Armoured in plate and mail, King Richard's ermine robe cast about him like a hunter's trophy, Saint Edward's Crown radiant upon his fair head, Prince Arthur Tudor strode down the aisle of Winchester Cathedral. He marched directly to Bishop Foxe, then with a crash of steel went down on one knee.
"My Lord Bishop," he said, bowing his head, the sacred crown catching the torchlight, "five years past I charged you to guard something for me."
Foxe arose, and in his hand was the Sword of Mercy, that had lain on the cathedral altar all these long years. "As it was given, so I return it," he said, holding the sheathed blade out across his hands. "Out of the stone of Winchester it comes to you, in fulfilment of long-held hope."
Arthur took the sword, and I saw tears glittering in the bishop's eyes even as my own.
"Hail!" said Richard Foxe, his voice cracking as he spoke. "Hail, Arthur Mabdragon, rightful sovereign of all England!"
Arthur nodded regally, then turned and looked me straight in the eye. "Hello, Mother," he said, and a smile lit up his face. "I'm home."
END OF BOOK I
Book I was from the viewpoint of Queen Elizabeth, wife of Henry VII; Book II switches over to Katherine of Aragon, wife of King Arthur Tudor. It's taken a couple of days to get comfortable with her, but I think I've got the hang of it.
NaNo emailed me today about the Week Two Slump, and they're not wrong. I've not passed 2K words/day for the last couple of days; I know that this story is wildly incomplete (the end of Book I completely drops one of the usurper kings of England, and the wife of the other, while Book II seems to have forgotten that coronations are a thing); and more than that, I'm not sure whether it's appropriate for me to write it at all.
My own view is that writing a more inclusive story (eg in this case by making the first-person narrators all women) is always better, but the non-evil parts of the writing world seem to hold that you shouldn't write major diverse characters unless you are one yourself (I've mostly seen this as 'white writers shouldn't write protagonists of colour', but also various other iterations). Which either means I should have written it from Arthur's own perspective (which would be much less interesting), or that I shouldn't be writing it at all. But it's not like someone else was lined up to tell the story and I'm stealing it! I feel like that logical pathway winds up inevitably at 'as a privileged person, I should never create anything', which... well.
So that's where my head's at. Not that it really matters, since this is a fairly rubbish NaNo that will never be published or anything, but I fondly imagine that I might publish something someday.
hS