Okay- I am going to say in my defense that this story does something I hate about other stories- it adds a new character just so it can tell an old story from a new perspective. I know, it's a sad sad thing and probably not the best way to start out my fanfic account. But, this is a sad sad world and I am a sad sad person. I'm also retelling a fairy tale, and that has been done SO MANY TIMES with Cinderella its almost sad. I really hope you don't just write this story off (PUN heheh) because of it. Also, if rape, abuse, deliberate murder and subsequently death offend your senses, please stay away from this story, it is at the moment (end of chapter one) G-rated, but will most likely be PG-13 before I am done. Heheh I'm a twisted person.
Oh, on a note- this story follows four (three) separate person's viewpoints, and it can sometimes get a little choppy. Will someone tell me if this gets really annoying or is simply a stylistic point that really doesn't matter? Thank you very much!
Disclaimer- I do not own Cinderella nor any of the many spin-offs associated with this over used fairy tale yadda yadda yadda
The Other Shoe of the Queen of HeartsShe brushed her long, dark, curly hair back and plaited it up into a braid. As her maid slipped her gold dress over her head, she smiled with pleasure. Eighteen long years of waiting was finally going to come to an end, tonight.
In a small house across town, a young girl paced with anxiety as her handmaiden put the finishing touches on a silver dress, one with gauze that would float like an ethereal cloud as she walked.
And in the palace, The prince was changing clothes with his astonished cousin, and left the room to get ready to watch the ball.
Each of them had a dream, the first: to meet her fiancé and first love, the second: to cheat a cousin she had never met out of an inheritance she felt was rightfully hers, and the third: to finish his long tale of jokes with a grand finale.
From her birth, she was taught that she, as the prince's only second cousin with money and connections, would eventually become his wife. She was raised and groomed for this purpose, and her quiet and sweet nature predisposed her to queenship. A soft-spoken girl of eighteen, she was loved by her servants and despised by her peers, who hated her for her sweet exterior. But, as sweet as she was, sweetness is simply a luxury afforded to those with no true trials ahead of or behind them. When tested, it may hold, but may just as easily snap.
Whether or not her mother knew, or simply hadn't told her, this dark-haired beauty had another cousin. This girl was also second cousin to the prince, but not as well qualified. Legitimately born, she was the result of a family quarrel. A woman, unhappy with her marriage, left her husband and took refuge in another man's house. She was given family permission to marry this man, on the condition that they produced no children to rival the then one-year old dark haired Elizabeth. Nine months later, a blond haired baby girl was born. A most unpleasant development, it was taken from it's mother, who was told her child died, and would be raised by a distant relative with decent connections, no children, but a good deal of money. The mother then returned to her former husband and began to raise her first child to become queen.
Elizabeth's father was not fond of the fact that his girl was to become queen. He had grown up freely, without a debt to privilege or station, and he was a firm believer of natural development. As such, it was a huge blow to learn that there was no child other than the one of his wife's suitable to wear the crown. However, he was willing to take the possibility of his wife's anger and family's rage to ensure his daughter was able to make free choices about her life. He visited that family relative, leaving a long letter to his only hope.
Anna Marie had not grown up with money for nothing. She was taught that money, privilege, and a figure to turn the eyes of men were all that were necessary to succeed. Already a theatrical snob at the age of thirteen, she gained years of wisdom but no maturity when she read the letter left on her doorstep. From that day on, she never wasted her charms nor flitted her time away on boys. She used all of her cunning and energy to master and use her charms so that when the time came, any person could be persuaded to her point of view. Beautiful petals surrounded a diamond centre on a pendant that forever hung around her neck. A diamond girl, beautiful, but cold and hard. Yet diamonds win the hearts of many, and are crushed only by their own kind.
The prince was not one of the many who cursed their royal position and wished to become a regular commoner in order to escape their responsibility. On the contrary, the only thing that surpassed his love of life was his love of practical jokes. Salt in the sugar dishes ruined many a royal meal, and subsequently rawed his bottom many nights. He was not an unkind boy, nor was he a particularly studious or proud boy. He enjoyed the privileges that come with princedom, and was bound to enjoy those brought on by kingship, but he was never too serious about his position. A court jester born to a king, his jokes were to bring about a most serious tale.
The Night of the Royal ball, the prince called his cousin into his room. He divulged his plan and asked for the cousin's help. The cousin, although similar to the prince in height, stature, and facial appearance, could not agree. The argument escalated and in the end, the prince simply pulled out a deck of cards. Whoever lost the game of blackjack, lost the right to protest the other's decision. The prince's second deck concealed in his handkerchief stood him in good stead, and the cousin began to remove his clothes and put on those of the prince.
The guests began to arrive at the ball, and were greeted by the King and Queen. Elizabeth arrived, looking radiant, and was offered a seat on the royal platform, along with all of the royal relatives. The "prince" came out of the back door and joined his relatives, being careful to avoid direct gaze with the King or Queen, who were to busy engaging in diplomatic conversations to pay attention to their son. Elizabeth' eyes lit up at the sight of the prince, and he noticed her and asked her to dance. They whirled out onto the dance floor, and her heart whirled high above them. As they bowed the end of the dance, a late arrival crept in. Her silver dress whistling about her feet, she walked directly up the royal platform without being invited. But for her beauty, she would have been thrown out. She had not spent seventeen years developing and perfecting her charms for nothing. She was given a seat, and watched the dancers on the floor. The prince in the cousin's clothing sneaked onto the platform, and laughed heartily at the girls who would, he assumed, be fighting over his cousin all evening. As his cousin approached the platform with his dancing partner, he did something he had never done before. Just for an instant, he regretted his joke. The stars shining in this dark girl's eyes captured him, and he asked her for a dance. She softly accepted, though her eyes followed the prince all the way out to the dance floor. As she danced, the prince slowly wheeled her away from the main floor and into a private wing. When Anna Marie noticed that her half-sister was nowhere to be found, she saw her opportunity and engaged the prince in flirty banter.
Elizabeth noticed the room get darker, and she began to get worried. She could no longer even hear the music. She looked down at the floor, and saw that it was now covered in black tile, instead of the pure white of the ballroom. A cold sensation on her back brought her eyes to his in a flash. Hers widened in alarm as he began to do as he had always done: take what he wanted. She stiffened, and he shoved his tongue into her mouth to keep her from crying out in alarm. Her dress fell to the floor as his deft hands found her clasp, and her body began to flame as he crushed her to the cold floor. She turned her eyes towards the door, and as she slid into a red veil of consciousness she waited for her prince to come and rescue her, unaware that he was the very cause of her torment. The blood she had released pooled onto the black floor and shined like a thick poison. She felt the searing pain of exhaustion seize her spine, and she lost consciousness. The prince, once he had cleaned himself off in the adjoining bathroom, began to wipe her off, and clean the floor. He picked up her dress from the corner he had thrown it into and as he waited for her to regain consciousness he reflected on his "outings" of old, and decided that this girl was different, and in his own way I think he really loved her. He resolved to have his father bring her into the palace instead of simply compensating her like all of the others. It was expected that the king and prince would take whomever they pleased, but he decided as he stared at her lips that he would marry her. She had been on the royal platform, he remembered, and thus there could be no objection. He had completely forgotten that, at this moment, to all observing him as he walked back into the ballroom with a dark-haired girl whose face was whiter than snow, he was not the prince. Simply a royal cousin who had taken something that was not his.
Anna Marie had not been idle in this interlude. She and the prince had danced, and all who saw them remarked that they made a beautiful pair, and they were obviously in love with one another. When he kissed her on the dance floor, as he was accustomed, all eyes turned to him with astonishment. He had forgotten he was the prince. When a cousin wantonly kissed a girl on a dance floor, no one noticed. But all eyes turned to him with surprise and he realized in an instant what he was expected to do. With a sickening stomach, he, with the ring he was given at the beginning of the evening, sank to one knee to perform his duty.
Elizabeth stared as the prince went down on one knee. She was weak from exhaustion, and this final insult was too much for her to handle. She ran for the exit, and the "cousin" ran after her. Her light figure carried her out the door faster than he could reach her, but he caught her arm halfway down the steps. He shook her and forced her to look at his eyes. With a pleading voice he asked her "does the prince really mean that much to you?" She wept, and merely pulled out a picture of him when he was ten. "I was his betrothed," she said bitterly, "but not only does he not honor his agreements, I now, thanks to you, have nothing to offer him." The prince was overcome with remorse. As I said before, he was kind, he simply lived in a different time from you and me, and thus had a different way of looking at things. He realized that she did not know he was the prince, and would have told her, had not her lips tempted him to kiss her. He was rewarded with a painful blow to his temple with the heel of her shoe, and as she backed away, the fire of Queens long dead shone in her eyes. Her words were cold and damning "You have robbed me of the one thing I was born for, for that I, second cousin to the prince, could have you jailed." He, through his pain, simply held her shoe and laughed. Laughed for the success of his joke. "oh," he replied, "But it is the prince you have before you, and what could he do to one who speaks to him so disrespectfully?" She paled and backed away, horror on her face. He held up a pendant around his neck that she had overlooked. The royal seal mocked her from its golden setting. She stared at the prince as he lay on the steps, clutching her shoe and holding up the crest. His face clearly showed that he expected all to be forgiven now that he had told her he was the prince. But her mind refused the possibility of marrying this man. He was not the prince she had been told of, not the prince who did so many good things for the people and for the poor. In fact he was, but she had just been let in on a centuries old dark secret of the throne. The unwritten rule that the prince could have whatever and whomever he wanted. This knowledge tainted her, whereas other wives had remained free of its poisonous stain. She now wept bitter tears for the loss of everything, her honor, her prince, and her life. She ran away, escaping the searching hand of the prince, resolving not to leave the palace forest, renown for its depth and great expanse.
The prince, left with his thoughts and one rather bloody shoe, returned to the ballroom in a fit of anger. Who was his cousin to propose to a girl? What had possessed him to misuse the privilege of being the prince for a few hours? Never mind that it was the prince's own lack of restraint that had ultimately brought this down on his head, at the moment he simply walked into the royal hall, holding his crest up high, denouncing for all to hear, his traitor of a cousin who had impersonated him.
The cousin was buried on the outskirts of the forest, with his severed head inside the plain coffin. As the royals walked away, the exhausted prince sobbed. He had not meant for his accusation to result in this, he simply wanted to chastise his cousin for what he had done. Memories of their many games came back to him, all of the happy times and sad times, and as his family called for him, he dropped the ace of spades onto the grave of the person who was closer to a brother than anyone had ever been to the prince. It began to rain a cold, bitter rain as he slowly strode back to the palace.
Anna Marie's face paled when the prince stormed into the room on the night of the ball. She, unlike most in the room, understood that this was a joke. His heart was cold; he must have tricked his cousin in a plot to kill him. How dare he humiliate her like this? She was speechless with anger, and resolved to have her revenge. Some day, somewhere, she would have it. The future path to the crown was, most ironically, the one who had denied it to her just now. She set her jaw and began to plan, as the cousin, with tears in his eyes, was dragged away.
Shivering in the rain was a girl who no one had missed in the confusion. A girl of eighteen who was sitting in a tree, covered only by her torn white undergarments, as her dress had been ripped off as she dashed into the forest. One pearly shoe, sadly dangling off her foot, was the only reminder that she was someone important. She cried, adding her tears to the rain, and fainted.
The trapper found her lying underneath a large oak tree. He picked her up, stunned, and carried her back to his wife, leaving the unnoticed pearly shoe half-buried in the mud where it had fallen.
Six month later, the prince, known for his sullen disposition and abuse of underlings, announced his engagement, reluctantly, to the girl of his parent's choosing. Anna Maria was now in line for the throne, and as she accepted his ring her smile had enough poison to kill a dragon, had any been looking in her direction.
As she sat by the fire in her quarters she stared at the flickering flames. She knew exactly the price the prince was going to pay for his joke, but she could not understand why his personality had suffered such a dramatic change. Her plan was flawless, as poison often was, but she had not enacted it for only one reason- she could not account for his change in personality. She had gone over and over the events in her mind, but nothing made any sense. And what of the disappearance of her half-sister? The Father had died, sick with grief over the loss of his only child, with only her torn robe to satisfy his inquiring mind. The mother had left and joined a convent, to live out her days in atonement for sins of past and present that brought such sorrow on their house. The girl, Anna Marie thought, must have a place in this story somewhere. The only plausible explanation was that he killed her too, perhaps she was the cousin's lover, and had planned to reveal his plot. This satisfied the cold mind of Anna Marie, and she drifted off into a blissful sleep. Had she seen the prince that night, who slept with a pearly shoe clutched to his chest, she might have understood that she misjudged him, but as it was, she slept contentedly in her conclusion.
The trapper and his wife looked out the window at the beautiful girl picking flowers in the garden. In the entire six months she had been with them, she never spoke, only smiled. She could write, and wrote long letters, rather, strings of words that made no sense at all. But her mind had given up on making sense, sealing her memories, so she wandered through time like a colorful butterfly, content in her plain clothes, sewn to fit her and her growing stomach.
In the castle, Anna Marie prepared for her final plans. She and the prince were to be married that afternoon, and she was certain he was charmed with her every move. The ceremony was beautiful, the theme in satin and lace, with a hint of blue.
The prince had decided to honeymoon in a cottage near the forest lake, and he and his new bride set off to spend several months in the cottage with some of the best castle servants. Anna Marie tucked the vile into her purse and smiled.
Four months later, the prince and Anna Marie were spending their last week at the lakefront. Early on, Anna Marie had realized that her plan was not going to work as of yet, she needed more time to woo this shell of a man. Apparently taking life was not as non-committal as it seemed. She continued, little by little, to charm the man out of the shell, and it would seem that today nothing was weighing on the prince's mind.
The prince had fallen into a depression, as I am sure the reader has figured out. How can he not, with the only person he has ever loved ran away, and the only brother-figure he ever had he killed? Even though he still sleeps with the shoe, Elizabeth has, of late, occupied less and less of his time. A pretty woman like Anna Marie is enough to charm anyone, and this prince was by no means immune. On what was to be one of their last walks through the forest, He held her hand tightly, and told her for the first time, "I love you."
At those words Anna Marie's heart leapt with joy. She jumped away from him, brought tears to her eyes and denounced him. "How can you, the murderer of your cousin, say that? You do not know what love is, I love you so much, and yet...., you only bring me pain." She inwardly smiled as the darts hit home, and he stared at her with sorrowful eyes. "It seems that you exist to make me cry, if that is the case, I am better off without a murderer like you to grace my bed." And with a triumphant cry, she thrust her poison-tipped dagger and watched the blood flow. "I want," she whispered, "to tell you that........I love you." The prince howled in agony as her lifeless body, dripping with blood, crumpled before him. His mind was a mass of pain, the only two women he had ever loved it seemed he had only caused pain to. Anna Marie knew how effective her plan was, though she would never see the fruits of it, but she never could have dreamed it would be this effective, for she had not known of Elizabeth. The prince's spirit broken, he dashed deeper into the woods.
The birthing had gone smoothly, and a little boy, a miniature of the prince in looks and mischief, but a softness of spirit that came from his mother, began to make his way in the world. He could talk and laugh, and often conversed with the trapper and his wife, but spent the most amount of time with his mother, and it was from her that he learned silent lessons of life. He learned how to be kind, how to be strong, that there is a God watching over him, and that even the smallest ant has a purpose. He loved learning from her, for though she never spoke, her eyes and actions were more poignant than words could ever be. He was out in the garden, walking with his mother, when a man burst into the clearing. He paled and ran to grab the trapper. The trapper, alarmed, grabbed his gun and ran out. He stopped short when he saw who the intruder was. The prince had no eyes for any of them, however. He stared at Elizabeth, and pleaded. "Elizabeth, Elizabeth, it is I- do you remember me?" She looked at him and smiled a vague smile and held out her hand, the gesture of greeting a stranger. He choked with pain, and then pulled a shoe out of his purse. He bent to the ground, and in front of her curious eyes strapped the pearly shoe to her foot. Tears wet the shoe as he stood up. The young boy gathered up his courage, escaped the restraining hand of the trapper, and tugged on the prince's pant leg. "Scuze me mister, do you know my mother?" The childish voice caught the prince by surprise, and he jerked his head down. He found himself looking into a window of time. Shocked, he pulled out the picture Elizabeth had given him the night she left and handed it to the boy. The boy took it back to the trapper and held it up "Grandpa, why does he have a picture of me? Huh, huh grandpa?" The old trapper took the picture of the young boy, holding a royal sword and crest, and looked at the prince. "The shoe, it fits you just like it did before." The prince said desperately, "I carry it with me all the time, looking for its owner." He paused, waiting for a reaction, and then he broke into tears. "Why didn't you tell me we had a son? Why didn't you come to the palace? Why did you run off Elizabeth, why didn't you give me the chance to make you my wife?" She merely smiled, picked a flower, and handed it to him. The trapper decided to speak, and broke in "Your highness, she hasn't spoken since I found her in this forest, she just smiles and carries on like that." Reeling, the prince stepped away from the group. He thought about it all, Elizabeth, Paul, Anna Marie, why was he alive, when he had, in effect, killed so many people why was he alive? He realized that he could find no real answer to that. Walking over to the young boy, he handed him a card. The servants found his body in the lake days later.
The boy in time grew up and became a man, and was never troubled by privilege or cousins or royal matters, as a distant cousin had taken the throne and did a damn good job with it too. He found a girl he loved in a neighboring town, and they lived in the trapper's house with his mother until she died, and they then moved to his wife's town. The shoe his mother had been given stayed in the bottom of a trunk; he couldn't bring himself to throw it away, even though it had no match. I don't know if the story would have been different had Elizabeth had the other shoe, as it is in the fairy tale the trapper told. Perhaps, buried in the mud of the forest, was the key to happily ever after, I can't tell you that. But I can tell you the card that the prince left his one true heir-
The Queen of HeartsAuthor's notes-
I hope you all enjoyed the story!!! Please leave me feedback, I know putting all the chapters up happened really quickly, but I'd lovve it!!!!