I will not speak of hypocrisy with you.

You claim I am but a wayward child, that this is a fit I will soon grow weary of, and abandon like all the others. Hear the words slipping from between your red lips, that all the courtiers follow as the sun's light, and listen. Hear them falling from a gilding tongue, listen to what they say. I am not you. I will not make the mistakes I have watche you make over and over again. I will not indulge in the selfish follies that have led us down this path to ruin, this cesspool where we decay and decompose, in dotage of our former glory, and wait for death to find us. My hope has not been wounded beyond healing, died for want of the attempt; nor am I such a vainglory, too indolent to remember there are others than myself threatened.

You try for pity, you say that it is for love that you would inhibit my own decision, the only thing I am good for. I counter, say this: When before have you ever shown your love to me, but when it was convenient? When have you professed your love of me, but when there were other eyes watching, and ears to hear your words other than my own? I do not doubt that you have loved me, after your fashion, as best you are able. But your best is no longer enough to keep me, or to dissuade me. It is my choice to make. I will not be bent and twisted to your whim, like so many others, all the bloody corpses. You cannot sway me to your will any longer. I have seen the truth in your words long before this, I know now; for petty childish insecurities, I schooled myself to not see all the signs you blatantly exhibited. You would blind them all, but at last, I see. You'll not blind me again.

And nay, it is not my duty, not obligation to a throne you so willingly hold. You know this well enough, and I need not shoot holes in this claim. I see you have yet to learn silence wins as many battles as ruse and shouting. And I don't care how prettily you pout, I am not another courtier, an outsider to be swayed by all the ploys and gambits you've worn to death; I don't care who else is watching, condemning, I am not afraid of who and what I am. I need not know my Name to know myself. I have seen the face behind the façade, I have seen your pale complexion florid with rage, I have heard the screams and shouts and felt almost-blows you will deny you've ever said or struck. I need not lie to myself, so that I half believe.

I've played your game, learnt your rules by heart, the rote dictums that govern your painted countenance. The bright colors chip and fade, fall away, and all the veils you would throw up between your petty soul and the eyes of the world have grown grey and tattered. Through the gaping holes, I learn to accept what I refused to see before. When I wanted to pretend that you were a good person. That you loved me. That you were beautiful and powerful and righteous. A good Queen who cared for her people. A Queen who would lead us out of the darkness. The pretty deceptions hold no charm for me now, and when I look at you, all I see is the cheap heart beneath the appealing veneer. This frontage has become your whole life, and now there's nothing left of you; with all the illusions stripped away, you're merely a shattered husk, a shrew, a spider, and you can't admit that even to yourself. Is that why all your kites are so bright and vivid, gaudy and vibrant? And nobody bothers to dig any deeper, complacent in this stupor—the haze the fumes of your cauldron have left them in. And you aren't any better.

There is no chance, you say, there is no hope of a better life. You have given up, given in. You never seemed to falter, and yet I know you've been broken, that you let despair steal your soul long, long ago. That is why you never loved me, seed of my father. In reflection, I cannot blame you for it. I pity the broken soul who relies on paltry tricks to win a semblance of respect. But also, I cannot forget the nights when a little girl cried herself to sleep, when a little girl's sweat and blood and tears poured in an effort to win the notice of a sylph who would not deign to look her way. That bitterness is with me still. Yes, I will admit to myself—admit that I am flawed—I want this to get out of here, I want this so that I will have something that is entirely mine, that you cannot steal from me not matter how hard you contrive. But, able to see all of the lives with a stake in this, able to perhaps glimpse a future without the cruel oppression and weakness we now suffer, I do, in all honesty, all sincerity, without the enamel paints you shield yourself with, I do this for others, for people I have not met and never will. I do this for babes unborn, who have no chance of ever being born, in this world we are enslaved to. I do this for mothers and fathers and all those who have gone before, and died trying to free us from insanity's shackle. And if I am gone from your house into the bargain, what harm? Else I will never be free of you. And if I do not do this, no one else can ever truly be free, either.

Just because you have given up does not mean I must as well. You lose your temper, and come so close to screaming because you know, aye, you do know, I am no longer in your thrall, held by the common thongs that you bind our people with, no longer susceptible to your domination.

I will not speak of hypocrisy with you. You can recount the dangers, shove my face in the spilled blood, the names of the dead. I know them all. It is for their sake, as well, that I will patch their mantle and take it up anew, carry on the work that took their lives. And if it comes to that…. You can recount my obligations, you can remind me of all the bonds that tie me down, tie me to you. I'll sever them all in a heartbeat. Nothing you can do anymore will hold me. You have lost what respect a tear-stained, ignored, adoring daughter once held for her mother. You have lost the respect I once held for my queen's authority, what I now know is simply the power of your lips and the burnished lies that issue there. I would absolve myself from you, take formal leave of what was never truly mine. Perhaps, once, you were a good person, and capable of loving someone other than yourself. If that is so, I shall never know it; that part of you died with my father, when I was too young ever to remember you loving me.

You've never come out of your alabaster bower long enough to care about those who look to you. You surround yourself with your nobles who murmur their agreement to your every word, who sway like saplings in your breeze; you keep to things that are safe, things you know. I have taken the time to know those who are the chattel, who exist for your governance—for what is a Queen without a kingdom?—and see the souls behind their eyes, that you so vehemently deny they ever had. They decided I was worth the time to talk to, for companionship and confidence. Who is to say which souls are of worth, and which are not? Certainly not you.

You can plague me with obligations and a thousand reasons why I should not, remind me of a duty you've so often told me I don't deserve. But this, this is my duty, to fight for a people who are caught under your supremacy, one who is supposed to sacrifice all for them, one who can't or won't—which is worse?—even tell them the truth. I do this for them, not the errant whimsies of adolescence, not to flout your supposed authority over me, not to prove a point to a lost cause. If everyone gives in, as you, despairing of hope, then there cannot, can never be a hope, for those who would effect it are ineffectual. For want of effort, for want of incentive, you would let an entire world slip into the abyss? Even if you are right, even if nothing ever comes of it, if all is lost in the end, I—we, all—must try. You can dither and vacillate till the stars fall. You can cling to craven excuses: what if our meddling plunges the world into an even blacker darkness than the dimness in which it is now submerged? I have no answer to that, other than 'I tried.' At least we would have tried. I cannot vindicate hovering around ambiguities while our race diminishes into extinction, while there is still the hope of one last living dragon egg, while there is some small chance, no matter how slender, no matter how slight, of ever salvaging ourselves from this backslide into nonbeing.

I will not speak of hypocrisy with you. I will take the yawë, I will join the Varden, I will give hope back to a people you have so thoroughly demoralized that there is only subservient complacency, a knowing damnation of an entire world, because one people are too craven to act anymore. I will do my duty by Alagaësia, not just by Drotting House, not just the Elves, not by you. I will finish a task you have discarded, like you discarded me, to grow as I would, a weed, because your hope died on the battlefield with Evandar, last true sovereign of elves. Not while there is breath in my lungs, will I let your follies infect my actions, my thinking. While I live and there is still hope, I will fight for it, because you will not. I will take the yawë, devote and surrender myself to the servitude of the greater good, of what hope there is left for a morrow. I refuse to lie idle and watch the world slip away while there is still a hope of saving it.

You would deter me from accepting the yawë, of binding myself to the good of the people.

I will not speak of hypocrisy with you.