The Final Year of Empress Anne I

[frankdh 2418]

Original PK post

 

https://on.soundcloud.com/IsaSB6x07RoKAWDycU

 

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Found within her lost casket by the NGS, these entries belong to the Novellen Empress Anne I. While most of the journal had weathered away, what remains was written in the last year before her passing.

 

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12th of Owyn’s Flame, 1799

My diagnosis exhausts me. The physicians continue to visit, and always when I am simply trying to work. They warn the cancer will spread, but what is left to do? Cleave away at chunks of me? I would prefer to remain wholly intact, thank you. I will not insult the men who blew themselves to bits diving in front of exploding cannons to save me by consenting to such irksome surgical tactics.

 

Snow has fallen upon our city of Providence. I am glad that this kind of snow - once every fifty years, falls on this continent too. While Providence is no Helena, the snow has that same diamond-like sparkle. Oh, how I love Tuvmas. Perhaps I should encourage someone to host an ice-skating event. 

 

 

 

23rd of Godfrey’s Triumph, 1799

    I spent some time with Elizabeth Anne today. I am not sure what I did to be blessed with such an intelligent daughter. The way her eyes lit up when discussing our empire, and her own projects… I find myself tearing up at the memory. But there was something else, in the way she looked at me. Does she know?

 

 

9th of Sun’s Smile, 1799

    The physicians postulate that the cancer has spread to my lungs now, with how I’ve been coughing. I have chosen to become something of a recluse -- the people need not to see their empress struggling. The Tuvmas season is one of joy and merriment -- it is not the time to mourn an old woman, especially when the threats of the Iron Accord loom in the winter chill. For the sake of my people -- oh, my sweet Oren, and our enemies’ craving the taste of blood in the water, I will not speak of it.

 

    For the first time in quite a while, I stopped to study myself in the mirror. I am grateful that I was at least granted enough time in this life to see wrinkles and grey hair. I hope it is age that can be blamed for my growing frailty, and loss in weight. Joseph, head always in the clouds, has yet to catch on. His inquiries about my cough were eased when I blamed the change in weather, and did in fact, praise me for finally being rid of the weight I’d gained in bearing him six children.

 

 

 

5th of Harren’s Folley, 1799

    I spent a little time with Elizabeth Anne again today. We were speaking of the children, and presents, and who to give what, but it was in all of this I found myself overcome with shame. I dismissed myself haphazardly - I know not if she saw my tears. 

 

    For God’s sake, why didn’t I do more?  Was it my hatred for my son that distracted me? Was it my disdain for my father’s mistress, and her powdered face? 

 

    Or was all of it just due to the hatred of myself? Maybe that is where this cancer comes from. A physical manifestation, born of my own self-loathing. 

 

    I let myself be blinded by it. And in doing so, I failed them. The women of the empire are left in the same position they started in, upon my coronation. Why did I not strive for equal inheritance, why did not I do more to liberate them from the patriarchal systems that have such a grip on our empire? MY empire? 

 

    Nay, to discredit women’s capability to lead, to be a true part of the empire’s politics and leadership, is to discredit myself. How I wish I realized this long before the cancer ever crept into my body. Had only the notion struck me as the crown rested upon my head, perhaps I would have liberated not only myself, but the women of Oren.

 

 

18th of Sigismund’s End, 1799

    I can tell I have little time left. It takes so much effort to go beyond the palace walls these days - and I can only get that far thanks to the overabundance of sofas.

 

    I spent time in our grand library today, reading through our histories. At every turn, I wondered of the women who were disregarded, discredited, and written off as nothing more than child-bearers and emotional fools.  I know this to be untrue, and I scolded myself for never questioning the lack of women in these texts. There is Lorina Carrion - a woman of centuries’ past, who is probably one of the very few mentioned of fondly. But she had to flee to the Church as a nun, and abandon all titles and all else owed to her by her blood. And then Empress Adelheid, consort of John I of Felson, who was divorced by the emperor and then forcefully exiled, only to be torn to shreds numerous times in literature and edicts and even in memory. I heard of her “emotional insanity” long after she was dead and Felson was left abandoned for Axios. It is only now that I question the truth of it. I wonder, why did I never question the male-centric narrative before? Was I just too accepting of the way of things? Too used to it?

 

    The sting of regret still permeates. I can only hope, if anything, my name in the list of monarchs has done enough to prove that women are worthy of the chance. 

 

    Yet, I find myself twinged with bitterness as I write. Should women need to prove themselves at all? Should I have walked this path with so much fear of criticism? Often I was afraid if I did anything too radical I would be cast aside with eyerolls and vicious commentary, and that my gender would be to blame. I was afraid those in power would mutter to themselves never again, and write away the laws of the heir-presumptive. And yet, men are free to make all the mistakes they wish -- lose wars, lose empires, and that does not doom their entire gender from ever having the opportunity again. And lord, after the Sutican War, maybe it should’ve.

 

I have spent so many years of my life desiring the easier route of manhood. Hell, I even dressed as Aurelius, clad in his armor, for Hallows Eve back in my early thirties. But what of the little girl I was? What of the young lady who shook in fear at her own wedding day, under a hundred pairs of eyes? What of the woman who was coronated as ‘the first’? 
    
    Is it that I longed to be Andrew to be more easily accepted? Was it a lifetime of stares that disconnected me from my own femininity? Or was it my father’s resentful gaze alone? It is only now as I write that I realize this should have never been the environment at all. It was unfair from the start. 

 

    And how unfair it is for all women. How sickening. Why is it that women are dismissed as event-hostesses, and considered otherwise irrelevant and emotional? Even the empress-consort is doomed to such a role. Teaparty after teaparty, soirees, markets… and worst of all, the Social Season. Should she not have the chance to speak on behalf of the empire’s women and girls, and to advocate for them? Should she not have a seat at the House of Lords, and stand shoulder to shoulder with her husband upon the dais at court? Should she not be listened to, and admired?

 

   I should have made Elizabeth Anne the heir-apparent. She is courageous, strong, and brilliant. She, like all the women of Oren, are deserving of more. 

 

 It is too late for me to change things now. Such a sudden move would be reckless and irresponsible, when I know that I will not be there to guide its transition.

 

If the people of Oren take any one lesson from me, I hope it is one of equality. I hope that women are seen as they truly are -- capable, strong, and resilient. 

 

 

20th of Horen's Calling, 1800

    It is my hope that the people of the empire do not blame themselves for the matter of my death. My silent killer was not caused by the stress of ruling, or the fear of the future, but the hatred of myself; the hatred of who I was, and who I could never be. Over the course of my life, I’ve come to love Oren more deeply than anything else, and… simply, I only wished to say goodbye.

 

[tilly 5115]

Princess Mattea Asadha laid the missive in her lap and dug into the work of historical significance. ((will write more, driving))

[KBR 2046]

An ancient Orenian soldier brooded within an Imperial tavern, his cowl drawl high to ward off more than the cold. It had been many decades since he last allowed his thoughts to stray back to the days of the Fourth Brigade. A faint smile touched his lips.
He had served under Empress Anne long enough to recognize her hand in the words that survived her, unadorned, unflinching, and painfully honest. He remembered her not as the figure preserved in the annals, but as the sovereign who stood before the Titan without trembling, who bore witness to the Pact's reinstatement. The Journal's discovery stirred embers he had thought long dead. If her words had endured, perhaps her intent had as well.
 

Spoiler

 

[Urahra 5776]

A certain dark elf had the privilege of living under the late Empress's reign and even meeting her, once or twice, in passing. She holds that era of Oren fondly in her heart. It was a peaceful time, a flowering of knowledge and culture unlike any that had come previous, and that was at least partially due to the Empress's influence. Though Anne may have died with regrets, she fostered one of the most wonderful eras in Oren's history - an era that this dark elf will always recall with love.

[Ivoreyy 2303]

Elizabeth Anne had wrote lots, and wrote often. On the eve of her Mother’s death, she’d heard the cries erupt through the city of Providence. 
 

The Empress is dead. Long live the Emperor.

 

In her journal, she wrote:

 

“…the cries reach my window before the weight of my Mother’s death is allowed to settle in my chest. I do not resent the crown that passes me by; I simply feel the absence of what could have been. Grief, I learn tonight, is not only for the dead, but equally so for the futures that die with them.”

[MunaZaldrizoti 8037]

The Lady Mayor of Saint Godwinsburg returned home from the nuptial celebrations held within that present Imperium's capital, to find a gifted manuscript of those recovered diary entries sat upon her desk. An Aldersberg by birth, the history of what they dubbed 'Petrine Oren' and the life of her distant ancestors drew her appeal like no other subject could. But especially Empress Anne, whom had led and built one of the strongest empires to exist in Humanity's long history. A woman, at the helm of a united human realm. It made her recent debates with the Archduke of Alba all the more poignant - that leadership and competence flowed within her very veins, regardless of the gender GOD had bestowed upon her.

 

But at that archive's conclusion, the lady did ponder: When again might a woman stand at the prow of humanity's great ship, to steer her people into another gilded age?

[Morigung-oog 5697]

Holy Ser Valithael af Bene Lisse had endured centuries, though the years of Empress Anne's reign were among the simpler of those.  She reflected upon the decades spent dancing on eggshells and rejecting the advances of her father, and the sense of peace that came with his death. Valindra smiled in fondness. She'd known Anne from birth.. What a fine woman she'd become. Valithael was slow to trust and slow to respect, yet throughout her years the late Anne had earned both.