15. Choose one of the 7 lords, and tell a tale from his perspective from any time of his life. When he first learned he was a lord? The first time he saw the sea? The first time he met his king? The day his king died? The wedding of the king? The first time he met Miraz?
Growing up, winters were cold, the snow thick and white on the ground. Ghost stories whispered it was the remnants of a witch's curse, one that had once held the land captive for a hundred years; but most of us laughed by the warm fires burning in our large house or trampled down the snow for sledding paths. We loved the winter months.
Summers, though. Summers, all the daughters and sons of lords were called to the castle, to spend two months before the harvest training with our future King.
He was a lordly man, Caspian the Nineth. Or would be, if he ever grew into his tall, spindly body. Loud, generous, quick tempered but also quickly moved to compassion—he was easy to follow.
Perhaps, though, that was only because we could contrast him with his brother. Miraz, the younger son, just as quick-tempered, but snivelling, entitled, believing the world was owed to him—oh, what a trial he was! Four of us—Rhoop, the brothers of Beaversdam, and myself—loved locking him out of the stable, castle, or bedroom. The bedroom was the best; we found a vine that made it easy to climb down from the window, and it would take him hours to get inside. He never had the head for heights. Not even the height of society he aspired to.
But I did not think about it too much. I was too busy quarreling with my future king. Because, after all, Caspian the Nineth was just a boy too, and he could be wrong. I loved pointing those moments out.
And, eventually, like good kings will—he listened.
When he and his brother both admired the same woman, a pruned up spirit in a lovely body, he listened when I said to watch her with other women. Fortune favoured us, for he found the woman this prune abused much more lovely; and so she was. Caspian chose the right queen.
His cousin got the prune. Prunaprismia, actually. Her name was easy to shorten.
The day his cousin married—first married, for he wanted to beat out his brother here as well—I watched as Prunes walked up the steps to the dais where she was to be married. Miraz loved her enough that he only had one triumphant glance to fling at his brother, before returning to look at his bride.
Prunes, however, didn't watch her groom. She watched the audience, demanding adoration, demanding it just as much as her soon-husband did, and then—then I took a moment to thank Fate, luck, or whatever power at work, that our King was Caspian and not Miraz. I knew when Caspian married, his eyes would also be on his bride. But having watched her, I knew her eyes would also be on him.
And isn't love the best foundation for a kingdom?
