Raegan Mallory ♚ Jonathan IV of Conté (![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} northernking) wrote in ![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} thereincarnates, |
This wasn't the first ball that Rae had been to, but she was already certain that it would be the first one she had ever enjoyed, and it had everything to do with the company that she was keeping. There'd been many balls, when she was growing up. Balls where her father, the king, would try to impress his nobles. Where Raegan, his only daughter, was meant to be on display as an example to them of his perfect family. Everyone had known that her father had never been meant to be king, after all, that it was always supposed to be his elder brother, before the incident that had left the heir dead, with no one to step in but the second choice younger brother.
There'd been balls where her father did his best to marry her off to some younger son from another kingdom, certain that Rae wasn't fit to rule on her own merits. In fact, he hadn't thought that she was meant to rule at all. Raegan had always been, as a daughter, unsatisfactory, and he'd never stopped letting her know it. She couldn't even smile properly, and she never laughed. She hadn't charmed a single person, in fact, and the future Queen of Tortall ought to be charming. His brother's wife had been, after all. Raegan had tried her best, but the expectations had worn her thin. She hadn't even known how to smile, hadn't been able to coax the muscles of her face into even attempting it.
And then her father had died, unexpectedly. A fever. A fever had felled the king, and left Rae the sole heir to the throne, an heir that had been no more prepared for her role than her father had. There was even less for Rae to smile about as a queen than there had been when she was nothing more than a princess. She'd done her best, of course, to be a fair queen. To be a good queen. She always heard her father's voice at the back of her mind, though, telling her all the ways in which she would never measure up, never be a good enough queen to stand on her own. He'd said, on his very deathbed, that he ought to have forced her to marry, that he was certain he could have found someone who'd marry her for the throne alone.
He'd never known, before he died, that Raegan would never have been happy with a prince at all. Nor with any man. Oh, she'd do her duty by the kingdom, eventually. Select someone loyal, someone she could trust, to father a child on her so that the royal line could continue. None of the princes that had come courting, in even greater numbers after she'd inherited the throne, would ever bring a smile to her face.
Only a girl on a horse had been able to do that.
Raegan's back was stick straight, shoulders high and proud, but there was a smile on her face as she made her way into the ballroom, companion at her side. "If you want to eat, we'd better do it fast. Once someone's caught us to start talking, there's not going to be a chance at it until after the best bits are gone." The hazard of a crown, she supposed, but that crown felt far more comfortable now, with Alex to remind her that she was more than just a head for it to rest on.