An Open Letter.
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HIS IMPERIAL MAJESTY, Tiberias I of the House Horen
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Dear Father,
It is a strange thing to be born an Emperor’s daughter. I am thusly born into the splendour of your labour, a name bestowed as testament of your victories. Your hand as it has cradled mine and mine lady mother’s, and your very hand as well which has brought empire from rubble and ruin. But father, it has been my privilege to be your daughter alone; not as princess to the Empire, but solely a daughter beloved.
I do not have Hadrian’s burden of expectation, a brow heavy with dignities. Nor Maximillian’s penchant for command. Neither, as well, my twin’s desire for early demise. Either by your own will or another’s, you have generously turned your cheek away from my lack of partaking in your Imperial court. Therefore, you will find in me, perhaps, the leisure robbed of your own life.
Father, I have seen the grey mountains upon our horizon. So grey from the distance of our towers, but blossomed vivid green in my journey thereafter. I have seen a temple upon white mountains, a flame upon the snow. A whisper in the fields, golden as my mother’s hair. It is peace, father, that I wish we could have shared - but it is peace willfully gifted, a privilege I cannot return.
Dear Father, it is a strange thing for a daughter to stand on the eclipse of her father’s life. The Empire will not know you as I have. Not through broken pastries snuck across tables, nor shared stories in gentle nights. Neither as the man whom guided my first steps, the man which tended to monsters beneath my beds.
Father, who do you think it is that Hadrian sees upon those coronation steps — his father, or his emperor? Perhaps to him, both are one and the same. I wonder if he, too, I will learn to see as both brother and emperor, or perhaps I will struggle to separate him from his ordained duty. Selfishly, in him I hope I will see you in times when you are long past. Yet, as we live now, celebration becomes opportune, that I might see him ascend as he is, and my father beside. God willing, the road back will be kind and without trouble, but I have sent ahead the portraits I have made of yourselves in the case that it is not. A coronation is a happy day; though I lose a brother, the Empire gains a good man.
With Love,
Joan Mariana Horen.
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HIS IMPERIAL MAJESTY, Hadrian I of the House Horen
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