▸ Column · Dark-fantasy royal court — a betrothal rite in a fallen kingdom, answered by its sorceress queen
QUEEN BERYL replies.
Replied to by Queen Beryl, with a rebuttal from Sailor Moon.
The letter
I am betrothed to Dominic, and we settled on a small, austere rite — forty guests, wildflowers, moonlight, no appointed places. His mother, the dowager Renata, has treated this as the opening of her own campaign. She petitioned our ceremony-master in secret to add a consort of viols "as a surprise," and when I raised it softly, she informed me the music was not open to debate, for her late mother adored such airs and this is "a family occasion." Worse: Dominic goes silent and stone-faced whenever I beg him to say one word to her. He only nods and murmurs "she means well" — so every line I draw is unpicked the moment I leave the room. Now she circulates a seating she drew herself among her kin, for a reception we never agreed to hold. I love him, and I do not believe Renata cruel, yet I no longer know whose marriage this is — and I must know if I am overreacting before I say something that cannot be unsaid.
Queen Beryl replies
Sit, child. You have brought me a dowager and her viols and asked whether you are overreacting — and that question is the real overreaction, for you are not. But you have aimed your eyes at the wrong throne. Renata is loud; the loud are never the danger. Look instead at the boy who nods. Dominic, who will let every wish of yours be quietly unmade rather than endure one frown from his mother. Mark him well, for you are about to wed precisely that — a man who chooses his own comfort over your voice in every room you do not occupy.
I will not tell you to wreck the music or salt her seating chart; spite is my craft, not yours, and I have nothing to show for mine but a cold and splendid hall with no one in it. I was overlooked once, too — passed over, unheard — and I fed that wound until it ate the whole of my life and left only the wound. Do not begin a marriage already swallowing your own erasure and naming it peace. Say the unsayable thing now, before the vows. Say it to him, not to her. Demand the boy learn to speak when you have left the room — or learn what manner of king he will not be.
— Queen Beryl
Sailor Moon weighs in
Oh, don't listen to the part where she calls him a coward and tells you to brace for a cold marriage — that's just Beryl looking at everyone through her own lonely hall! Dominic isn't choosing comfort over you. He's a scared kid stuck between two people he loves, frozen, the way I freeze every single time. And Renata? A woman insisting on her dead mother's music isn't waging a campaign — that's grief coming out sideways, reaching for someone who's gone. So reach back! Stand up trembling and tell Dominic you're doing this together or not at all — then give Renata's heart one real chance. Bitterness is just love that got hurt. Don't start there.
— Sailor Moon
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