Fate has never been kind to Francis de Valois, nor to Mary Stuart. Whether that be in the reality wherein the crowns upon their heads weigh down their shoulders, or in the reality where the only decoration their hair finds are the willowed roses found on their fathers' porches. In a universe, porches are swapped with porsches and money is no object at all. In some universes, they live in the most lavish luxury known to mankind, and in others, there are the most backbreaking hardship ever to be written onto parchment or paper. Some universes, they are so cold in their medieval little cottage that was almost always damp with the snow, five children at their feet, while in others, they take to the skies in private planes, and birth no children at all. In one universe, the renaissance Queen bares no children to her King -although people will know that it is no fault of her own- and in another, they reach as many as seventeen offspring. In one universe, she bares three children in total, but none to the beloved King who took to his grave before she could take to her motherly role. Two daughters to a wicked usurper, and one to a madman who meets his death by her own hand. In a certain reality, she lives a tragic life of no happiness and heartache, meeting death like an old friend thanks to a dozen blows from the axe. In one universe, the only child they were ever going to have, he slips from his mothers' womb far too soon to live in this Godforsaken world. While in another, their child is lost, yes, but it is a far more dramatic affair that will go down in the storybooks for centuries to come. In this universe, it is the King who meets his end by the chopping block.
The child is lost, but it is not on the day his bastard half brother is introduced to the Catholic God, his mother's shoes are not stained with blood and the sky is not lit in her grief. No, the child sticks to her womb and flourishes in a large bump that brought his mother and father so much joy and extaticment that nothing else in the world mattered more than this tiny life growing inside of the Queen, the first of many.
After a long, thirty nine hours of labor, French Court rejoices with such excitement at the cry of a healthy pair or male lungs, screaming furiously at the notion of being birthed. The French drink and light the sky in a thousand colours with the excitement of the heir that will grant them empire. The Scots will dance and they will sing, power forever connected to the European countries separated by the sea. Elizabeth, the bastard Queen of England, she will throw such a tantrum after the news that her meeting room will not be clean for nine days.
This King Francis, he will live until hs maturity, but it will be him to lose his life to a sword. His crown will be taken from him by an uprising lead by his Protestant Navarrian cousin. Who, let it be known, doesn't live long enough to wear the Valois' crown, for he is dead from a poisoned jug of wine, young Charles taking his place in the throne. Catherine, the grieving mother, who poisons the bastard himself, she will tremble and scream as King Antoine dies at her hand, so bereft by her loss that she seems to lose her mind for several years to come.
But that is not the focus point of our story, reader. No, what we focus upon is what -arguably- is the true death of King Francis II of Valois. Yes, he lives for years afterwards, but not in the same way. Not in the way that matters, anyway. He has spent the last seven and a half months planning a disgustingly perfect future of Europe with the beautiful, raven haired siren Queen by his side, the one who grows his heir healthily in her womb. They dream of a better world, one better than the one of corruption, lies, murder and political backstabbing that they had grown up within.
This child, he would have been the future of the European monarchy. And yes, in another world, he is. Emperor James lives to inherit the entire British isles (after his mother takes her cousin's head for her role in the attempted murder of his father), France, Navarre -the infamous lost war, the match lit by King Antione after the death of Princes Louis and Marcus, but who loses everything because of his vengeance. His wife, his marriage, his children, his crown, his sanity- and the Netherlands. He weds a beautiful Danish Queen, and they rule with glory and just, but that is not the reality we live within, reader.
No, this James, he is not miscarried, he is birthed after a horrid labor, yes. But the joy of hs birth is lost after it becomes apparent that the nursemaids wait to attend to their Queen, too long. As, a few hours later, the Queen is laying pale and shivering, the afterbirth beginning to rot her insides. The beautiful golden King, he holds her hand and begs her to fight back from her sickness, for him, for their son, for their countries, he gets the best physicians in the country to do whatever they can to save his Queen's life. And yes, they manage to remove her afterbirth, but the damage is done. Nineteen days of suffering, of fever and vomiting and fainting and shivering and sweating, the Queen of Scotland, she lays dead from infection in her childbed.
And that precious baby boy, who the King and Queen have spent several months planning for, nine months anxiously awaiting for the arrival of? He is found dead in his cot at three days old.
The two of them, they are buried in the land of the French, not the land in the north, not the land of their blood, the land that neither had seen in far too long. The Queen lays in her tomb of white marble and gold, clutching her baby to her chest, layen to rest in a private meadow on an isolated isle in the middle of the largest piece of water France ever has to offer.
It is said that this blow, the loss of his wife and his son, is the one blow the King of France cannot recover from. It is said that the day that they lay Mary and James to their eternal rest, the King of France, he ages a decade that day. And when he returns to courtly duties several weeks later, he is no more or less the son of his father, ruling with an iron fist with no mercy in his heart. Court shivers when the handsome King with the weight of the world walks past, and they begin to fear him in the same way they feared his father. He never smiles again, not even at the bastard boy who he loved to the point where his marriage was nearly cracked irreversibly. The child is sent away, and he dies from plague two years later.
A decade and a half later, the King loses his life in a duel with Antoine de Bourbon. The sword penetrates his chest, but he doesn't try and struggle. No, he drops his blade with the assuredness that his life would be avenged, and prepares to join his missing pieces, the ones that appeared in front of him just before the life faded from his eye, and she holds their child in one arm, the other extending out to him, inviting him to join them in the next life.
Needless to say, fate is never fair to King Francis and Queen Mary. But they hold one thing that fate can never take away. They love they share can never be shaken, fate be damned.
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You Are My Light Part II
Historical Fiction-Reign Oneshots/Taking Requests- The world can be dark, Mary, and uncertain and cruel. The only thing that matters is that we face it together. No matter what happens, you are my light. Part 2! -Read TEML first!-
