I: Pride

[Word Count: 522]


Marion's magical genius diminished her faith in miracles. Once she was hardly ashamed it was so.

For an aristocrat, Marion grew up despising the idea noble privilege gave her an undue advantage. She was convinced people only ever got what they deserved based on their efforts and desires. She wasn't conceited enough to dismiss fate and destiny but she habitually downplayed their perceived influence. Yet even so what place did miracles have in the grand scope of things? Were the divine forces that created the universe cruel enough to torment mortals with wondrous but eternally unexplainable occurrences?

She never liked thinking there were aspects of life designed to be utterly out of a person's control and she was determined to disprove the notion. But no matter how hard Marion tried to explain her motivations to others her feverish study of the arcane was judged as unhealthy. It wasn't as if she was abandoning her duties to her kingdom to pursue knowledge. But even Oritel merely tolerated her magical obsessions out of love for her.

Of course no one complained when her expertise saved Domino from being overwhelmed with surprise when the Ancestral Witches first attacked. She couldn't help but revel in the respect she was given then as a powerful defender of her realm and indeed the rest of the Magical Dimension because of it.

So it was only fitting she lived long enough to see her magical expertise fail her. Some argued her deeds in Domino's downfall were ones of sacrifice. In all honesty she could only feel they were reactionary, split-second decisions. And the long dreamless petrification in Obsidian was nothing compared to what came after those near two decades of cold emptiness.

Only a miracle could have brought a dead realm back to life. And so a miracle came, in the form of a lost daughter she had left to fend for herself in a world devoid of magic. This daughter she thought had died in infancy only continued to perform remarkable magical feats after restoring Domino.

Her youngest daughter, Bloom as she called herself, was a living miracle.

Daphne was as well in her own way. She had entered the Order of Draconic Nymphs at a remarkably young age, cheated death and provided guidance to her younger sister that had proven instrumental in their realm's resurrection.

Marion knew she should be thrilled with her children's accomplishments. But trying to feel any gratification only exacerbated her sense of unfulfillment. She had barely raised one child and she didn't feel she could be a real parent to the other she orphaned. It wasn't helped by how Bloom seemed to keep her at arm's length as she probably found it just as difficult to reconcile with the thought she had a mother.

Marion always told herself she should only take pride in accomplishments she had gained through her own efforts. While she had dreamed of her daughters being a fulfilment of everything she couldn't be, Marion also looked forward to having a hand in guiding her daughters into surpassing her.

But the reality was both had survived well enough without her.


Author Notes: These drabbles are going to explore Queen Marion in detail particularly with how I've developed her character for my fanfiction story Death Came for the Princess (DCftP). I haven't prewritten any of this but it is coming from ideas I've long thought about. Maybe you think you're going to get some spoilers for that story by reading this one. You probably will. In any case I think this is how I'm going to cut back on all the excessive writing that's been building up in DCftP. I really like exploring characters in detail but that's really starting to clog up the progression of the plot. But don't expect that I'm going to do this for EVERY character in that story though. Any future drabble stuffs will depend on how well this one turns out.

As of publishing this I'm currently working on editing and rewriting some chapters of DCftP extensively so that the plot is a bit more streamlined and less clunky.