Must be the different nicknames (Euridice on AO3, LaurelinElena on ff.net) as I am pretty sure to have comment your works (at least that one) there more than once there (Sometimes I still read on ff.net but I usually do not comment there so and in general I often just read stories...)
The Queen is Dead!: Katherine of Aragon dies in 1518
- Thread starter FalconHonour
- Start date
Section CLII - April 1524
Stirling, April 1524
“I don’t believe my brother!” Margaret snarled, clenching her fist around the missive from England, so that it crumpled and tore beneath her hold.
“My Lady?” Catherine Erskine, one of Margaret’s teenage attendants, glanced up, brow furrowed in confusion.
“That’s two sons and three daughters he has now! Five living children! Five! And yet not one of them bar his eldest bears a Tudor name! Has he forgotten that he owes his very throne to our mother’s blood, our father’s strength and our grandmother’s scheming? You’d think one of them, at the very least, would merit being a namesake to the next generation. But no. As ever, Harry has to know better.”
The colour flooded Margaret’s cheeks as she prowled her chamber, temper flaring in her blood at this blatant slight to her heritage.
Catherine watched her mistress warily, mulling over the tirade as she did so. Suddenly, she blanched.
“Did you say King Henry has five living children, My Lady?”
“Yes,” Margaret tossed her head impatiently. Catherine crossed herself.
“But that means Queen Mary birthed three babes at once!” The young girl’s jaw dropped, “I thought that was impossible!”
“Clearly not. But then, my brother’s Boleyn girl has always proven herself as fertile as a bitch in heat. She was with child before Harry had even ridden off to war in her honour, for God’s sake! Besides, the multiple birth only makes my brother’s slight to our family all the greater. I’ve never seen such hubris. Five living children and only one of them bears a Tudor name. Oh, Lionel’s passable, I suppose, but the others! The others! He’s named one for his dead Queen, another for a Duchess who was accused of bewitching our grandfather, and his newest son for the Plantagenet usurper. The usurper!”
Saying the words out loud was the final straw. Too shocked to keep herself upright any longer, Margaret collapsed into the window seat and clicked her fingers for a goblet of wine.
Catherine brought it to her obediently, chewing the inside of her cheek surreptitiously.
“I think it’s romantic that King Henry has named his new daughter for the late Queen Katherine,” she said tentatively, “Surely it shows that he still loves her and wants to honour her memory, even after all these years?”
Margaret’s head snapped up at her words. She fixed Catherine with a gimlet stare.
“Need I remind you, Mistress Erskine, that very same Queen was responsible for the forces that slew our King at Flodden Field? The very same woman who wanted to send my brother my husband’s cleaved off head and had to be talked out of it – by her generals no less? Forgive me if I do not exactly mourn the woman or delight in her memory being honoured. Even if Harry didn’t deem myself or my grandmother to be suitable namesakes for my new niece, what’s wrong with Elizabeth, I ask you? Why, it would even have honoured both sides of the child’s family, for Lady Ormonde is an Elizabeth too. But no, Harry had to go with Katharine, didn’t he? Katharine and Jacquetta. Jacquetta of all names! It’s not even English!”
Exhaling, Margaret flopped back in her seat, taking advantage of the privacy of her own rooms to behave as she pleased rather than as decorum demanded.
Silence reigned for several seconds.
“Still, to father three children at once is a remarkable statement of King Henry’s virility, especially since Her Grace Queen Mary seems to have come through the birth unscathed as well. And to have conquered and held such a swathe of France with the ease that His Grace has…Why, I’d almost say it smacks of Your Grace’s family being blessed by God.”
Something in Catherine’s tone brought Margaret up short. She glanced across at her handmaiden. Catherine had picked the message from England up from where it had fallen when Margaret released it as she collapsed on to the window seat and was smoothing it between her hands. Sly mischief gleamed in her blue eyes.
For a moment, Margaret wondered what Catherine was implying. As it sank in, however, a sly smile spread across her own face as well.
Setting her wine aside, she sprang to her feet and clapped her hands for her household’s attention, startling the lot of them.
“Prepare yourselves, ladies! We go to the Chapel at once, to give thanks for the safe arrival of my nieces and nephew, the Lord Richard, Lady Katharine and Lady Jacquetta!”
As she sailed forth at the head of her train a few minutes later, she couldn’t stop a smirk coming to her lips. Angus might have her son, her precious James, in his control, but what he did not have was royal blood in his veins. Let him see her praising God for her brother’s children, for his victories in France, and tremble at the thought of what Margaret’s connections might do to him, if she only asked it of them.
James did invade England while married to it's king's sister, he was kind of asking to die. Margaret... Good old angry Margaret, I hope her prayers don't actually end up being a curse to Henry and Marie's triplets.. Good chapter!
Ah, well, that would be telling, wouldn't it?
But yes, I've always seen Margaret and Henry as having a very antagonistic relationship, to say the least... It was Arthur and Margaret and Mary and Henry in the nursery, in my head.Pretty likely was like thatAh, well, that would be telling, wouldn't it?
Oh, they've already met and had little Meg. Scotland basically goes as OTL until 1526, as I said upthread, and then changes a bit as Henry finally decides that Tudor honour is more important than his own personal dislike of his older sister...
Well, it would make sense for one of the new English Ladies to be married into the northern neighbour like her aunt was before her, wouldn't it?? And yes, Margaret did twig. She's a Tudor. Turning every situation in her favour as best she can must be in her blood...
Section CLIII - May 1524
Baynard's Castle, May 1524
George was jolted out of sleep by Kathy’s scream.
Scarcely pausing to throw back the bedclothes, he rushed into her chamber to see the sheets of her bed awash with blood.
Kathy was curled in a foetal position, almost insensible with pain and grief. Her hands were pressed between her legs in a feeble attempt to stem the bleeding.
George’s heart tore. He swore under his breath and whirled on his heel, intent on finding a midwife, a physician, anyone who might be able to help.
As he turned, however, his shadow fell on the bed, the change in light doing more to alert Kathy to his presence than any noise he might have made would have done.
She raised her head, “George.”
The raspy plea stopped him in his tracks. He glanced back, and Kathy locked anguished eyes with his dark gaze.
She shook her head slightly. “Stay. I want you here. Please.”
“But – Kathy, darling…”
“Please!” The word came out brokenly, and she squeezed her eyes shut, obviously fighting tears.
In the face of her pitiful bravery, George was utterly powerless.
Heedless of the fact that he would ruin his nightshirt, heedless of the fact that his father would scorn him for doing such a thing, he climbed on to the bed and pulled Kathy into his arms, capturing her hands in his as he did so.
“Shh, love, shh. There’s nothing you can do. Just let it happen. Let it happen. Shh, shh.”
He held her and rocked her, murmuring soothing nonsense into her damp chestnut brown hair. Kathy buried her face in his shoulder, weeping, flinching every time another wave of pain crested over her.
They lay like that for several hours, as the dawn light crept in through the window, until it was quite clear that there was nothing left of the child they hadn’t even told anyone they were expecting.
I know. But people did say it was all going too well, so I thought I'd throw a chapter in that showed, that while Henry and Marie are on top of the world, the same cannot necessarily be said for those around them...
Well that's not the happiest of news, I haven't had children yet or lived during that time (I hope this doesn't offend anyone) but I think losing an unborn child is possibly a little less awful then bringing a child into the world and then it suddenly dies... It seems we both added some rather sad events to our timelines recently. Good chapter!
No, I didn't expect it to be. But everyone said everything was going too well, so...
I haven't had kids either, but one or two of these pregnancies have got to end badly, if only to be realistic to the time period. I do feel for George and Kathy, though.
Feel very sorry for George and Kathy. Losing a child, even an unborn one, is such an awful experience.