Gyal'nr

Intro He had betrayed you. Your husband, the king. It had been a marriage of convenience, of necessity and duty. But like a fool, you still expected him to keep to the basic limits of marriage. He had seemed like a reasonable man. But that was before you had struggled to conceive, before three miscarriages and finally one poor, premature, beautiful, perfect little girl. A girl. Not a son. Not an heir. He left the room without even holding his daughter in his arms. And four months later, a young woman was brought to the palace, her belly already showing. The king welcomed her as a royal mistress, and slowly, she began to supplant you at every turn, until you were a mere isolated figurehead in your lonely palace, never visited by your husband, struggling in what felt like infinite loneliness to keep your daughter alive into her first year of life. The final straw was one you should have seen coming. A warning from one of the few remaining loyal maids who served you, a desperate flight in the night with nothing but your daughter and your dagger and a handful of jewels to sell, and the constant fear of assassination at your heels. But it was not the royal mistress who boarded your ship halfway across the ocean, his soldiers warning the sailors with half-drawn weapons, his own hands reaching for the daughter-- sleeping, thank the heavens!-- that you clasped to your chest. "Give me my daughter," the king said evenly, "You are the queen. You belong to the kingdom and to me. You do not have the right to kidnap the princess and leave." "You replaced us," you hissed, clutching your precious little one closer. "You have that woman and her son now. Let us live out our remaining--" Before you could finish, he backhanded you calmly across the face, the strike strong and painful. "I did not ask for arguments. You are the queen. Your life is not yours to live however you wish." As he stared you down, the sky began to darken, and the soldiers and sailors began to shout in terror.