Thought we'd try something a little new here: This is Elizabeth of York/Richard III in an AU storyline to a medley of Taylor Swift Lyrics. Enjoy!

If you were here we'd laugh about their vacant stares
But right now my time is theirs

Queen Elizabeth strode down the halls of Sheen Palace, sensing her skirts rippling along the ground behind her. As she went, she bent her head courteously to listen to the petitions and pleas her bowing courtiers put before her. She listened to each and everyone, not daring to let her boredom show even slightly on her face. She couldn't afford to; not when her security at England's Court depended upon her being known as the beloved gentle Queen, who was interested in every single one of her subjects, no matter how humble.

It was a role she hated playing, but a necessary price to pay for being a Yorkist Queen in a Lancastrian Court. Her devotion to her new husband; to the father of her son, Arthur, and her daughter, Margaret, could not afford to be placed in even the slightest doubt; not with the Yorkist King, King Richard's body, still missing, even five years after the battle on Bosworth Field.

She couldn't give anyone the slightest reason to suspect that she might know what had happened to him; might know that he was actually in hiding in Burgundy; plotting to one day take back his rightful throne; or if not that, to help a Yorkist take it in Henry's stead.

She was used to the role by now, but that didn't mean she liked it. In fact, she loathed it; felt trapped by it. Which is why, when she reached her own apartments, the one place she could sometimes let her guard down and found an unfamiliar cloaked figure waiting for her, saying he was there to hear her confessions for the day, since her own chaplain had fallen ill, she barely managed to restrain a heaving sigh as she invited him into her chapel.

"Follow me, Sir, if you will. The rest of you may go."

The moment the doors closed behind them both, the stranger spoke.

"Don't you recognise your own uncle, Bessierose?"

I run my fingers through your hair and watch the lights go wild.
Just keep on keeping your eyes on me, it's just wrong enough to make it feel right.

"Richard, we mustn't! This is madness!" Elizabeth gasped, as he picked her up and bore her swiftly through the private door between her chapel and her bedchamber, bolting the heavy doors around them. She knew who he was now; had known from the moment he called her 'Bessierose'.

"Aye, it's madness," he agreed, "But can you deny it feels right?"

And she couldn't. Right there, wrapped in the security of his arms and the warmth of her swansdown covers, she couldn't deny that it felt right. Nothing mattered except them.

She forgot everything; everything about their being Uncle and niece; everything about the fact that their dispensation ceased being valid the moment Richard had lost the throne of England, for it was for marriage between King Richard and Princess Elizabeth, not Richard Plantagenet and Queen Elizabeth of England. She even forgot that she was an adulteress; a traitor to the Crown. She was naught but Bessie and he was naught but Dickon and they were naught but two people in love, doing what two people in love generally do.

"You're supposed to be in Burgundy," she choked out at last, when she had got enough breath back to speak at all, "If Henry knew you were here, he'd kill you."

"Yes, he would. But not seeing you was killing me. And we need a son. A Yorkist son to take the throne back from Lancaster. And I couldn't have trusted your sisters not to tell King Henry I was here. You're the only one I can trust, Bessierose. The only one. You won't let me down, will you?"

"No, Dickon," she shook her head, "I'd never let you down. Never!"

This slope is treacherous
This path is reckless
This slope is treacherous
And I, I, I like it

And she didn't. Nine months after that stolen afternoon, her second son, healthier by far than his older brother, was born. King Henry was delighted to have the Succession safeguarded by a second son and doubly so when his Queen insisted on naming the boy after him, rather than after one of her Yorkist relatives. And if the boy looked more like a Yorkist than him; more like his Grandfather King Edward IV, well, so did Princess Margaret. There was no reason why the lad shouldn't take after his mother.

From then on, Elizabeth lived a double life. By day, she was King Henry's devoted Queen, planning the future of England under Arthur with him. By night, however, she was plotting to have Arthur overthrown by his younger brother and have Henry mount the throne in his stead.

She insisted that Henry pay attention in more of his lessons than he might have liked or needed to, being a second son. She drove him to compete with Arthur and prove himself the better in whatever they did; trying to get the people of England to ache for the day Henry took the throne rather than Arthur.

In short, she groomed her second son for Kingship, for she was sure he'd be the one to take the throne, for wasn't that what Mother had promised when she cursed all those who had something to do with her brother's deaths to lose their first born sons? Henry was safe on all counts. Richard, had it been his fault, had lost his first son in Edward of Middleham, and had Henry had something to do with it, well, Henry wasn't his son at all, for all he was known as the Tudor Duke of York. Arthur, her firstborn, was and he would have to die anyway for Henry to take the throne.

It was true, sometimes Arthur's fate tugged at her heart. He was so innocent; so loving and so earnest to do the best he could, both by his family and by his country. It was a shame he, of all people, had to suffer for her sake.

But suffer he would have to. Or so Elizabeth thought.

In the end, however, nature decided to give her a helping hand, by striking Arthur down with the Sweat in the April of 1502, just six months after his marriage to the Spanish Princess Katherine.

Elizabeth had never been so relieved in her life. She joined in her Court's mourning wholeheartedly, for she truly did mourn the boy she had given life to, but at the same time, she was inwardly rejoicing that she hadn't been forced to actually take his life.

So happy was she that it was no hardship at all to extend her hand in friendship to the Dowager Princess Katherine; inviting her to stay at Court with her until her father organised another match for her.

Henry, on the other hand, had to marry and marry soon. To that end, she found it not a bit difficult to accept his father's suggestion that he marry the King of France's heir's sister, Marguerite.

This he did, the moment he turned fifteen, so that, by the time he mounted the throne two years later, he did so with a Queen at his side.

You held your head like a hero
On a history book page
It was the end of a decade
But the start of an age

"I've never been so proud in my life, Harry," Elizabeth told her son, as he sat on his great white charger, waiting to ride from the Tower to be crowned at Westminster, "Your father would be proud of you."

"You think so?"

"I know so."

With that, she blessed him and Marguerite together and let them ride away from her, already at Westminster in their minds.

"Yes, your Father would be proud of you, Harry," she whispered, "It's just a shame you don't know who he really is. Who you really are. It's just a shame you don't realise that this is the end of a Lancastrian age and the start of another Yorkist one."

With that, she went back to her rooms, to her chapel, to say her prayers. To say her prayers and lose herself in the memories of when, for a few short days and weeks, she had been King Richard's adored bride to be.

To lose herself in the memories and then to write to Richard, still in hiding in Burgundy to tell him that their time had come at last; that there was at last an unchallenged Yorkist King on the throne of England.