This is dedicated to my readers who have left such lovely comments - you motivate and inspire me to write. Here's some promised insight into the head of our mysterious Queen. 

Elinora

Queens are made, not born.

That was a phrase I steadfastly believed in. An ironic phrase at that, considering the rules of inheritance within my world; but that was the line that I abided by, that I guided myself with, through the good days and the challenging ones.

I wasn't born to the knowledge that I would be heir to England. Father had hoped many-a-time within my childhood that Mother would eventually bear a son, but after about a decade without success, Father began to accept that England's future might land into the hands of a woman – his daughter – but a gentlewoman nonetheless in Father's eyes. And thus I was plucked from the cradle of books and imagination; rid of my schedule of training in the arts and etiquette – and thrown into everything that Father considered would divest me of the natural disadvantage he believed me to be in due to my gender.

The fullness of my routine left me no time to grieve the childhood fantasies of discovering a world beyond the palace – a world where Mothers smiled at their children and wild roses grew beyond stone walls. My new routine was hard, but I took everything in stride as for the first time, at least one of my parents was seeing me.

Edna had once asked me whether I resented Mother. This had been two years after Father's death; two years into Mother's regency over England and four years since a brief moment of sympathy had caused me to rescue Edna from the ever-present battle of treachery between the servants at Court to climb higher in the hierarchy. By then, after numerous occasions of her tending to the injuries Mother would inflict when she was of ill-temper and I did not want to show weakness by calling the palace physicians, we had become steadfast companions. I'd gazed out at the night stars for a long period of silence following her question. "I...do not know." I had answered. The teachings from my books, my religion and my faith all spoke of filiality, of benevolence. The Queen was my mother and kin. Surely, she'd never meant ill towards me, and if she did... it was due to my wrongdoing... right? I was an abomination in mother's eyes – as twisted, as coldblooded, as vile, as any of the Deveraux line– and somewhere along the line, I had given up trying to make her see otherwise. Or maybe, I had taken in so much of her words that they had become part of who I am.

I did not blame Mother, as I was more versed in her plight than anyone else in the Palace. Her beauty and fire was what had first captured Father, but it was that fire was not suit for the Consort of a King such as my Father. With time, as the novelty of romance fell away, her wildfire grew into became a pertinacious insubordination, and Father's stature was only a cage that was no longer new enough to gloat about, his riches only a gold-gilding on that cage. One of Mother's favourite jabs to use against me was my ignorance of what love is, and sometimes, I think she's right. I never truly deciphered whether Father loved Mother or whether Mother loved her scholar. I just learnt that love was not ever-lasting – or perhaps that even if it is – it would only lead to screams ricocheting off cold marble walls and loud bangs behind closed mahogany doors.

Whatever love was, I wanted none of it. Peace, mutual-respect, seemed much more pertinent – much more stable. At some point between the booming and crashes, I had promised myself that no matter who I would marry in the future, I would provide him with nothing less than the respect fit for a partner and Prince. Anything more... I did not know whether I was capable of; whether I dared dream of; whether I was worthy of. 

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