He had always loved her, since the day of her birth. She had been so small and defenseless, staring up at him with cobalt blue eyes and blotchy pink cheeks. His mother had all but thrown the princess into his arms as she attended to their bleeding queen. The baby girl cried and shuck in his arms so he took her from the chamber to the nursery. He spoke softly to her, sang horribly for her, eventually calming her. Hours later the king entered the nursery with a tear stained face. The queen was dead.
He swore that day he would protect her with his life, from her infant years to his death, he would fight for her no matter the consequences. She was perfection in the purest of forms.
As she grew in the light of Camelot he stayed dutifully close, yet far into the shadows. She was his to protect even though he could never have her, she was his undoing and his determination. As a small girl she was a vision of hospitality and beauty, her sweet nature attracted the kings of foreign lands, resulting in their immediate departure to her father in hopes of arranging a marriage between their two kingdoms. Camelot's king would cast a glance to him, her protector, declining the offer.
Time passed and he continued to stay only steps behind her as she acceded into adulthood. She was still childlike in nature but she grew in both body and mind, developing a beauty so unheard of that lords and commoners came from far and wide to simply gaze upon her. He protected her, as he had promised, even past the normal role; starting the day he heard her soft cries nearly silent behind her oak chamber doors. He had called to her, opening her door to find her sitting at her window dressed in her white nightdress. Her head had been bowed and her eyes rimmed red and moist. She looked up upon hearing his entrance, falling into another set of fresh tears when she spotted him. She reached out to him, resembling a child. Without a thought he swept across her room and enveloped her in his arms while her own wound around his neck and she wept into his shoulder. She never spoke of her sadness. Every new day came with her tears to follow in the dead of night, where he held her till long after she had fallen asleep in her sadness and the early daylight streamed through her curtains. When morning came she was a princess again and he just a knight.
He was her senior by eighteen years with no greatness or coin to his name. He could offer her nothing. His father had passed no title to him which he could fulfill, so he could only watch over her as she entertained the men of the court in her search for a husband. Nearly every day's end she would return to her chambers without success, casting him her sweetest smile and laughing with him in the dark corners of her chambers where it mattered not that she was the princess and he was a mere knight, and deep into the night he held her as tears once again fell from her blue orbs.
On the eighteenth anniversary of the day he first held her she found the one she would marry. He stood by and watched over her as she sacrificed her happiness for her kingdom on her father's arm and in her brother's eyes. She was stunning in a dress of the purest white with golden thread, a silver crown atop her head holding the white veil in place, keeping the sparkling liquid upon her cheeks hidden from all but him.
He followed her to her new home and land, an insistence of Camelot's king despite her new father's protests.
Their lives would forever change as her harsh husband barred him from seeing his princess, choosing instead to post him to the castle dungeons. No longer able to watch over her he was unable to save her from the worst of harm.
It was years past their arrival when his princess slipped up, allowing him to spot the dark crimson purple that decorated her skin one morning. He knew what he had to do. He spoke no words to the young queen, instead waiting till the dead of night after the king had thrown his bride from their chambers not paying heed to the fact that she carried his heir. She had gone with her maidservant's assistance to the court physician, one arm across the servants' shoulders and the other cradling her stomach.
When the sun awoke the kingdom the next morning, the king was dead and her protector was missing, forever asleep in the bed of his princess. When the queen heard of her husband's murder she went to their shared rooms and fell to her knees. She wept not for her husband, but for the son of Emyrs.
A/N I feel the need to mention that jumping between queen and princess at the end wasn't an accident, I put it like that on purpose. Merlin's son still thinks of her as the Princess of Camelot, not the Queen of some other place. I tried to make it when he was thinking of her that he called her princess but when it wasn't his point of view exactly she was called Queen.