A dreadful nuisance for my parents. They had betrothed me to the king of another land in an almost entirely mercenary trade agreement, and while they had expected me to run away, there is some hope for retrieving a lost princess and a good deal less for reviving a dead princess. They’re useless for anything except looking elegant and tragic in their glass coffins. Even my parents agreed that a dead princess was a minor obstacle in forming successful alliances.
A vicious fever killed me, a week before the king was coming to meet me. But now, with the pawn casually flicked off the board, there was no alliance…no dowry either, but it irked my parents to disappoint the young king (and lose the trading rights).
Did they mourn me and regretfully tell the king that the arrangement was off because there was no bride?
No.
Only a few knew when I sickened, and even fewer when I died. They couldn’t afford the king to hear of my illness and think I was a sickly princess, such being only slightly more desirable than dead princesses. I did not have princess’ burial, smothered with flowers and laid in the royal crypt. I was placed in a wooden coffin and forgotten in a minor nobleman’s crypt. My marker held the name of a lady-in-waiting I had particularly despised.
This lady, who brought me too sweet honeyed milk at night and hated all I liked, was told to assume my position. Paid, rather. It was ridiculously easy; she stayed in my room, seen by a very few trusted servants until the king came. And so she became the princess, and I the deceased noblewoman. The king couldn’t know the difference; she had sat for my royal portrait. We looked somewhat alike, but she was by far the more beautiful, and my parents were forever wondering why I wasn’t more like her. We were of the same height, though, and if her eyes were larger and bluer than mine, what of it?
She wore a veil when the comely king arrived, in a noisy and colorful procession. Watching him, I thought wistfully that he might have been nice. She looked infuriatingly content. When he took her away to the wedding in his kingdom in a gilded carriage, she raised her slender hand to wave to the people who had loved me. They never knew that they were not waving to me. All this I watched, an insubstantial ghost, while my body lay cold in a tomb that was not mine, deprived of everything that should have been mine. I had not wanted it when I was alive, but being dead made a surprising amount of difference.
The dead do tell stories. People don’t want to listen. Why should they? Who would prefer the tale of a wronged and dead princess when the tale they are told—a handsome young king marrying a beautiful princess and living happily ever after—is far more pleasant? Dead princesses have no place in this story at all.
***
But even the dead princess doesn’t know about the small crystal vial among the new queen’s luggage. It is perfectly clear, but far too sickly sweet in smell even to be perfume. The queen smiles, thinking of it. Not now, but perhaps someday, when the king’s interests have strayed and wrinkles have found their way into her face, he, too, will drink a glass of too sweet honeyed wine and fall sick to a wasting fever. And history will note as a saddened queen reluctantly assumes the throne.
The first line of this story came from a song lyric that I misheard. It was supposed to be "I lied when I was seventeen," and I wasn't paying attention. From then on, the idea of how the traditional 'happily ever after' ending could really be far too much of a generalization-- that the view history takes on something isn't truth at all. As always, I like the idea that appearances aren't always reality and that even the central players sometimes don't know the truth.
