The Howard's Archive

Prologue

Talia Howard.
1850.

It was newly 1850, an old year birthing life to what I imagined would be another round of woefully dull and inexplicit months, passing in slow and hazy days just as the thirteen years I had lived before had. And for the first four months leading the year, it was rather boring. But when the fifth month ripened upon my calendar like an apple falling from its tree, it began to change– Truly, it seemed my life had both begun, and ended, in a juxtaposition of ways.

I had been standing outside my fathers chancery for what I assumed to be about thirty minutes– though I lost count when the voices of the people inside had risen, like when a kettle screams to announce the boiling of the water it held inside. It wasn't an odd scene, not necessarily. My mother and father (The persons inside the chancery, if you had not yet assumed) had often had these screaming fits, back and forth as my father, The King, trotted a dance along my mother's very thin boundaries. But this fit in specific was peculiar for one reason and one reason only; the very sudden and very permanent end to the disagreement.

Their yelling was interrupted when a rather unpleasant gurgle left my fathers drool-covered lips. A gasp left my mother as she took two, light steps away. As much as I wanted to permanently traumatize myself with the sight of a life-ending stroke, I took two heavy and long steps away from the door, before my steps turned to a rather quick-paced run.
I slammed straight into the first person I saw, muttering something along the lines of "The King.. a stroke.. His chancery".
They seemed to understand, and quickly ran towards the two ceiling-to-floor wide and now open doors of my father's chancery.

It wasn't until the sun rose upon the palace the next morning that the news was confirmed, that my father was now dead, and there was nothing I nor anybody else could do about it. I sat on the sun-embroidered sofa, a maid combing a horse-hair brush through my brunette curls, and watched as the poor man with the message choked out his condolences and finally left my quarters.

Truth be told, I was not sad. It was a terrible and dreadful thing, my lack of remorse, but not even did I feel guilt for my indifference with the death. My father was a man of many words, insufferably so that he had always felt the need to spew them out to me– more often than not in hard-landing yet subtle jabs. And if not at me, then he would harass my mother, and my mother, as dear and polite as she was, did not have the will nor the power to speak back.

A funeral had already been planned, and that event had passed dreadfully slow. After that a ball was held in his name, to mourn him with the clearly appropriate mix of alcohol and ballroom dancing. I was forced to attend, yet my mother stayed in her quarters caring for my newly-born baby sister, Afina. As Queen, I supposed she could get out of any events with an excuse. I, however, was far from Queen. The maids pulled me out of my black dress and stuffed me into a slightly lighter black dress, gold lacing around the hem and a grosely tight corset– Though, as tight and uncomfortable as it was, I made it tighter when the maids left.

I was aware I was mature for my age. The Lords and Noblemen and other rich snobby men who felt entitled to a stare made that delectably clear. In all gruesome and sadistic honesty, I did not always mind the stares. I enjoyed the attention, so much so that as my maids footsteps deafened into the halls, I stuffed the top of my corset with some old stockings, a routine I never skipped. I wasn't quite sure why men seemed so attracted to women's chests, but if it got me the attention I so yearned for and was so devoid of, I would do it. All of it. And I didn't know it then, but I would regret it all in due time. I would regret all of my woefully naive attempts for attention.

I sauntered my way to the ball and listened as a tall man in fancy black clothes introduced me, speaking my name loud and clear for everyone to hear across the echoing of the vast walls. It was, plainly put, a rather boring and boisterous affair. The symphony that echoed from the piano was one I had heard one too many times and the singing of the bow against the violin was becoming repetitive. I was bored. And yet I stood in a palace with any and every source of entertainment at my fingertips. I wanted none of it and yet all of it at once.

People told me how awfully sorry they were for me, and how dreadfully terrible I must be feeling, and in their eyes I saw a glimpse of genuine sympathy, of genuine mourning and sadness. I didn't know how or why anyone would feel sadness after my father died. He was a terrible, capricious, incompetent and ill-intentioned man, and he was far from a good King, too. Maybe they were just unaware of all this, seeing only the perfect, stoically handsome (which he wasn't, by the way), chivalry-practicing King he had shown to everyone. Either way, I accepted the apologies and moved on.

When the ball came to its long-awaited end, I snuck out without saying one goodbye, and headed straight for my quarters.