A/N: I'm still in the process of rewriting By the Grace of God but in doing so I've found myself pulled in a slightly different direction (I'm fleshing out Ned Bayne and Queen Eleanor, basically, and giving Ned a reason not to run away). I'm therefore going to hold off on the next book of that story until I'm finished rewriting the first.

That said, I was browsing the Challenge Master List last night and I noticed the Prince Mary Challenge (#417) posted by ReganX…and I desperately need a day off, so this strange Freaky Friday awesomeness burst forth. I don't know how often I'll update it – probably only when I'm stuck on a section of my primary work – but I hope you like it anyway.

I've followed Tudor history here to a much greater extent than The Tudors, as I'm more familiar with the former.


8 September 1540
Hunsdon House, Hertfordshire

Mary lay in bed unable to sleep, the bare white plaster ceiling above her a bitter, mocking reminder of her failure.

If Mary had been born a boy there would be a canopy of estate over her head proclaiming her status as Prince of Wales and England's next sovereign. She would never have had to sign her soul away to save her life, would never have been subjected to the abuse she'd suffered at the hands of that witch Anne Boleyn and her minions.

If Mary had been born a boy her father would never have been tempted to cast away her mother, would never have turned against Holy Church, would never have imperilled his soul by attempting to try one cardinal and going so far as to execute another. England would still be an obedient daughter of Christ and the souls of the English people would not be tainted by Luther's heretical reforms.

If Mary had been born a boy the Devil would have had no reason to enter Anne Boleyn. She firmly believed Satan had only infested the harlot's soul because he'd seen how he could use her to manipulate her mother's vulnerability and her father's insecurity into providing him with a healthy crop of damned souls. Elizabeth might still have been born – or at least she hoped she would be, as she loved her sister dearly – but her mother would have been acknowledged by all as the King's whore and Elizabeth would have been considered bastard-born at birth, as she truly was.

If Mary had been born a boy her father would never have killed so many good men to marry Anne, would never have killed so many good (and evil) men to get rid of her either. The monasteries would still flourish and the churches would still bear their rood screens, crucifixes, sacred paintings, and holy statues; most importantly, the poor and sick of the realm would still be cared for. How many innocent men and women had perished in ditches and fields, how many had died huddled alongside roads or in the abandoned wrecks of chantries and convents? How many had seen the thread of their lives snapped by that malicious, greedy monster Cromwell, now rotting in his grave, and his toadies?

If Mary had been born a boy her mother might still be alive. Chapuys had once told her that Anne and her vile Lutheran brother George had poisoned Queen Katherine with arsenic disguised in Welsh ale. He'd even gone so far as to suggest that the patently false charges that had sent the two of them to their deaths had been a disguised act of holy justice. Of course she could never be certain that Mother would live; she had after all been five years older than Father, so perhaps God would have called her home by now. But there was always a chance…a chance that had never been realized.

If Mary had been born a boy they would be living in a golden world - but she was a girl, and they were not.

She rolled onto her side, moving quietly so as not to disturb her gentlewoman of the bedchamber, Barbara Hawke, who was sleeping on a pallet at the foot of her bed. Perhaps it wasn't entirely her fault; her father would surely have to answer one day for beheading the witch instead of burning her as God had surely intended and thereby failing to neutralize the spells she'd cast. But none of it – not Father's 'marriage' to the witch, not the deaths of so many good men and women, not the butchering of the Pilgrims of the North, not even her mother's abandonment and cold-blooded murder – would have happened had Mary been born a boy.

That was her fault, and she and all of England paid the price for it every day.

She closed her eyes and tried to sleep – only to open them again as searing pain tore through her right arm.

Fire!

She tried to rise, tried to open her mouth to call out to Barbara, tried to move her unaffected hand, but the light was suddenly so blindingly bright she could only squeeze her eyes shut and cry out in anguish.

"Your Highness!"

She knew that voice: that was Thomas More.

Was she in Heaven?

She carefully opened her eyes again, peering up into…it was! She tried to speak but only a strangled croak came out.

"Oh, praise God!" he cried – but why was he wearing a cassock? And why was he so old?

Or was Heaven where you found your true calling and lived to the age God intended? Is that why he'd called her Highness?

Her heart suddenly swelled; God knew she was a princess! God knew—

Another voice, this one somewhere behind her, broke into her thoughts. "How is the Prince?"

The Prince!? Had she and Edward died at the same time? Oh, no: please, God, no—

"There was some eye movement, doctor," More said, "but I fear the blow to the head may have caused more damage than you first thought." He looked down into her face again, and she could see terror in his eyes: so she was not in Heaven where fear was unknown. "Your Highness, are you able to speak?"

"Where am—" she began – but why was her father's voice suddenly in her ears?

"You're at Windsor Castle, sir," a third man said as he hovered over her—

—and she suddenly couldn't catch her breath. "Why are you, why, no, no…" but she couldn't get her mouth to move right. She'd seen that face a thousand times before in her nightmares; she'd begged God a thousand times to send him to the Hell he'd climbed out of.

What was George Boleyn doing here?

And why in God's holy name had he called her 'Sir'?