore the plight of our people so.

I do not truly miss his company, but this is no real marriage — it may as well be childless, and will ever remain loveless — and I cannot believe my husband will attend my deathbed. Whenever it comes.

~fin