Just FYI... I wrote this story a long time ago. Posted it. Hated it. Deleted it. So... we are revisiting it for round 2, and I hope it turns out MUCH better.
Disclaimer: I do not own Once Upon a Time, or any characters & characteristics associated.
"Heavy, is the lonely crown."
CHAPTER 1: Queen of Nothing
Regina perched at the head of her Great Hall as long, colorful, and fleeting shadows swirled around towering golden pillars, and stained glass windows cast off brilliant reflections below them as the evening sun crept down below the horizon in one final burst of light. An empty throne loomed over her shoulder where a beloved King sat only three nights before, toasting to a victory on a distant battlefield. The late King served his kingdom wisely and powerfully and his name was common in bedtime tales of great battles and heroic quests across the entire kingdom. There was not a man, woman, or child who did not respect and adore him. As a husband, he was hard to love and hard to understand, but was reminiscent of a man Regina once knew who was also taken from this earth before his time. The fever was commonplace in much of the kingdom and a man who lived into his fortieth year was almost unheard of, even for those most protected in the high castles. The doctors, in haste, tended to His Majesty as best they knew how, but as the days wore on so did their spirits, and so darkness overcame the King.
As much as their majesties tried, there was no heir. No son to take over the throne and rule in his father's stead. There was only a queen. A queen that was swiftly and justly defended by her husband for her shortcomings at child birth. According to tradition, a queen who could not bear a child was better off living in the servants quarters and shoveling manure from sun up to sun down. Despite the King's best efforts, there was an unsettling feeling across their kingdom about the legitimacy of Regina's rein. Marriage was one thing, consummation and producing an heir was another. Now, the same court that the King had defended Regina's honor in front of before was now in a fiery discussion about her future in this kingdom. As of this night, Regina was the queen of nothing.
The sun dropped below the horizon and the moon's full glow rose up, changing the colorful reflections across the hall to an eerie wave of silver and blue. The rays danced in reflections of a tiled pool that separated rows of men, most of whom were too buried in deep conversation to notice much of anything, let alone the beauty of the natural magnificence around them. Their debate was heated and at times hostile, however, it was clear, despite a few small voices, that Regina's rein was nearing an end. The same court that demanded her removal from the throne after she was not able to produce an heir, even when the King was alive, now held the fate of her future tightly in their hands.
"We must have a King! There is no question! It is the law!" A man large enough to fall out of his robes at any moment shouted angrily from his stone bench, waving his hands dramatically around him.
A small voice from the other side of the pool echoed back. "But we have a powerful Queen. No male heir has been produced. Therefore the law states the kingdom will be given to the next royal member of the family. Long live the Queen!" Sydney was the Queen's most sincere ally in the court, and it was refreshing for her to hear a positive voice through all the hisses of opposition.
"She would not provide stability or strength against our enemies. We need someone gifted in the art of strategy. We are in the middle of a war! What would our soldiers think if they found out they were now being led by a woman?" It was like she wasn't even there. The words spit out in disgust of the thought of a woman in control.
"Then tell us, who will be King?"
As if under a sudden spell, Regina rose impassively from her red velvet thrown, and like a switch to a lit room the men below her grew hauntingly silent. Even if they didn't support her rein, they did respect her as a powerfully, intimidating woman. Behind her as her bare feet descended the marble staircase, her gown fell gracefully on each ash colored, ice cold stone. The city's solemn silence whipped through in the cool evening wind as the air of the Enchanted Kingdom sat heavy around them.
The Great Hall was something of splendor and stories of its golden exterior structure had been told among many nations, many of which had never seen the interior themselves and only dreamed of being invited in. Only those most deserving were invited to dwell among the Kings of the Enchanted Kingdom. A painting of the greek goddess Athena hung at the highest most point of the hall, adorning her wisdom on the Queen, or so Regina wished. Regina had ordered it hung shortly after she married the late King, feeling as though the place needed a woman's touch. She found the goddess an inspiration to all women, common or royal, as the most divine example of the power a woman could have in the world. As Athena ruled, so could she.
She strode past the crowd of men, her bare feet making no sound, but catching the judgmental gaze of each one like a fly in a spider's web. "My Queen?" The question was soft and hesitant, like a quick breeze through an opened window, but hauntingly echoed off the walls.
Regina turned to the minister who spoke closest to her right to find Sydney standing calmly beside her. She placed her hand gently on his shoulder. "Sydney, do you know the story of Athena?" she asked as she pointed to the goddess's painting above them, and brushed a small lock of brunette hair behind Sydney's ear motherly. He glanced up at the painting like he'd never seen it before, and shook his head in confusion.
Regina smiled genuinely and moved away from him to the other side of the room. She could feel every pair of eyes burning into her bare back, but she kept her head up to the painting. "The Goddess of Wisdom and Strategy. The Goddess of the Arts. The Goddess of Battle and Reason." She started. "As a daughter of Zeus, the Olympians were unimpressed by her at first, but she proved formidable by demonstrating her impeccable wisdom and skills at warfare, and she undeniably became Zeus's favorite daughter. She was strong. She was a fighter. She was among the most admirable of goddesses." Regina paused as if to reminisce on some memory of the story she told. "She was admired so much that the Greeks named cities after her, erected statues in her honor, and worshipped the ground she walked on. Her godhood did not depend on her dependence on a man, or another God, not even Zeus himself. She ruled for herself. Alone. Against all of the other Olympians she rose as just herself and conquered the world." Her voice turned low and she turned her head to glare at the court from the corner of her eye. "Hear me when I say, good councilmen of the late King Leopold." Frustration and anger rose from her voice. "You will not sit here in your glorified bathrobes and tell me that I need a King." The men shouted out in protest. "SILENCE!" She whipped around fully, her ruby dress thrown out from her and the men hushed immediately. "I am the Queen, follower of Athena, the embodiment of her power!" She shouted. Flames could have been rising from her fists and the men would not have been more mesmerized by her sudden confidence and powerful presence. "With or without you, I will rule this kingdom, and I will follow in my father's footsteps and conquer this world." She pointed accusingly at the men. "If you want to question the law of this land, the law handed down by my father to King Leopold, handed down from my father's father, the law that has ruled this land for hundreds of thousands of years then you can be sure, this will be the last night you find yourselves on my court." Regina turned on her heels and marched away from the murmurs and questions that bounced quietly between the groups of men. She disappeared through a large door, it's slam echoed and hung in the air as Sydney's lips rose in a small grin.
As the murmurs died down, the men dismissed themselves in small groups. Sydney hung back hoping that Regina may reappear in the Great Hall when she had regained her composure, but as the last groups departed he sadly followed close behind. A pair of heavy boots shifted from behind a group of men who had huddled together to whisper travesties, no doubt against the Queen. The general of her army stood in the shadows behind them, the glint of his chest plate caught one of the men's eyes and they kept their voices low as they finally exited.
"General Graham." Regina had snuck back into the room and made her way, stepping softly, up to her throne. The emblem of an eagle pressed in and raised intricately in the general's metal plates caught the moon's rays and shadows lighting up like demons in the dark as he reported to his Queen. He moved into the light from his cover, a scar adorning the right side of his face was whelped across his cheek bone in a straight, even, slice, and it made his brawny stature all the more sinister. She studied his large build as he approached her, as she often did, his shoulders high under his straps, sword long and nearly scraping the floor. She found him extremely intimidating, and handsome, as did everyone else that attended to her and the castle, which made him all the more appealing as her personal protector.
"Yes, your majesty?" Graham's deep, rasped voice echoed through The Hall, his head bowed ever so slightly.
Regina twisted her hair through her fingers. "What do you think of me? Be honest." Her eyes never shaken, stared at him like a wolf to its prey, ready to pounce at just the right moment.
His scar twitched as the rest of his body stood cemented in his stance before her. No clank of metal or scuff of boot could be heard from his body. "Your Majesty, I believe this kingdom would be satisfied with you as our Queen." His answer was too simple for her liking.
"Satisfied? What an interesting word. Almost like content, or settling with me. Is that what you're saying? That this Kingdom is content to settle with me?"
He eyed her as if they were the only two people left in the world, and his resiliently silent demeanor only served to annoy Regina. "You know," She interrupted the ugly silence and rose from her throne, approaching him casually and confidently. "General, you don't always have to be so… conventional." She circled him like a bird to her prey, his brown curly locks twitching as a small evening breeze traveled through the room. "There is no need to stand on ceremony now. They have all gone." She waved away the thought of her great hall being swarmed with filthy rich men who had nothing better to do than argue. She made note of the reflection of the moon in the calm water, but sucked in an icy breath as Graham stepped up close behind her, their reflections merging in the pool below their feet.
She turned her head every so slightly, the metal of his armor so close to the bare skin her dress failed to cover. Her eyes quickly turned serious and her face became heavy. As if peeling a bandage off a wound, she proceeded to walk down the edge of the pool away from him. "No matter. Why am I surrounded by fools? Old men who can't even dress themselves properly and who go home and can't even please their wives, yet they sit here and tell me I am not good enough for them or this kingdom." Her eyes darted up quickly as Graham moved along the opposite side of the pool, even with her, his hands perched behind his back, his eyes deep in thought. "Why am I not good enough for them? Have I not proven myself worthy of ruling this kingdom?" She watched his reflection move against the water carefully. She bent down to study the water's edge in the pool, her fingers gracing the very surface causing a ripple over her own reflection. "It's frustrating to see my Kingdom, day after day, become hidden from the rest of the world. My father did not spend his life building this place just so it could wither away when his own daughter took control. His death haunts me every night, I can hardly sleep anymore. These… these incompetent bastards I am stuck with in this counsel are destroying this Kingdom. What do they know?" She swatted at the water, splashing it up on the marble stone, leaving dark grey spots around her shadow.
Graham eyed her carefully when she bent down and drew her finger in the water, and his heart was caught off guard when she attacked the tiny blue waves below them, but his posture remained strong and unwavering. The history they shared was buried deep in his heart, and while his dreams of a different life tortured him night after night, he made sure to hide his true feelings when out in public.
Though he was not a man of many words, he often stayed up late at night, thinking about all the ways he could love Regina, and tell her so. Each time he found himself here in a room, alone with her, however, he always managed to hold it all back. He dug a deep hole in his heart to shield both himself, and her.
"I do not believe you would want advice from a lonely warrior like myself, Your Majesty." He finally spoke. His tone was dark and mysterious.
"Oh don't be ridiculous, Graham. Why would I ask you if I didn't see you fit? We've known each other too long to play those games." Regina stood and regained her poise, wiping her wet hand on her dress. She walked around the edge of the pool to Graham's side and looked up into his eyes trying to find a way inside him. She wanted to know how he ticked. What made him who he was? No doubt his past was to blame, but she could tell he was hiding a whole other life she knew nothing about. War changes people, and Graham was not susceptible to the wages of war.
"My Lady, may I could speak my mind?"
"You may." They walked properly down the edge of the pool, close enough to touch but both paying attention to keep their bodies separated.
"I have heard from ministers, here and there, that the kingdom does in fact need a King." His voice became more serious and deeper. "If I may say so, I believe I do not deny I have those feelings as well." Regina hesitated as the words cut her deep. He noticed her abruptness and stepped in front of her to catch her gaze and gently, as he would have with a delicate flower, he lifted her chin so that he could look directly into her brown marbled eyes. Regina soon became aware of the situation, adjusted, took her chin from his hand and brushed past him quickly making her way back up the steps back to her throne. She stood with her back to him, bracing herself on the intricately carved chair, its wood creaking under her grip.
"Why?"
"Why what, Your Majesty?" he asked knowingly.
"Don't you dare make me explain myself, Graham. Why do you think this kingdom needs a king?" Her grip tightened on the head of her chair, her knuckles turning white, knees weak, as she anticipated his answer. He stood respectfully below her throne as he gathered his words.
"When I was in Rome, before I was general, I came across a man of wisdom that I will never forget. He taught me what it meant to truly be a warrior. I am… just a man. It is all I know. War is all I know. The guidance of generals is all I know. Call me old fashioned I suppose, but as I respect you as my Queen, and I would sacrifice my life for you, this Kingdom is just that… a Kingdom. And I…"
"Leave." Regina spit back at him.
"Your Majesty, please. I… mean no disrespect, I just… "
"For the love of the gods…. LEAVE!" Regina whipped around, a single tear falling down her cheek.
"As you wish." He muttered, bowing his head slightly and he heavily made his way to the door, his armor clanking around him.
Regina was alone. She trusted her council only as far as she could throw them, and Graham, she felt she had misjudged. Deep down, she knew he meant no harm, and she opened the conversation when she asked, but on the surface she'd hoped he was not like everyone else. But to her dismay, he was. He was a man, in a man's world. No amount of threats or shouts could convince her council that she was good enough. So she would prepare for her last days as Queen alone. By the end of the week, she knew the council would have plans for her future, plans that she would no doubt disagree with. She felt she was under their spell, an evil curse that drowned her slowly. They pulled the strings. She was not Athena, Goddess of Wisdom and War. She was Regina, Queen of nothing.