A Cinderella Story
Note: This originally was intended to be your normal retelling of Cinderella. I never really was a fan of the story because I always felt it was very superficial, and because of that I guess, it has evolved into what you are reading now. You will catch glimpses of Cinderella-esque material here and there, but it does not follow your average telling of the story. This is also one of my first attempts at a serious non-Star Wars piece, so bear with me. Thanks. :)
Prologue
I didn't ask to be beautiful. I didn't get to pick my appearance nor the current social opinion of beauty at that time. It just happened. At to be honest, it did me little good anyhow. It caught the attention of a young royal, placed me in a beautiful castle and in the lap of luxury, and out of the servitude I lived my whole life in. But see, it was that royalty who put me there in the first place. And my beauty? People assumed it was a gift. It was no gift--it was a curse. One that took years to escape from.
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My mother's nobility was just a name. The family fortune had long been spent, and the blue blood diluted and tainted over the generations. Her mother hoped to bring back honor to the family and restore its wealth by marring her off to a nearby land-baron. Instead of fortune, she chose to follow her heart and eloped with my father, a captain of a modest shipping vessel. They never were rich, but that suited them both, and they were happy. That is all that mattered.
While they were still newly wed, the tyrannical king of the land issued tax after tax on the working people to finance an ongoing war with a neighbor kingdom. It hurt industries everywhere, my father's shipping business included, and the never ending power struggle between the 2 feuding nations left low morale with its people. No one could even remember why they were fighting, it had gone on for so long. I guess its only human to get frustrated when in such discouraging circumstances, and action, regardless of how rash, gets taken. A rebellion was formed and they assassinated the king. However, they were caught and hanged. My father was among them.
The other families of the rebels were also executed. The only thing that saved my mother was her title. Instead she was placed as a servant in a house of a wealthy noble woman and her 2 daughters. The normal person in her place would have preferred death over the humiliation of working for another of the same rank, but head held high, she faced her fate. Besides, she spent a happy life as a commoner with my father. It was nothing new to her. She was 4 months pregnant with me at the time.
I never knew my father. All he is to me is the stories my mother told me during my childhood. He sometimes didn't seem real--like a mythical hero of the fairy tales she would also tell me. Like Odysseus and Beowulf. But in those stories, they always came home. Someday I hated my father for putting my mother and I in our situation. On occasion I would find my mother weeping late at night. She always seemed so strong to me, it was odd to see her breakdown. I assumed it was because of our circumstances, for I too was embarrassed to have to earn my keep for a stern woman and her obnoxious children. It was his fault this happened to my mother and I, and his fault she was so sad. As a child I couldn't help my resentment, and try as she did, my mother never could fully ease the anger that would boil inside of me. Through cloudy eyes she spoke of him with admiration, but all I could see was scrubbing boards and chaffed hands--the results of his thoughtless acts. It wasn't until long after my mother passed away of a fever, did I see the courage my father really had.
She died when I was eleven during a severe winter. After her death, no one would not take me in, for my mother was disowned by her family after her elopement, and I was as good as dead to them too. Especially since I was a rebel's spawn; claiming me as theirs would be dishonorable to the family name. My father's family too would not admit to me belonging to them--I was tainted by the rebel's name, like an infectious disease. So I was forced to stay under my mistress and now my new guardian's roof and take on all my mother's duties as well as my own. I had to learn fast how to weave thread, sew hems and match up holes in material. I would have to work hard for my keep. All I had to grow up with was a sewing needle and a scrubbing brush, with the stories of my father and memory of my mother in my head. But it was better then death right?