Any mistakes in the following belong to the author alone, because she did not grab a beta reader. Continuity, grammar, punctuation, characters acting badly all belong to the author. Warning delivered!
As per normal, I claim no ownership of the characters belonging to the show's owners. Just my own.
Would you like to hear a story? One, like all good stories, which has a princess, a hero, a villain, a witch, and good triumphing in the end after many trials and tribulations. The hero marries the princess and they reign in peace and prosperity for the rest of their lives. The evil comes back now and again to challenge the glorious rulers, crowned King and Queen in the same ceremony as their wedding, never to succeed and only taste defeat after defeat.
Would you like to hear a story about the loyal companions of the hero? Who fight side by side without asking for a reward? Of course, they would have to fill the archetypes of the playboy, the smart one, the strong but dumb one with a heart of gold, and the brother of the hero who steps aside to let the hero wed the fair princess. In the end, his purity will win him a kingdom of his own. The other companions stay with the King and Queen as loyal subjects and core of advisors keeping the land safe and healthy.
Perhaps I should tell the tale of the villains. The horrendous king whose wants only to increase his wealth, resources, and to bring all other lands under his subjugation. The son of the king, who becomes entranced with the princess' beauty swearing to capture her at all costs. The witch who encourages the obsession and subtly keeps father and son at each other's throat to ensure her own power and influence never wanes. In the end, they self-destruct and cannot win against the might and purity of the hero and his companions.
All of those tales will ring down through the ages. Chronicled by historians, playwrights, and story tellers. The names will pass down through the generations like Author, Lancelot, and Guinevere. The tales become wilder and more romanticized, until only a kernel of truth remains.
Would you like to hear one of those stories?
Well then, you will have to ask someone else. This tale tells about me and my role in the grand drama. It too, has a kernel of truth. Can you find it?
"I'm twenty years old Nanny! I don't need you anymore to tell me what to do!" Allura shook her finger in Claire's face, screaming at the top of her lungs. "If I want to go swimming naked in the lake with the boys, I will do it!"
"So there! You must add, then stomp your foot and stick out your tongue." Claire fought to keep her voice level and not give the young princess the slap on the face she so richly deserved. Vain, self-centered, and oblivious to normal social interactions, the girl needed some lessons in humility and understanding. Claire would deliver those lessons if it killed both of them. "That is how children finish their tantrums, and I have had about enough of yours. You are not yet 20 years old. You have not yet achieved your majority, and I will not tolerate this increasingly poor behavior of yours. If you cannot learn control and forbearance, I will find a way to separate you from those hooligans in soldier uniforms."
"You can't do that! I am the Princess and I rule here!"
Claire gritted her teeth and swallowed hard. "Not. Yet. You may have more leeway than any ruler in Arus' history, but you are not in charge yet. Now. You have kept the delegation from Arne waiting long enough. You are expected to attend to the negotiations and you will dress appropriately."
With a muffled scream of frustration, the princess whirled around and stomped to the bathroom, slamming the door behind her. The sounds of water filtered through the door as Claire momentarily slumped against the wall, breathing deep. "That child," she muttered to herself before standing straight and going to the bureau to pull out an appropriate outfit for the meeting.
Pressing her hands to her face, the Royal Governess offered a prayer to She and He Above before resetting her face to placid lines and walking out the door.
Heels clicking against the door, she walked to the commander's office and knocked briskly. The door opened, and the young man rose from his seat as she entered and sat in the chair across from him. The man returned to his chair, pushing aside the data pad. "Mistress Mareen. How may I be of service?"
Clair sat straight in the chair, hands folded in her lap and stared directly at the young man. "You may tell me exactly of the relationship between you and the Princess."
The Commander looked directly into her eyes, "Professional only, Mistress."
"Well that is not going to do going forward."
For the first time since the men had landed on the planet, the Commander had no response. His mouth opened to make a response, and then closed back again before he leaned back in the chair and studied the woman seated across from him.
"Ahhh, I think you are going to have to enlighten me on this one, Mistress."
Claire waived one hand in the air, "Allow me to be blunt."
A smile came over the commander's face, "Madam, you are beyond blunt now."
Returning the smile, the woman allowed herself to relax into the chair. "Blunter, then, commander. Allura is a brat. She has no discipline, no sense of how to serve her people, and spent five years running rough-shod over Corran. She and He Above bless the man, he did his best. At this rate, she will alienate her people, destroy the planet, and end up in the hands of that madman or his son. So. I have a plan. It involves you and your team. Are you up to the challenge?"
The man blinked at her once or twice, and Claire could see the calculation in his eyes. At 24 he held the rank of Commander, one of the youngest to ever have achieved command of a prestigious team. He had hand-picked some of the best young men and women to come on the mission to resurrect Voltron and harry the Drules from this system. Claire knew he had great ambitions. She would wet those ambitions to do the best for her planet.
"If I am understanding you correctly," he began.
"I am offering you the crown of Arus. Your people will have the option of marrying into the small remaining noble households on the planet or being granted old titles that Zarkon wiped out. The only thing we will require is that they marry native Arusians. Commander, I want my planet restored, and you and your people are the best bet I have. The people adore you. Your campaign to win them over and have them fight back while supplying what we need here? Brilliant and flawlessly executed. You and your people work well together, and go toward a goal until it is achieved. We need that in our monarchy. Are you in?"
The man leaned forward in the chair, lacing his hands together on the desk. "Your terms?"
"You will marry the princess and be crowned with her on your wedding day. Any children will be raised by you and me, with Allura not having much say until and unless she demonstrates a change in behavior. She adores playing with children and appearing the benevolent monarch but it is only skin-deep. Your job will be to convince Allura ruling is too much work and you are willing to take the burden from her so she can continue her studies or whatever keeps her occupied. You will take our advice on your council and will at least appear to accept our way of life and our belief system."
The man's eyes sparkled and a smile curved on his lips. "All other details negotiable as needed?"
Claire nodded.
"Done then. I assume you have a plan?"
"I do. The princess is convinced she has a royal right to fly a lion. I of course shall oppose this at every opportunity. 'You have to stay safe.' I shall say or "A princess should never fly.' Of course, you shall be 'ruffians' or 'hooligans' and she must stay away."
"Ahh, I begin to see."
"Good. Let us gather your team and make a plan."
The raven-haired commander rose, walked around the desk and offered his arm to the royal governess. "As you command, Mistress."
The two shared a look and walked out the door together to continue plotting.
Ah, but now you are thinking that I have ruined the love story. The dour, hide bound Nanny has a different role to play than portrayed. The beautiful Princess has flaws as does the valiant commander. You think that I have told the wrong story. That the most perfect couple, the self-sacrificing team could not have happened the way I show. The two fall in love in spite of the rampaging governess, in spite of the odds and in face of the evil that threatens them. Did nothing in the tale survive?
Yes, much of the tale survives. As we plotted amongst the commander's people and our own, things changed. Balances shifted as did loyalties and desires. I digress. Forgive my wandering thoughts. I have never before voiced this tale.
It took a month to put our plan in place. The war continued to grow larger and the opposing forces soon realized that the Garrison team had too much training and too many resources to take through sheer attrition. Even though it takes months for new forces and equipment to arrive, the team had planned for this and constant resupply ships arrived. The Drules could not anticipate the route and timing of the ships, and managed to only find a few until the conflict ended. You ask how this could happen. This I cannot explain well, but the commander explained it to me thus. If you have an ocean with three islands. Two islands have a large armada and enormous resources. The third lies on the other side of the ocean from one of the well protected ones. If the well provisioned one launches a ship to the less provisioned one, the third island would have to guess the route, which day the ship launched, how fast or slow the ship goes, and then find it in the middle of the ocean to try and steal the resources before it reaches the destination island. With space it is orders of magnitude more difficult because you deal in three rather than two dimensions.
We knew they would try direct assassination. Most likely they would target the princess, betting on the team stepping in front to protect her and take any hits. In this much, the witch had it right. The commander would protect the princess at all costs because without her, he could not realize his ambitions. While we plotted, I continued to rail against the 'hooligans' and 'ruffians' and deride their irreverent attitude. The commander worked with the team to leave the trainers unattended at certain times of the day while I cleared Allura's calendar at the same time. Do I need to say more? Yet, in this instance, she managed to surprise us.
Claire walked into the commander's office and sat in her usual chair. "I only have a few minutes, Commander."
The man nodded, "Understood, Mistress. I wanted to show you these." He held out a data pad and Claire found herself looking a variety of graphs and data points.
"I could understand these better, if I had any idea of what I am looking at."
The commander shook his head, "Oh right. Sorry, I just can hardly believe the results myself. Long story short, the princess can actually fly. As in she may be one of the most talent recruits Garrison has seen. With some intense training, she conceivable become an actual contributing member of the force."
The woman sat and listened to the commander for the next several minutes and he spun a different scenario from what they had originally planned. Rather than letting the Princess fail in her attempt to become a pilot, he suggested they actually train her as a pilot. Granted, in the beginning she would be a detriment to the team, but in the long run, it could change the landscape forever and push forward their plans to end the Drule threat in the Quadrant several years.
"Commander, are you sure without a doubt, you could pull this off."
"Give me a month of serious training with her, and I would put her against any third year cadet at the academy. If we can squeeze out three or four months, she will be the equivalent of any graduate. Of course, this means she belongs to my people fourteen hours a day. No exceptions." He smiled slyly, "Someone else, of course, will have to step into the day to day ruling of the planet."
Claire smiled back at the commander in a wide grin. "Why, Commander, I do believe I can work with this plan. We will just let Allura 'pull rank' on me for this one. How do you propose we go about this?"
The man nodded, grin not leaving his face, "I would bet within the next week, Allura will steal one of the keys and head up in a lion. We will make it easy for her and have Sven 'absent-mindedly' leave his key at the dinner table. She will not be able to resist. We can have a large fight about this, let her come to me and cry a bit. I will, of course, give into her tears and baby blues. You will rail and fuss, and eventually she will come to exactly where we want her. Can do?"
"Done."
Claire glanced at her time piece and stood. "With that, my dear commander, I am off to deride someone who has not performed their work up to my exacting standards. I think the stables are due for my inspection."
The commander tapped his stylus on the desk as he stood, "Mistress, I live in awe of your ability to manipulate people into becoming whatever is needed and in such a way as they develop skill and pride. I am honored to count you an ally." He bowed his head to her and walked around the desk to escort her to the door. She raised her head regally and left the room with a smile.
Things turned out exactly as we planned. The princess made it a royal decree that she would train with the team to become a pilot granting Coran plenipotentiary powers to handle the day to day running of the kingdom. Unbeknownst to Allura, a general sigh of relief echoed through the land as she stepped away from ruling.
The Commander kept his word and he and his team worked Allura fourteen hours every day, sometimes longer. He took over the running and building of the military on the planet. Without having to work around Allura, he and Corran were able to move quickly and decisively into moving resources into the military. More people came in from Garrison, and the Arusian Military rose from the ashes. As you know, planets send their recruits to train on Arus as we have the best military in the known universe. When you take people who have no power and no hope, and no future and give them the best training and the resources to rebuild, you build a planet who will never fall again.
In the stories, the noble brother falls to the wicked witch and the unlikely heroine steps forward to save the day. The brother did fall to the witch. The princess did step into his role. The brother left the planet, supposedly because his grievous wounds needed specialized treatment. Here the story departs into another tale. The heroic brother instead became a mole to gather information and prepare Doom for a revolution. That is another tale and not mine to tell.
Within a few months, we had settled into a routine. The princess trained with the Commander's people and in return became a trainer of ours. To our delight, she developed an innate talent for sorting people according to ability and talent. The Commander slipped easily into his role as future King and head of the military. He turned the day to day running over to his talented team.
The wedding happened just weeks after the fall of Doom. Riding high on victory, the planet celebrated for weeks even as we mourned all those lost in the battles. Within a year, more weddings followed and Garrison released all those from the Commander's team to officially become Arusian citizens. The next year, babies abounded as people looked to the future of the planet.
I stayed on in my role as Castellan, and member of the ruling council. The commander and I have raised wonderful children both in temperament and talent. Allura happily played with the children and read bedtime stories until the children grew old enough to train with her.
The King never forgot his roots and ensured he passed on his brand of honor to his children and mine. For, to my surprise, I too found someone to marry and we had two children of our own. My youngest followed me as Castellan and my first born pilots Black. The King ensured my children received the same education and benefits as his brood. He and Allura had nine children in all. For all her faults, Allura made an amazing mother, in her own way.
There ends my tale. Perhaps not the tale the way you wished to hear it.
The Pilot married his Princess. They became a beloved King and capable Queen brining light to their planet and joy in their lives. Eventually they became loved and beloved. Laughter filled the halls far more often than angry voices. Evil still returned every few years. The Drules. The Kaftons. The Lorne. Each left defeated time and again. Each time, the planet rebuilt better and stronger.
The twilight approaches and my story will end. Perhaps no one will remember the tale of the Royal Nanny who helped shape the nation or perhaps I will become as mythical as Merlin, remembered for shaping the boy who would change a nation. I did not shape a boy, but chose a man to bring hope and change.
The King and Queen ruled for many years brining joy and prosperity to the land. They became known for their wisdom and for their strength of character and might of their military. Over the years, the bond of love grew until it shone in their eyes when they beheld one another.
The Pilot married his Princess.
They lived Happily Ever After.