The Aftermath of Happily Ever After

Chapter One: Cinderella

Once upon a time, in a faraway land there lived a young maiden with her mother and father. Her father was a successful merchant and her mother was the daughter of a lord. When the girl was 10 years old her mother ran away with the butler. Her father was distraught and refused to speak to his daughter for weeks. Eventually he told her that her mother had died. From that point on he became colder and more distant, leaving often on business trips that lasted months.

When the girl turned 12 he came home one day with a new wife. She was a beautiful woman with two daughters of her own. The woman's previous husband had been a rich general in the military and she valued beauty and outward appearance above all else. She noticed that the girl, Cinderella, was very beautiful even at the young age of 12 and, as her own daughters were nothing special to look at, raised Cinderella as her own. Cinderella always hated her stepmother for she believed that her stepmother stole her father's attention away from her and her mother's memory. Her stepsisters were jealous that their mother gave Cinderella more attention and affection than them and they insulted her at every chance they got.

As time went on Cinderella grew more and more vain like her stepmother and cold like her father. When Cinderella was 16 the prince of the kingdom threw a grand party to celebrate his 18th birthday. Naturally her stepmother insisted she go and even lent Cinderella her wedding dress to wear to the party.

At the ball Cinderella stood out in her stepmother's ivory wedding gown with her blonde hair down and her skin painted with glitter. She caught every man's eye especially the prince who was known for his love of beautiful women. When she didn't melt at his attention or simper when he danced with her the prince fell in love with the challenge she presented him. He chased her for months and months before he proposed to her. The idea of becoming a princess and eventually a queen was irresistible and she accepted. Her stepmother was delighted and planned most of the wedding preparations herself. Cinderella had not forgotten her stepsisters' slights and insults however and banned them from her wedding. Cinderella's stepmother did nothing to try and get Cinderella to forgive her daughters and went so far as to renounce them as her children and declare that she only had the one stepdaughter.

Cinderella had only been a princess for a month when the old king died and her husband became king and she his queen. Cinderella quickly became addicted to the power that came with being the queen. She surrounded herself with beautiful objects and people, firing her servants if they weren't attractive enough.

Power made Cinderella still colder and more obsessed with her own beauty. When her husband's eye began to wander she grew enraged and assembled a group of guards to execute any woman who caught his eye. Even now that she was queen she hadn't forgotten her hatred of her stepmother and stepsisters nor her contempt for her father who hadn't given her a second look after her mother left. She sent her men after them and ensured they would never forget her. Cinderella did everything she could to ensure everyone knew of both her power as well as her beauty. She became more and more vicious with every passing year and kept herself locked away in the castle for the most part, too contempt with the world outside to leave her rooms filled with jewels and pieces of fine art. She will remain hidden away in her castle of mirrors until someone comes along who will cause her to lose what little sanity she has left.