This is a one-shot type story that was inspired by the song "Yellow Flicker Beat" by Lorde. I love this song and it just reminded me of Elizabeth so much. The characters in this are all from Philippa Gregory.
Richard was gone, my mother wouldn't let us fall. I was going to be queen. I was raised to be a queen. Mother made sure that I was good enough for it. If I hadn't been queen of England I would be queen of some of other country. I was raised for this, but it was supposed to be with Richard. My lovely Richard, he had promised me. Every time I thought I about him I wanted to cry, to scream. My love was gone, my life was gone and I was being married to a loveless bastard who did not care to kill a Holy King. I knew I could do none of this, I could not appear to be upset in the slightest. My mother glared at me every time I got the far away teary look to my face. She constantly reminded me that I was the key to our family's pride, to our ascent back to the throne. It didn't matter who sat on the throne beside me, as long as I ruled, just as my Lady Mother had.
She had encouraged the adulterous, incestuous relationship with Richard. She had loved that I had been made his whore, even when we killed the poor Queen Anne with it she still reveled in the attention, the favor of the king. My father's brother. No one talked about how my father had died and all the trouble that led up to his death. My mother ignored that Richard had killed my brothers, brother. I was to never tell this bastard that I was being ransomed to about my sweet little brother and the night that my mother and I sent him down the river Thames to a distant land to be hidden away. I would never show any of my feelings. I could never show my feelings. I could never show the court that I had loved Richard and that he had loved me, even though the whole court knew that he called me to his bed every night as his sick wife was in the suite that connected. He didn't care, he loved me. I was going to be his queen.
I waited to meet this lawless man that I was to wed. Looking around me, and thinking about my future as the queen of England I thought of the past. I had been born a princess, the oldest to a king and queen who had been married in secret out of love. I was loved, people showered me with gifts, with praises of my beauty. They shouted my name in the streets. I was the most loved princess in the world. The world was at my fingertips. I could not ask for a happier existence. My other uncle, George, didn't love my father the king though. He made my mother and I hide as he tried to steal my father's throne. Then the awful Lancasters tried to steal the throne as well. The people begin to hate us. My friends were taken from me. My father's friends turned on him. We hid in the abbey. In a dark hovel, with a window looking at the river. I grew up in a strange existence of utter happiness, and utter despair. For a time we were loved, we lived in luxury. Then we were hated, we hid in a dark hole, and my mother cursed the people who hunted us. She taught me the dark ways that she used to curse them. I watched as she put her greatest enemies to death with her words. I watched as my grandmother helped her, then after my lovely grandmother died it was up to me to help my mother. We used our words, our bodies, everything we could to gain the power that she craved. That was the thing about my mother, she hadn't wanted the power that came with my father, but after she had it, she couldn't let it go.
When Richard had asked for my little brother we had given him over, thinking that he would not hurt his own nephew, the little boy he so loved. When he had asked for Richard we knew that it was not his intention to merely safeguard the boys and we knew that the Beaufort woman, the mother of the man I was supposed to marry, had a hand in his plans to kill our precious boys. I struggled to understand how my mother could think it ok to give me over to my own uncle and the murder of one of my brothers, then she gives me over to the son of the woman that told him to do it. But I knew that the way of life for royals was not a happy way at all times, and that there was a circle of life. My grandmother had told me about this circle once, that if you get to a certain high it is inevitable that you will reach an almost unbearable low, but if you can survive that low you will reach the top of this circle again. It was this knowledge that spurred me through life.
I was appalled that he had thought that it was alright to just have sex with me. I was astonished that his mother, his God fearing, famously pious mother, had encouraged him to do it. She sickened me, my mother sickened me, He sickened me. I would not live with this utter humiliation. I was not some sort of mare that could only be prized on her ability to birth a healthy child. It was not fair. I was royal. I was born to a higher status than this horrible man. I was being raped. I didn't want this. I wanted my Richard. I wanted my Richard who was killed, had his crown ripped off his head and thrown in a ditch in Bosworth by this terrible man who raped me every night until I could become pregnant with his damn child. I was not born for this. I was born for so much more. I was born to be queen, but I guess this was how I was to become queen.