Once upon a time, a very long time ago there was a Queen. She was a very brave queen and when her husband was killed by an invading army from a nearby kingdom she did not panic. She had heard terrible stories about the king of the neighbouring kingdom. Everyone said he never stayed long in any kingdom, he stripped the kingdom of what it was worth and moved on, quickly.
The Queen moved very quickly. She hid her daughter in the walls of the castle and at the first opportunity her daughter stole away into the forest and made a life for herself in the woods. She was very young, but she had inherited her bravery from her mother and knew how to survive when things got tough.
When the King arrived, the Queen, whose name was Althea, threw herself at his mercy.
"My Lord," she cried, "I cannot face the same fate as my husband. I can be a good queen. I am strong and I am loyal and the people love me. If you were to show your great mercy and take me as your wife I could help you win the hearts and minds of our people. Together we could be unstoppable."
And the King, who was not a monster after all, and whose name was Aubrey, agreed. He was grateful for her strong leadership and happy to be merciful to her plight. After all, he hadn't planned to have her husband killed, it had been in the heat of battle, he had been further back in the fighting line and had not anticipated that a King in those days would have been so brave as to fight in his own battle.
Althea was clever, and made sure that within the year she had produced a new daughter for the King. This secured her place in the castle and made sure that her line would continue. But in all that time she never forgot her own daughter, once she knew she was safe, she sent her messages every day she could and invited her to the palace.
Her daughter Sarah declined. She was happy in the forest and although she wanted to see her mother, she didn't want to have to pretend and didn't want to put her mother's safety in danger. She had no ambitions to be queen and wanted to carry on living her simple life, free from the judgements and pressures of those around her. She wanted to meet her new sister though, so when her sister reached her eighth birthday, she was allowed to start leaving the walls of the palace and travelling around her kingdom on her own. Althea and Sarah realised that this was their chance and Eadlin, the young princess was introduced to her sister as the girl who would accompany her on her short journeys. She would never know that this strong, independent, clever girl was her family.
No comments:
Post a Comment