~𝕭𝖊𝖙𝖗𝖆𝖞𝖆𝖑 𝖎𝖘 𝖔𝖓𝖑𝖞 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖇𝖊𝖌𝖎𝖓𝖓𝖎𝖓𝖌~
Born the youngest daughter of Charles I, Duke of Bourbon, Constance of Bourbon grows up amidst comfort and splendour on her powerful family's estates in France. A shy child, she prefers her...
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~The Bloody Meadow~
29th of March 1461....
Edward looked around, his vision blurred by the icy flecks of snow that swirled around the battlefield. From all directions the agonised cries of men echoed and blood soaked the ground, the pure white blanket of ice ground into a grisly mud by hard boots and broken bodies.
Horses whinnied as their riders plunged them into the freezing river running across the field, trampling soldiers beneath their feet, drowning them, crushing their skulls. Never had a battle been so brutal.
Four hours the battle had raged, slaughtering men of Lancaster and York in numbers he doubted even God could count amidst the blinding snowstorm. Many had been slaughtered by blades, even more through the volleys of arrows sent back and forth between the two sides, giving no warning as they descended onto the battlefield in a deadly rain through the snow.
Was this how it had been at Wakefield, he wondered, a world of fatal, icy white swirling around all, a mocking cage with moving bars, so simple yet so difficult to escape, not knowing where the next strike, the next battle cry would come from? Was this how his Father died, in the icy grip of death, the snow stained with his blood, red bleeding through the white, destroying it....
He shook his head, driving himself through the next line of soldiers, their warm blood spraying on his face as he slashed their throats, cut open their bellies.
Such grisly thoughts plagued him day and night, whirling around and around in his mind even when his own life was at stake, wondering what pain they'd felt, how much they'd suffered....the anger it sparked drove him on, twisting him into the warrior with the luck of the Devil he would ensure the Lancastrians feared.
They already did, that much he knew, even before he stepped on a battlefield, men shrunk away from him, not eager to see him draw his sword as he did now, cutting through men like sheaves of wheat.
They fell to the floor, lifeless puppets of the enemy, their strings cut, leading him ever and ever closer to defeating their puppeteer. In the heat of battle, they were not men to his eyes, not humans with families, they were part of the devil's army that had taken his kin, his Father, Edmund.
With a yell he fought on, driving his sword through man after man and kicking them aside. All around cries for York echoed in his ears, drowning out those for Lancaster, mingling with cries of King Edward, a cry he almost refused to hear.
It should be King Richard the men rallied to, it should've been his Father they gathered around. To hear his own name on their lips was wrong. It was all so so wrong - the timeline of his life he'd imagined turned on it's head - and yet he had no choice but to accept it. His Father was dead and, if he faltered, he would be to.
