Elegy for Francis, Duke of Dukes | An Alternate History

Endings and Beginnings

FIRST STANZA, VERSE I

Francis of Brittany is dead, and soon I will be too. No tragedy has claimed us but the passage of time. His old, wind-weathered body was too feeble to fight off influenza and it took him at the age of eighty-one. I passed that milestone forever ago, sometime in the spring of 1588. By then he had already been dead for nearly fourteen years. Since my dearest friend never got a chance to let the world see him for what he truly was, I will do it to the best of my knowledge and ability.

He was born on Christmas. It was just ten weeks after the Spanish expedition to the Americas struck land in 1492. The reason he existed to begin with was political. Duchess Anne needed a child to prevent dynastic extinction and got that through a marriage with the Count of Flanders. What never occurred to her was that a living, thinking being had been created through her actions.

Francis was seen more as a tool to be used for the continuation of the dynasty than as a human. The only people to recognize his existence were the Maltese slaves who took care of him. They took pity on him, frequently taking him on trips to Saint-Nazaire in the south. Goods of all descriptions could be seen, most originating from nations in and along the Mediterranean. Every color of the rainbow and all that laid in between was present.

A caravan of bodyguards always followed him closer than his own shadow. At all times they pestered him with their caution. No amount of complaining or threatening could make them see reason for they were under orders from the Duchess herself. Despite their watchfulness, they were ultimately unable to stop tragedy from occurring.