This is brilliant and tragic and absolutely convincing and almost painful to read. I felt a sense of creeping dread all the way through, but I was also utterly absorbed in the lives of these women. You evoke their era beautifully, and the interplay between their moral decisions and betrayals and what we know of the history they helped to shape casts a pall over their story, a shiver at the way evil can ruin innocence simply by crossing its path. On top of that, the helplessness and devastation of old age is so starkly chronicled it wrings my heart. Yet there's also tenderness, and it makes Bathilda's ultimate fate almost unbearable.
It's too late at night for me to do this justice, but it's one of those unforgettable stories that conjures up an entire lifespan, an age that has passed away, a legacy that's unintentionally appalling. I'll have to come back later and try to be more coherent, but I feel genuinely haunted by this fic. It's inexorable and sad and spellbinding, and I'm bowled over.