Though they disowned the term the Tudors she was everything they all were. She had the righteous royal fury, she punctuated her sentences with curse words when she was angry, she had a face white like the moon flooded with red hair, holding angry, fierce eyes that shone like precious jewels. He was the nation that had lived longer than songs, longer than entire dynasties and certainly longer than the one that had birthed her. But he lay himself before her and let his heart be unraveled. Not once as long as he lived had he regretted doing so.
"No one must know," She whispered to him once, pressing her finger to his lips. "No one." He kissed her knuckles one by one and curled against her, knowing even then that such pleasures and passions were as short lived as she would be. In the blink of an eye she would be gone, so he spent entire nights lying awake holding her to his chest and listening to her breathe against him.
Never before in his life had he felt like nothing short of land. He had his ties to it and all those who resided on it yes, but when she was on top of him and pressing her hands to his chest and speaking under her breath to him in the night she was his Goddess, and he was but the land she ruled. Arthur was happy to give himself to her.
Everyone had the suitor they favored the most, of course - from the dauphin to the Russian czar to any number of her male counselors, but they laughed at this together. No one ever named the somewhat thin looking man who followed the queen around the castle like a pup. Every man turned to look at her in desire when she stepped into a room, every woman watched with unbridled envy stampeding any sense of dignity at all. She was the most coveted mate in all of Europe, and she was no one's - no one's but his.
She worried over the odds of conceiving a child with him far too often, murmuring to him as they rode together, "I would be ruined," She said, and he nodded, glancing to the guards who watched on from beyond the hillside. Though he was the man whose wrath the whole court feared, not even he could defend her right to rule against thousands of furious men charging for her head. She would risk not only her own security, but his. Part of him wondered if she was so cautious for his sake; she knew that even in the event of her trial and execution, he would be the one being torn apart. Warring clans and invading nations wanted a piece of him for themselves and they both knew he would be caught up in politics higher than himself for as long as he lived; that was the greatest price of immortality. If she died she would go to God and her troubles would be over, while his would only begin. In all her power she was most considerate for his welfare - that was the woman he loved.
Arthur never knew he could envy a human so much until the night he noticed gray in her hair. Without her stirring in her sleep he plucked it and examined it in the moonlight. Without her stirring still he held her tight and let his hands shake. No matter who sat in the big chair King Death would always preside over them, and now in the lateness of the night the reaper drew near, watching, waiting. She was too old to bear children now but he still kissed her like she was the mother of his, and touched her like she would never, ever grow old.
And then one day she did.
He watched her decline clutching intense denial like a rosary to his chest, preferring to close his eyes and think of all the portraits of her hanging across England rather than see the smallpox scars and the awful wrinkles the portraits denied on her body. At her request he had all the mirrors in the castle removed. She began writing to James in Scotland, insisting to Arthur that it was only a friendly correspondence and that she meant nothing by it. Even as he himself took her letters downstairs to be sent out he grabbed the courier's arm like it was his throat and growled, "Make it clear a successor has not been named," into his ear. The terrified boy ran off into the night and he stared after him. Arthur would be damned if some Scot would be his king after all this was over.
Those close to her heart began to go, one by one. Each time she got the news she wailed like an orphan child and he stayed with her, envying the gray of her hair and the wrinkles on her face more and more. Finally, she could no longer speak. The cracks in her heart spread everywhere and she never seemed so weak as she did lying in bed with his tears on her hand. The two of them held one another like they'd always done while cautious ladies in waiting and counselors watched nervously and said nothing.
"She must name a successor," Said one of them one night. But he was only there because his father had been, because his father had won the favor of the queen, but Arthur was not nearly as easily swayed by emotion as she was. He pinned the man to the wall and shouted him down, told him that he would not be ruled by a foreign king again and that if he spoke the name James he would find his throat slit - he meant it.
She exhaled deeply then, and everyone turned. It was her last. Mildly like a lamb, someone would put it later. Off to God she went, always his little lion-hearted lamb.
He thought back on it, watching her lifeless body as the sun rose. Her last words to him, before God had taken her mighty voice, had been an apology. And he wondered if she meant it. Was she sorry for her birth? Surely she knew all the trouble surrounding it was not her fault but her father's. Was she sorry for her death instead? Not naming an heir could have thrown him into civil war (he was dragged out of the room by force when those higher powers came to make their decision), but she knew he forgave her for it. In the end, he thought, he might never know what she meant, at least not until judgement day.
She could have meant she was sorry for all of this, for dancing with him in the meadow when she was just becoming a woman, for talking to him the way she did and for taking his ring at her coronation and only removing it when the doctors told her she had no choice. She could have meant she was sorry for making him love her, and for loving him in turn. But she wasn't. And neither was he.