Becoming A Queen.

5

The next week snailed past.

King Roland found his work tedious and was often interrupted by the mental image of a beautiful smile he was unable to forget. He couldn't remember feeling this way before. His whole body felt aglow and his mouth tugged up in a smile whenever his mind drifted to his new pair of shoes, or his attention was drawn to the hole in his slipper. How could a lowly cobbler make him feel so alive?

He stood to see his two children in the garden. He could hear James laugh from where he was standing. The boy was chanting "I am a Pirate. I have a treasure!" repeatedly while Amber looked ready to explode.

His darling daughter was so precious to him, but he was completely unable to understand her interests in clothes and trinkets. Her mother had been very keen on looking good, and Amber seemed to have inherited her vanity.

She even looked like her mother.

He sighed.
The twins mother had always looked immaculate, and she was always poised and graceful, but he always felt it was a veneer. A shield she hid behind to guard her real self. Not even he knew her true feelings or her opinions. She could be coy and flirty when she wanted favours and furious like a wet cat when servants misbehaved, but she had never once shown any real happiness.

Unless it was to undermine the "commoners" of Enchantia. She had always had a rather unattractive air of superiority which only increased with her title of Queen. Thankfully she had the common sense to not sneer in public at their dress or food choices, but certain meals, such as his favourite wibbly-wobbly-pudding had to be hidden from her to be enjoyed. 

Not exactly a great environment for the marriage Roland had wanted when he married her, but youth and inexperience had made him believe beauty, and the way she flirted was the real thing.

She just never seemed to understand how much he loved his country and the people in it. Without them, he wouldn't be a king. Not that he needed to be a king. Roland often thought he would have been just as happy as a farmer. But fate had placed him here as the head of a beautiful country with amazing inhabitants who were loyal to him despite the trouble his ancestors had brought them.

His Queen just hadn't agreed with all the festivals he arranged, or the favours he gave them. She used to say they were lucky to have a king as good as him, where Roland felt lucky to have his people.

He sighed.
Of course, he had loved her. He had felt so lucky to be married to such a beauty. She was renowned for her looks. And her looks had been what he fell in love with.

His uncle had called it a marriage of convenience when it had been suggested.
It was convenient for Enchantia to tie the bonds with her noble family by the eastern border.
And it was convenient for Enchantia to have a queen who would look good in portraits.
And it was convenient for her to have access to the royal treasury with all its fine jewellery and the numerous servants she needed on hand for all kinds of tasks from doing her hair every day to someone who had the tedious task of removing her body hair.
Roland had objected to these unnecessary acts of vanity, arguing for an extra pair of hands to care for the stables and maintenance of the buildings instead, but she always laughed and told him she was maintaining their marriage. So the team of servants tending to her beauty stayed.

And she had, of course, loved their children. His duties as the king had made him a distant father, leaving her to indulge the children's every whim. He had attempted as often as he could to correct their behaviour and talk to their mother about trying to give them a sense of modesty. With no luck of course. She would tell him to mind his country while she minded the children. 

He looked at his children through the window. Since their mother's death, he had made it a priority to raise them himself. With love and a clear example of proper behaviour, but it had been hard. Amber was shaping up to be a lot more shallow and self-absorbed than he would wish for a princess and James was always a sore loser and set in his ways. They had improved under his firmer rules, but with the kingdom to run, his fatherly duties were still sorely neglected.