Work Text:
A collection of letters, neither sent nor received, detailing the relationship between Queen Elizabeth of Fairy Fort and Lady Cleo of the Moonwall Dynasty.
1 year before the death of Queen Isabella
Cleo, my love,
I can bear it no longer, this isolation wears on my soul. To be apart from you is to have my very heart ripped from my chest. In these months I have experienced love like never before; I have been seen where in past I was not. You come and go like the tide, and each time you are here, I am filled with a life I had not known before you. When you leave, I am shattered, a distorted fragment pretending to be the girl I was before you.
Mother always said there was no room for love in the lives of people like us. I thought it was wisdom as a child, but now I see the truth. It is cruel, her projecting the miseries of her lonely life onto me in hopes I will end up just as unhappy, and we will finally have found something to relate over. She will not succeed. I have you, dearest, to call mine, and you who will call me yours in return. It is this that renders me untouchable from the plague of solitude so deeply rooted in the soul of she who calls me daughter.
I hate to bore you with the woes of my mother and her ignorance. Unfortunately, without you here, there is little else for me to do or think about. Return to me soon, my darling. Though I know it is out of your control, if there is anything I could do to bring you back to my side, I will do it without question or hesitation.
Yours ever faithfully,
Princess Lizzie
6 months before the death of Queen Isabella
My dearest Lizzie,
I struggle with where to begin with this letter. I will start, as I do with all my letters, by expressing my unending love for you. These past weeks without you have been beyond dull, and I long to be in your embrace once more.I am unsure of how much I am permitted to say, but rest easy, I will return to you soon. After an audience with King Scott tomorrow, I will begin making arrangements to travel back to Fairy Fort. Before you, it weighed heavily on my soul to have to leave Moonwall but now I find myself almost eager to depart. Oh, how you have changed me.
Yours forever,
Lady Cleo
1 month before the death of Queen Isabella
My beautiful Cleo,
I must speak plainly, my love, for in truth I am awfully frustrated. Mother has once again summoned me to her chambers for a private conversation and once again refuses to discuss anything of real merit. I am a grown woman and have been for some years now, however when the topic of politics, warfare, or my future reign comes up, she refuses to engage in any meaningful conversation. You know better than most that I have much to say on the matter, yet it seems our benevolent queen hopes to be succeeded by a sheltered imbecile. Forgive me for putting, what to many would be considered treasonous, to paper, but I can not allow this outrage to go unobserved. One minute she praises my intelligence and success in my lessons, and the next she denies me the use of said intelligence to discuss any real issues. I am not foolish enough to be oblivious to the turmoil brewing in the south, yet she seems to believe me so weak as to require protection from such conversations.
Perhaps she knows that any discussion of recent politics would lead to my staunch rebuke of her oh so favoured neutrality. I simply believe that with the way things are going, we must take hasty action to join this conflict on our own terms lest we be dragged in unwittingly through less favourable means. The kingdom is prosperous. Should war come to our doorstep, we would surely be invaded, and as it stands now, Fairy Fort does not have the resources to withstand such an onslaught. Our numerous alliances, including that with your own kingdom, count for something, yet alliances are not all there is. I understand and appreciate Fairy Fort's history of neutrality and the prosperity it has brought, but times are changing, technologies are evolving, and we must as well, lest we get washed away by the tides of change.
I’m sure when I see you next, I will have plenty more complaints to regale you with, but for now, I will sit in my chambers hoping either the Queen will change her mind and allow me freedom of opinion, or die and allow me to succeed her. A thousand apologies for my tone, I am aware you will endorse it, yet it feels proper to apologize nevertheless.
Sending you all my love,
Princess Lizzie
1 day before the death of Queen Isabella
King Scott,
Your highness, I write to you, not as a lady of your court, Fairy Fort liaison, advisor, or confidant, but as your most humble servant. In the six years since you offered me this life, I have been faithful to a fault and not once asked for anything save forgiveness for the transgressions of my family. I must now plead with you to once more offer me the pity and sympathy you afforded me in past. Sixteen months ago, you sent me to serve as liaison to the Fairy Fort. I knew what this would entail, how it would end, and why you chose me to do it, and with that knowledge, I swore to you that I would not fail. And yet now I write to you in distress, pleading upon your mercy. I cannot complete this mission. To speak plainly, I am in love. I love her more deeply than I have loved anyone, and in return, she loves me with such passion and vigour I have never before known.
You will understand then, why I cannot complete my mission as instructed. It will break me.
In spite of this, I will not fail you. Six years ago, when I was but a child, I swore complete and absolute fealty to you. Never once has this wavered. This weakness of mind will indeed prevent me from carrying out your orders as intended, but I assure you the outcome will be the same. War will come, I swear it, just not at the cost of her.
Your ever faithful servant,
Lady Cleo
2 hours before the death of Queen Isabella
Dearest Lizzie,
I wish I was not writing this, my love, but I have been given an impossible task. Please know that I have loved you since the moment I saw you, and I will continue to until we are both in our graves. It is due to this love that I must write this. If I were to follow the instructions of my king as I have done unquestioningly my whole life, you will meet your grave far sooner than I. It was those instructions that brought me to you but you who gives me the strength to defy them for what I hope will be the only time.
If I were a more foolish woman, I would ask you to leave with me. Alas, I know you as the stars know the sky, and admit it or not, you would never flee from your duty. I wish you would, my dear. It would make this far less painful. What I have chosen to do will hurt you beyond any pain you’ve felt, yet it will not kill you. This is selfish, I am aware, but my dear Lizzie, even if we never see each other again, I need you to live. It will not be easy, but please, my dear. Live for me, and then live for you.
You must know that you are the only love that has ever meant anything to me. I wake in the morning to see your face. If this world was less cruel, I would gladly spend my life at your side, however you wanted me. Each time I leave, I feel as though a piece of me is missing and does not return until I see you once more. While I pray I will see you again, I imagine it is unlikely. I will forever wish we had said goodbye.
I’m sorry, my love,
Cleo
1 month after the death of Queen Isabella
Cleo,
You’ve written to me. The letters stay piled on my desk, cold and unopened. How can you write to me? What is there to say? I cannot bring myself to open them, not just in anger but in fear. What if I read them, and once again, you say all the right words, and I cannot help but fall gracelessly into your waiting arms. That may not happen. I am Queen now, thanks to you. There is no room in my life for love, especially not for she who tore my world to splinters.
You should know, dear, this morning when I received your latest letter, I made my choice. Fairy Fort will be declaring war on the Moonwall Dynasty. I hope this is what you wanted because it is what you deserve.
Yours,
Elizabeth
1 year after the death of Queen Isabella
Lizzie,
I don’t know how to go on like this. There is too much, always. Guilt, shame and anger form an iron collar of which there is no respite. I did not ask for this burden of warmonger, but when they look at me, that is all they see. It chokes me, drowns me, until there is nothing else. I am bleeding out, but I cannot bring myself to bandage the wound. It is what I deserve. Your anger is what I deserve, your hatred is what I deserve.
Everything I have given is for my kingdom, and now I am naught but the king's bloody sword. Even if I found myself kneeling at the altar of forgiveness, I would surely be turned away.
Yours always, in body and mind,
Cleo
2 years after the death of Queen Isabella
Cleo,
I dreamt of you last night. I dream of you often, but last night was particularly harrowing. We were lying side by side in my bed, as we did so often when we were young. You were telling me a story with that delightful passion in your voice. For the life of me I can’t remember what you were saying, as is the nature of dreams. I turned my head to catch a glimpse of your face after so long. Instead of your face as I remember, it was grey, cold. Suddenly we were no longer in my bed, but instead you lay dead in my mother's coffin, slowly being lowered into the ground.
It is cruel to say I miss you, to both of us. Perhaps it is what we deserve. Fairy Fort was not prepared for war, it has drained us of so much, and as Queen I must bear that burden stronger than anyone. When we were together I would often catch you looking at me like I was made of porcelain, something delicate and pure to be protected. In the years since, despite you and many others best efforts I have not broken. Yet no one has looked at me like that.
I have forgotten the colour of your eyes. Please be safe.
Elizabeth
5 years after the death of Queen Isabella
Dearest Lizzie,
I have been thinking of you, as of late. I never really stopped thinking of you, but I am no longer pretending otherwise. There is much I wished you had known, you saw me in a way no one else did yet there was so much I had to hide. I told myself it was because I was protecting you and ensuring my loyalty to my Kingdom. The truth is I was a coward. You were so full of goodness, I thought if you’d known the extent of my miserable youth and what I did to end up so devoted to my king, you would look upon me in disgust or perhaps pity. I would not have been able to bear that.
It does not matter now. I could tell you how I betrayed my family as a child, the things I did to protect myself, and how King Scott, in his endless, pitiful mercy, took me in and made me the person you knew. That means nothing now, not when compared to the terrible things I have done, the things you have done, all in the name of this accursed war. A war I caused, but you started. Maybe I should have told you when I had the chance, but I doubt it would have changed anything. This bloodshed was inevitable.
All my love, and all my regrets,
Cleo
7 years after the death of Queen Isabella
My dear Mother,
How long has it been since you died? I confess I try not to think of you, for when I do, I am flooded with the regrets of my youth. And yet, as of late, I cannot seem to escape you. I see your figure lurking in every darkened corner of this forsaken castle. The idea that this was once the place you lived so happily and full of life ceases to bring me joy as it once did. It serves only to amplify my guilt and make my failures shine brighter.
To think as a child I truly believed I could make half as good a queen as you, even when it was my own truly foolish actions that led to your undoing and perhaps the undoing of Fairy Fort as a kingdom. Perhaps if I had been less blinded by change, I could have recognized the value of the peace you so often preached. This is not to say that I view you as blameless for the person I became. You were at many points overbearing and strict, yet inattentive. This culminated in a child who was terribly rebellious and woefully inclined to fall completely in love with the first person who made her feel seen.
Of all my many regrets, I have never found it in me to allow Cleo to be one of them. And yet when I trace them back, every other regret somehow leads to her. What a horrible fate, to fall in love. I cannot help but selfishly wish her this same feeling that torments my soul. The truth is I must imagine her caring for me still, for if I don’t, the grief would consume me. How pathetic I must seem. A broken queen clinging weakly to a girlhood romance, long taken by the tides of war.
You told me once that love is not kind to people like us. At the time, I did not understand. I had no sense of where I ended, and my love began. Years later, I see so many of these moments of quiet wisdom and understand you more than I have understood anything.
You did not have the privilege nor the dignity of knowing when you will die, I do. That is the truth of this mother. Why I have been thinking of you, seeing your shadow, and writing this letter. I believe I am being poisoned. I do not know by whom, or why, or even how, and I truly do not care. There are mere weeks, perhaps even days, left of my life, and I will not do anything to prevent it.
The fact of the matter is, when I look in the mirror, I no longer see the daughter you raised. I do not know where that girl went, and it pains me to see the woman she has become. In your name, I have committed atrocities with no regard for what you would have wanted. Our kingdom is so much stronger now, Mother, but it is full of so much pain.
My pain. You would have hated it. And that is how I know that I have done wrong, and thus this incoming death is deserved. May Fairy Fort be stronger and happier when this cursed bloodline finally dies.
I can only hope you will forgive me when we meet again.
Queen Elizabeth
3 days after the death of Queen Elizabeth
Dearest Lizzie,
How could you leave me? I have spent so much of my life without you, far more than those few years by your side. Yet since I met you, every second of my life has been marked by your presence. On that night, where I killed the Queen and started this horrid war, I vowed I would never see you again. Yet I still rose each morning praying that today is the day where I break my vow. I suppose there is no way to break it anymore. I do not know how to go on without you. I do not know how to wake up in a world you are not in, fight a battle you no longer oppose, live a life where no one has loved me.
I hope to see you soon,
Your Cleo