The funny thing about history is how little it reflects what actually happened. We put together the scant scavenged pieces into a plausible story, forming an imperfect broken image of what happened, and then treat it as if it's a reflection of reality. Recounting history is like putting together a puzzle with most of the pieces missing and calling it "good enough" once you mash the pieces together in some sort of abstract picture.
Over the course of my second life I came to deeply appreciate how much of the puzzle we are missing. (I also realized that time is nonlinear, but I try my best to not think about it - going down that road only ends in headaches.) You see when I died I was reincarnated into the past. My first life centered on the turn of the 21st century. Now, I am in the 16th century. My name is Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, and this is my story.
I'm unashamed to report that my last thought was "Oh shit" before being blasted into pieces. I imagine it's a fairly common thought when people suddenly become aware of their imminent demise. But to be perfectly honest how I died or what I was doing when I died isn't important or all that interesting. What matters is that I'm dead and I'm aware that I'm dead.
"I think, therefore I am"* has never been more apt. I'm dead, but somehow I remain self-aware. I'm senseless, wrapped in a cocoon of darkness for an unknowable amount of time. I thought I would remain that way for all of eternity, before suddenly seeing a blurry light. I feel cold. I've a physical body, but I can't move. I'm utterly terrified. So, I do the only thing I can: I scream.
I feel somebody gently wiping my skin with a wet cloth. I tried to flail but my body fails to properly respond. I've no idea what was going on. What the hell sort of afterlife is this? The senseless dark state wasn't a surprise, but what is this? Why can't I see? I'm not blind. I can see light, but I can't make anything out. Is it some sort of brain damage? That would explain my apparent aphasia and paralysis. But that doesn't make any sense, the areas of the brain that control those functions aren't even near each other. At least I'm still have my complex cognitive abilities. That's something.
I cry as I feel myself being moved, and then I'm laying down on something warm. Inexplicably, whatever I'm on feels secure and familiar. I'm exhausted. My senses fade. I wake up to the air whooshing past my body as I move through it, and now I'm being held in someone's arms. Whomever has me is warm, but unfamiliar. I scream. I feel so helpless. The next thing I know something warm and firm was thrust into my mouth. Instinctively, I clamp down and suck. Warm milk squirts into my mouth and suddenly all the pieces come together. I'm a baby. You've gotta be shitting me. Why am I helpless little infant? How is this even possible? Did the fates screw up? How can they condemn me with knowledge of my past life and independence and place me in a squishy prison that doesn't respond when I tell it to move. Not to mention this means I'm going to have to go through the indignities of infanthood while being self-aware. That's just cruel and unusual punishment.
Ok, so my initial reaction to being aware of my reincarnation into an infant body is a bit extreme, but it's extremely emotionally distressing. Who can blame me? Fortunately, infanthood turns out to be much more tolerable than I anticipated. I cry and sleep a lot. I don't even need to pretend to act like a baby. My baby body is ruled by instincts. Not that my adult self has any desire to act differently.
I've a lot of issues to sort through about my death and new life. In the end, I decided that I'm going to lock away my past life and identity in a dark corner of my mind and bury it best I could. I'm going to live a new life fully, and I that means that I can't be weighed down by my previous life. However, I'm going to abuse, I mean apply, my semantic knowledge and previous education to my new situation. I'm going to be the fastest developing and most insightful child that anyone has ever seen. No need to dumb myself down anymore than absolutely necessary.
I'm so caught up in my existential crisis, it takes me an embarrassingly long time to figure out that I'm in the past. It isn't what I'd have expected. At. All. I guess I always assumed that if reincarnation were a thing, people would be reincarnated into the future. That souls are bound by some sort of temporal linearity. I gave up on the idea of any sort of fate intervening on my behalf. Clearly, fate either didn't exist or is severely incompetent and unreliable. I have to take charge of my own life and survival, because I refused to succumb to infant mortality even if I have to cheat.
After my second revelation had me sullen for days. I curse whatever force is responsible for my situation. I don't want to live in the past. My life expectancy is shortened drastically, although I'm not sure if I've a right to be mad about that given how much I fell under the life expectancy of my first life. But the past doesn't have any modern comforts, this I can't get over. I mourn the loss of the internet, instant communication, fast transportation, washing machines, tampons, and many many more conveniences. I can spend whole days brooding on how much more inconvenient my current life is compared to my old one. How much less opportunity I have here, especially as a woman. My only solace is that I figured out that I was born into a wealthy family. At least I've a greater chance at surviving childhood than most, as long as they don't insist on some barbaric practices like bloodletting.
My third revelation is that I'm a queen; an infant queen. Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, in fact. The realization of my identity began as a nagging thought at the back of my mind for months before I finally acknowledged it. I knew my name was Mary Stuart, but that's a common enough name. I knew that the servants would often call me a little queen, but I thought it was an endearment. A nick name, something, anything more reasonable than being an actual infant queen. Embarrassingly enough, I'm not forced to confront reality until my coronation when I'm nine months old. I burst into historical laughter when the archbishop proclaimed me the Queen of Scotland in front of a bunch of richly dressed strangers.
I should have figured this out sooner. My coronation is absolutely, positively the worst time to find out that I'm the bloody Queen of Scotland. Having a mini mental breakdown in front of a bunch of important people that you were just instated to rule over is less than an ideal start to your reign. Lucky for me, I've the excuse of being a baby. Nobody even blinked at my behavior and some of the court ladies even cooed over me. Thank god for the small mercies of my infant status.
The realization that I'm Mary, Queen of Scots kicked my plan to abuse my past knowledge into overdrive. The Mary I remember from history had a rather unfortunate life. I'm going to try to avoid as many misfortunes that befell the previous Mary as I possibly can. I dismiss the thought about the consequences of messing up history or disrupting the timeline and creating paradoxes. If I'm reincarnated into what I thought of as the past than time is flexible enough to deal with any divergence from whatever the hell I thought that Queen Mary previously did.
Thinking of time travel as a pseudo time-traveler is even more confusing than thinking about it as a temporally normal person. The experience violates all the rules I thought I knew about time and life. I must be on a different strand of time, or something, which is different from whatever time strand I was on during my first life. An alternate reality as it were. I'm going to leave it at that. I never was that big into philosophy anyway.
I spend my days plotting. I'm definitely moving up several inventions and innovations to make life easier and to make my country stronger. Postal service and railroads are an absolute must. Also agriculture and public sanitation are going to get face-lifts. I'll train doctors myself if I have to, but at bare minimum I'm going to abolish the horrid practice of bloodletting. Hopefully, I can jump start the path to developing modern medicine, which means I have to introduce the scientific method.
However, the most difficult change to implement is going to be the promotion of basic human rights, including freedom of religion. I know that the conflict between Catholics and Protestants is just beginning and is going to be a huge part of my life. It defined past Mary's life. I've future knowledge concerning not only what happened, but also future solutions to the problem. With any luck I can set a more tolerant tone to Catholic and Protestant relations that will last beyond this time. Maybe I can ease the pain and suffering this problem caused throughout history. It's a noble and ambitious endeavor. Stupidly ambitious even, but I'm extremely confident in my previous education and knowledge and more than a little arrogant. Besides, it shouldn't be that difficult to improve those relations given how things played out before. Hindsight is 20/20 after all. However, in order to do this I'm going to have to take on a powerful corrupt Vatican consumed by it's own hubris. That's a force that Mary previously didn't even try to face. Well, I have my work cut out for me, that's for sure. I've always liked a challenge.
*René Descartes' most famous axiom
