By Kielle
#2 in the Happy Endings Triptych
EXPLANATION: This story is set in the world of the Nine Kingdoms, from the TV miniseries The 10th Kingdom; however, you don't have to be a fan of the series to understand it. If you know anything about classic fairytales, you'll do fine.
DISCLAIMER: The Nine Kingdoms belong to Viacom -- no harm is intended and no profit is being made, do not distribute without my permission -- but the concepts herein belong to archetype and legend.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: The first story in this set was "Tarnish." One more story is planned. All three will be interrelated (even if it's not immediately apparent) and take place in the past -- about fifty years after the Five Queens came into power. Stay tuned.
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To this day, I'm not sure why I laughed.
Some would say that I'd brought it all upon myself. That I was a headstrong girl, a spoiled child, an arrogant daughter who didn't know her place in the grand scheme of royal affairs. Others would say that this sort of misogynistic thinking was going out of fashion; after all, the Five Allied Kingdoms were just rising into full bloom, each with a "headstrong girl" either directly on the throne or guiding her husband's affairs with a none-too-subtle hand.
It was a new age of power for queens -- and if a woodcutter's brat and a hearth wench could claw their way up into that august society, who was to say that a highborn princess could not reach out and claim what was rightfully hers, too?
Unfortunately, I was not a citizen of the Five Kingdoms. My father, and his father before him, and so on back beyond the point at which the records crumble in your hands, had always ruled our quiet little corner of the world within a comfortable shroud of tradition. I admit they had ruled wisely; our people always had food on the table even in the depths of winter, and even a few gold coins to splurge on their children during the holidays.
In fact, during my father's reign, local life was better than ever. Prosperity for the newborn Alliance meant prosperity for little outlying kingdoms like our own, thanks to new trade routes through areas which had previously been nothing but wolf-infested wilderness. There had even been some talk of offering to join the Five Kingdoms, but it was only an idle thought. We were small, hardly more than a city and a valley-full of outlying farms. We were content in our role as good neighbors, and at sixteen I wanted for nothing.
At least, that was what I thought. My father saw differently.
My father -- I did love him, don't get me wrong, but he was a stubborn old cuss who felt that while it was wise to take advantage of the changing times, this same influx of new ideas made it more vital than ever to adhere to the customs passed down from his father's father and beyond.
And according to these customs, it was high time that I married a prince and settled down to the business of producing an heir.
Did I want to marry a prince? Why, of course I did -- all princesses dreamed of a romantic royal romance, in those days.
Did I want children? Very much so.
Did I want either at sixteen, on my father's orders?
No.
Despite this rebellion in my heart, I was still very much a product of my upbringing -- poised, prideful, and oh so proper. I did not directly oppose my father on the betrothal issue. Without a murmur of dissent, I gracefully greeted every suitor he invited to our court -- and by all standards he chose them well enough. I smiled and I curtseyed and I chatted as I had been taught.
I simply did not wish to wed any of them.
Not when it was whispered throughout the land that every important royal decision made in the Second Kingdom bore the queen's seal above the king's own.
Not when Gretel the Great was already a ruler in her own right.
Not while I daydreamed of gazing into a mirror to admire my father's crown set upon my own head.
My father could not have known of my half-formed ambitions, but his patience wore thin as I refused suitor after suitor for increasingly trivial reasons. That one was too short. That one could not hunt well. That one was too old. The final straw, apparently, was when I turned away the son of a close friend, a good-looking boy my own age with blood ties to the elf throne, with what I now will freely confess was a poor reason indeed: his complete lack of a sense of humor.
I never expected the king to lose his temper so spectacularly. To be honest, I'd regarded the entire affair as a joke. I'd always been able to get my own way, in the end -- not through spoiled tantrums but from the simple quiet persistance I'd inherited from my mother. I was confident that my old-fashioned father would eventually see the light...or at least tire of attempting to please my "fickle tastes" and simply drop the subject.
He did not. Instead, before the entire court and several astonished servants, he announced a new royal decree: that if a sense of humor was so important to me, then I would damn well marry the next man who could make me laugh.
So you see, the story is not quite right on that point. It was not that I could not laugh. I did not WANT to laugh. If this was the game my father wanted to play, so be it. Did he honestly believe, after years of having his only daughter tutored in royal etiquette, that she would not be able to control her own emotions? If I ever laughed at a courtier's joke or a visiting minstrel's jest, it was a trained laugh. A polite laugh. An artificial laugh that was easy to stow away like an unneeded winter coat until my father tired of this game and left me in peace to my lessons once more.
By restraining myself to the occasional patronizing smile, I knew that I would, in the end, get my own way. It seemed simple enough...
You know the rest of the story. To this very day I still don't know why my guard was down that day when a simpleton from an outlying hamlet -- never underestimate those fate-blessed youngest sons -- strolled whistling into town with an honest-to-goodness golden goose tucked under his arm. I don't know why the sight of all those greedy unfortunates stuck to each other and, thus, to the tail of that gaudy bird struck me as so humorous. I don't know why I chuckled.
But I did.
I clapped my hand over my mouth but it was too late. A month later I was married off to the simpleton, who (as it turned out) got along famously with my father despite being a little too cheerful and a little too trusting.
It isn't a bad marriage, all in all. I don't love him, and he knows it, but he's kind enough. My father died five years ago, and a year later my husband signed a treaty which brought our little corner of the world into the Kingdoms Alliance. It seems that they wanted us after all. I'm not sure if my father would have been thrilled or appalled, but either way we have prospered ever since. It was a good decision...for a simpleton.
And now? I cannot say that I got what I wanted, but neither can I say that I am as miserable as my sixteen-year-old self might have surmised. Being married to the king is not the same as ruling in my own right, of course, but he's willing to listen to my advice...most of the time. He has developed one weakness since acquiring the crown; it is a fairly harmless thing compared to the vices available to a king, but still it is one that must be monitored at all times...
You see, this simple man who never knew anything but rough peasant garb in his previous life has become quite the clotheshorse since his rapid ascent to imperial circles. So much so that he would cheerfully bankrupt his own people with wagonloads of jewels and precious cloth, if given the opportunity.
I can usually steer the sweet, foolish man in the direction of something a bit more...appropriate, and I have managed to extend this influence to decisions of state as well. Fortunately for us all. I shudder to think what would happen if he ever allowed himself to be tricked in the political arena as badly as the time he allowed himself to be duped in regards to his treasured wardrobe.
Travellers tell me that the tale already being told in other kingdoms does not mention a wife; they speak, snickering, of the Naked Emperor as if he were a wayward bachelor. No one would ever believe that any sensible woman -- let alone a highborn lady -- would allow her husband to shamelessly parade through the streets of his hometown without a stitch of clothing to cover his royal self.
Officially, I am shocked and appalled. I cannot imagine how these two false tailors gained access to our court, and to my husband's impressionable ear. Everybody knows that I would have put a firm halt to the entire sorry mess had I not been laid low with a "feminine complaint" the entire week. And of course I would immediately have been aware of the slightest whisper of trouble at court, as always, had I not most understandably ordered my maids to shield my delicate constitution from sordid political news until I was once again hale and hearty.
This meant, of course, that I was alone to open the highest window of my chambers and lean over the sill, barefoot on the cold slate, my unbraided hair whipping loose in the morning breeze, to take in a perfect view of my bare-bottomed husband's triumphant procession as it pompously wound through a sea of dropped jaws and round eyes below.
And so there was no one there to see as, at long last, I laughed and laughed and laughed until tears rolled down my cheeks and fire burned in my side and I could barely draw breath though wheezes of sheer blissful mirth.
I do hope those two "tailors" took my advice and are halfway to the Sixth Kingdom by now. I'd truly hate to see them hang.
They were worth every coin I paid.