Just Being Mean

Queen Kathrin loved to draw. She was pretty good at it too. Painting was fun as well but she was a bit more fascinated by what could be done with just lines, just the dark ink and white paper. It was a little known fact that in her spare time she drew the original wanted posters for Corona. Afterwards she sent them of to be copied by others of course. But the first, the original, was usually hers.

There were times when she didn't draw them of course. When her duties as Queen left her with no spare time at all, or when her husband was away and she had both her responsibilities as Queen and as Regent.

She always tried to do them as realistically as possible. It was no use to her guards or her people if the drawing was inaccurate. Some drawings she got really good at, mostly because the person was a repeat offender or, in the case of a few, nearly uncatchable. The Stabbington brothers for example were one of those few that defied being caught. They were ruthless, ambitious and excellent thieves. She's been making updated drawings of them for some time now. When one lost his eye, then the other got that new scar…

From the time she'd made the first one she had thought they'd be the best at it, and therefore she'd have to do these for quite a while. Surely no one would be able to beat out these ruffians.

Then she'd made the first Flynn Rider poster. She didn't know what to think of him at first. The facts told her that he was an up and coming thief, that he could be troublesome indeed. The French Dukes jewels had not been an easy target. The protection that they had been given was one of the best. French guards and Corona's best had made a joint effort of it. And somehow he had made off with them without so much as a scratch.

However when drawing him… she couldn't help but feel that despite his handsome rogue appearance he really wasn't very thief like. Something about him made her think that he was more than just a mere thief.

And for some reason drawing him as he was portrayed made it seem… wrong. That was not him. So when she was almost done, she did something she never did with the posters. She followed her gut. Normally, she only did this when she was painting something for art's sake. It often came as a spontaneous urge to put a line here, or bold something there or add a color here and mix it with that one. Her husband told her that was what he loved about her art, the spontaneous way she'd add to the piece.

But the posters were her way of exercising her skill in a more focused manner, doing something within the confines of reality and accurately portraying it. The posters were no place for artistic license.

The nose changed. A line here added weight to the nostrils that were not added in the description. And a slight bump near the top made it look like it had been broken before. It maybe took a bit from his good looks but not really. It still looked like Flynn Rider as he was described, just… a bit different. It still wasn't him but it… fit Flynn Rider the thief.

She was going to throw it away, start over again but duty called and she left the poster near the top of a stack of papers upon her desk. When she came it was gone. It was an accident that she didn't have time to rectify. Queen duties took over for a week after that incident and she never had time to correct the Guards on the erroneous poster. To tell them to commission another one, in fact, the captain didn't even seem to notice anything about it when she started to bring it up. Flynn Rider was, after all, only just beginning to earn his fame. He wasn't that big a deal… yet.

The second time she had to draw him she tried to stick to reality, but…. It just didn't seem right. She'd heard rumors of him complaining from some of the staff. Castle staff were notorious gossips, and were bound to know everything that happened in the kingdom before official word reached her or her husband. They'd said that he'd almost gotten caught twice because he'd been loudly complaining about the nose, though he'd managed to escape the guards pretty quickly. Thinking about this she made a decision.

His nose was now too small, almost button like. On someone else it would have looked cute, on him… it looked way out of place.

After that she made it an exercise to never do the same nose on him. One time he gave him freckles, but just on his nose. Another she lifted the nostrils a bit, on another she made it too big, the next too flat. One time she gave him the Stabbington brothers nose.

It wasn't until he stole the crown of her daughter that the Queen did something she'd never done. She couldn't get to him, not really, both because she was Queen and therefore had an image to maintain in front of her people and because of her own moral code. Taking justice herself was no more wrong than one of her citizens trying to punish another for some offence. That was what judges and courts were for.

She knew her husband had already called for some of their most trusted nobles, the clear level headed ones and a few magistrates. They would be sitting down to discuss Rider's punishment for taking the crown. Neither her nor her husband could levelly issue punishment without fear of being vengeful.

A poster of him, however, that would just be his ego, wouldn't it? And he had a big enough ego to handle a few petty blows. It was, after all just being a little mean. Nothing like… death by hanging, which could last for several minutes as the body was trashed, or worse, life imprisonment at the sacrifice island prison. That was the most dreaded prisons in the continent, only the worst criminals went there, it was said to be hell on earth.

But she could be mean to his poster and not feel guilty about it. After all, it wasn't like she'd ever done his nose right. Now… well she'd just let her artistic side go.

Grinning widely, Queen Kathrin gave Flynn Rider a nice Pinocchio-like nose. Take that, Flynn Rider.