it was a question that could have been interpreted in many a light, if offered before the wrong person it might be taken in a provocative light, yet the intention behind the curious words were entirely innocent. the love in elizabeth’s life had so far only been familial or platonic, she may have wept at the death of her betrothed but it was surely grief for her own loss of potential adventure than loss of a future husband, and it was known that she was curious about almost all other things in life - why should she not question something which seemed so important for the soul? the way the duchess drew near and spoke softly would have her believe that her query was improper and deserving of a scolding response, yet the answer received was far from it. plump lips curved for the maid of honour was in both relief and awe of the duchess for her honesty, for how she took the young woman under her wing with such care and grace. “ do you believe it is something we all experience in our time? whether we choose to accept it or not, is it an option for all? or perhaps some are just not made for love. ”
The girl’s daintiness fueled a warmth from her own part. isolde tutted, lightly, though it was more of an incredulous sound than a chastising one. The presupposition that love might only be reserved for some awoke a strange presentiment, a vestige from her early days when she had equaled marriage with submission, and matrimony with renunciation. She dared hope different scenarios spun through the younger lady. ❛ Oh, but of course love is made for all of us. Perhaps we simply shut ourselves to it before we can receive it. ❜ Her neckline stretched, and her head perched higher, as if to gaze at a point more remote than their reach. ❛ Take, for example, a boorish man. Surely he was not a brute from the cradle! No one’s life is tailored out for them before they even begin to live it. Something must have made him so, no? An ill-put desire, a mismatch between talent and possibility. Or perhaps a tragedy, the sort we only hear about at Mass. Whatever it is... ❜, the duchess paused, smile turning conspiratorial once more, ❛ I am quite intent to learn why you struggle with the question. Does it beg a swift answer? Is there, perhaps, a reason for whom it could not wait to be revealed? ❜
there was a lasting thought in the countess of salisbury’s mind, harvested from the moment her entrance to the queen’s chambers had been denied – her majesty still suffered from the severity of her ailment, and there were only so many visitors she could accommodate at once, so the montagu would have to remain in the backdrop, awaiting further instructions. the thought was rooted in delight, in a blasphemous idea that god smiled upon her wishes this time, denying her the unwanted opportunity to meet with the queen while excusing thomas to be somewhere else as he continued to wait. another would have wondered by themselves if this would cost them any heavenly grace some point soon, but lianor feels consumed by her happiness not to partake in a royal company she usually took little enjoyment in sharing.
she already longs to return to the florentine street, still lively with the papal festivities, when a pronounced presence spins her out of her own selfishness. lady isolde neville was to the queen isabel what lianor herself had been to clementine: a companion of youth that persisted into adulthood, fitting themselves into smaller roles in court all in order not to depart from their dearest ones’ presence. when the red-haired had first met the then lady seymour, she had foolishly confessed her mother she would not mind becoming something similar to isolde – a certain, faithful position. beatriz had scolded her daughter to tears that day, spewing insults to both women of york that would cause the portuguese lady’s confessor to send her on a pilgrimage to clean herself off of her sins.
now, years older, with her lady mother but miles away, lianor does not care for what will be said of her when she indulges in sympathy and early penitence for her wrongful mind as she makes her way to the queen’s woman. “your grace,” the countess is quick to properly address, keeping a safe distance between her and the golden haired lady out of habit. “i have been told our majesty is otherwise occupied to receive my husband and i, but i believe it is right of me to extend my condolences and my best wishes for yourself as well. your good sister suffers greatly, but thankfully, she survives, yes – however i can vividly imagine how it must have been for yourself, for if the princess was to fall ill, i do not know what would be of me.” she may not have learned to hold isabel neville as highly as her position demanded, but lianor knew well that the cost of a loved ones’ happiness or sadness was easily shared among those who cared for those, as such was the case for the two women.
𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐈𝐑 𝐌𝐔𝐓𝐔𝐀𝐋 𝐑𝐄𝐓𝐈𝐂𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄 𝐈𝐒 𝐆𝐄𝐍𝐔𝐈𝐍𝐄. Perhaps it derives from a sort of awed respect, from obedience in the face of tragedy. When death breathes so closely over your shoulder, you learn to distinguish between truth and morality –– between what you should heed and what you should leave behind, discarded for the artifice it was. Whatever complications have bonded the Countess of Salisbury with that utter, irredeemable tosspot, Isolde has no fault to begrudge her. She is merely the emblem of his hypocrisy, not the root of it. Harry of Wales did what he bloody well pleased, and if he were to co-opt someone for murder, it could hardly be the woman who shared his bed, and who was more recognized amongst courtiers than a lighthouse fire. Like many a women have been in their days, which went on as tempestuous and similar since the dawn of time, Lianor is a figurehead. For what, she might not know herself.
Isolde could certainly not proclaim it in her stead. Above all, she realizes better than most how rewarding it is to find refuge under an arm more powerful, more self-possessed than yours. There is the risk, yes, that such a union will strip you of your own agency, but more often than not the opposite happens. It gives a girl her fortitude, her merit –– ill-found though the priests may deign it, bedding a man who holds your fate in its fist has a worthiness of sorts. Not that Charles ever rose to such extremes, nor was he as fickle and fiendish as the Prince, but even so. The similarities are there. Her eyes unearth them, easily, and they only grow more fonder when the fire-kissed woman speaks up.
It is not something hard to understand, how the earth can splinter off beneath you, be rendered into fragments by a foreign, nameless hand, without so much as a question on your part, so much as a chance to fight against it. Many people could relate to it in some manner or other; this is what worlds do, after all: they overturn, they topple on you. And yet the Countess is the only one who comes to her in her shock (steadily subsiding, only to spring again whenever a doctor emerges from the room) and says, pale-lipped, If it were me, I would be shattered. It touches Isolde than such thinking is possible –– even across the borders of their loyalties. She turns to the younger, motions her closer. The safe distance is a safe one to cross.
❛ I pray that you will never find that out, and if God so ordains, then come upon it as late as possible. ❜ She steels herself against the ominous air, the foreboding tone wedged in that remark, and twitches her neck lightly. ❛ But I do not think it will come about; the Princess is well loved, and seems to be in good health. We all pray for a grand match now that she is of age. ❜
EVERYTHING HURT, it was the only thing that the queen knew for certain. they told her that her wine had been laced with poison, that it had only been by divine intervention that she had survived ––– well, if this was what surviving felt like then it may have kinder of god to have delivered her unto his heavenly kingdom. for days isabel had been plagued by excruciating convulsions, her screams and cries so loud that the children had to be moved, little anne especially unable to bear her mother’s agony. delusions had also plagued the queen’s mind; queen lianor’s spectre never far from the ailing queen ––– she seemed to greatly enjoy isabel’s torment, how could she blame her ?
despite the odds, the queen had survived and yet she was told it would be some time before her strength returned… though it was not clear whether it would do so to its previous capacity. her body was frail and her mind was tormented, but isabel had taken to receiving a few well wishers.
unable to move from the bed, she was propped up against silken pillows; her dark hair braided to the side, the robe covering her nightgown regal if not informal, yet isabel could not bear the thought of being laced into a gown. regardless of the fatigue that plagued her features, she remained dignified in her torment. lips gently curled as the figure was brought in, a sudden wave of self-consciousness washing upon her… even in her predicament there was a degree of vanity. ❛ it is kind of you visit, please forgive my inability to greet you properly. the physicians inform me it will be some weeks before my strength returns. ❜
𝐇𝐀𝐃 𝐈𝐓 𝐁𝐄𝐄𝐍 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐋𝐄𝐒, she would’ve groused and fretted. She would have slipped into the convenient shroud of female concern, of wifely diligence, carrying damp towels and ewers steaming with brew. Perhaps she would even purse her lips every now and then, a staunch, self-righteous, unconvincing serves you right ; what were you about, mingling in such businesses ? She could do all that with a clear heart because, well, Charles was... Charles. Invincible. Rooted in life as deeply and favourably as he was in death: one foot planted in each, shifting and recoiling. She half believed she could see him trampled under the whole of eastern cavalry and still emerge unscathed, mud dappling his forehead like laurels. Her worries about him did not have any ties with mortal dangers.
But it was not Charles. It was Isabel ––warm, hot-blooded, vibrant Isabel. Life blazed so bright and volatile in her, so present, that any gust of wind threatened to abate it. In the same instant she witnessed the Queen collapse, she immediately saw it. Felt it. The tapering out. The flame dwindling, until only a speckle of defiance remained. The ashes left in its wake: everything about them, everything they had touched, ashes. That final spark losing to its own obstinacy.
The only reason she did not fall herself was because falling did not belong to her. It was no longer her right; she was here, at Isabel’s side, because she had chosen years ago to remain standing. Fainting fits were a thing of the past, a luxury or a curse another girl might have picked. The girl she had been would have howled and balked, would have crawled under the grimy benches to reach that body, drowning. Convulsing. The girl she had been would have downed the cup just because it felt like the only thing left to do, a gesture to match the way fairytales spoke of tragedy: one handmaiden following her sworn princess in death. The loss doubly felt, the sin expunged. The woman she was, the girl she had willed herself to become, did not fall. She darted towards the dais, breathless, blind, but not mindless. Her voice joined the two others who bellowed for the physicians. Was the other Charles? Was it Edward? She felt hands gripping her shoulders, steering, and she knelt next to the body nonetheless. She watched the pit of that body’s throat, where her friend’s voice, her sister’s voice once resided, pulse and pulse. It was still pulsing when the healers arrived, to purge it of whatever poison thrummed within.
Isabel’s actual voice was claiming Isolde now, pulling her back. Wherever back was, this new world they inhabited, where what they once thought to be dangerous meant no more than a child’s needle prick, and what were true horrors seeped out. No. The voice was raspy; it was overly-formal, and pained, but it was still hers. Isolde huffed a sound of complaint and scooted closer from the bed’s edge towards its middle. Her hand grabbed the Queen’s, careful to avoid where her arms had been bled.
❛ I should know bloody well what the physicians informed you, since I am the one who’s been tormenting them since evening. They’ll pen me a harpy soon enough, the whole Florentian intelligentsia. More the fools them for thinking they’ll get any sleep. ❜ She rolled one shoulder, brisk, as thought even the effort to properly dismiss it was too much. ❛ Charles can deal with that; it’s he who wants to charm them out of their breeches, after all. ❜ The Duchess sensed it well enough, this deluge of words without head or end, only more unstoppable for how ridiculous it was ––how, arguably, the last thing she needed. Sensing it did not mean she could control it. She tossed her hair back with another taut, snappy motion. Her tone, however, was as furthest away from that as possible.❛ Oh, Isa... . How in the world... . Well, no. How do you feel? ❜
001. describe your characters’ relationship with their mother or father, or both. minimum word count: 150.
tba.
002. what are your characters’ most prominent physical features? what is a feature that they are most insecure about? what are they proudest of?
it’s been long since isolde has regarded her body as something to revel ( or agonize over ). she likes the ambiguity of her features, how it tricks the general molding of the english, and ventures into marginal territories, burgundian, southern, traitorous. not insecure per se, since she inhabits all aspects of womanhood with ease, all but one: childbearing. she struggles against fertility, rather than towards it: the idea of giving birth has discomfited and unnerved her ever since she was young. it only increases tenfold with age, and so the duchess longs for the time when such worries will be rendered moot by nature’s course.
003. how vain is your character? do they find themselves attractive? what is their worst flaw, and are they aware of it?
she might have grown to be vain if she did not have isabel as a childhood companion. the other woman’s beauty was so stark, so undeniable, and it embodied so many characteristics of desire as well as distant grace, that isolde found herself to be a lukewarm contrast. it was not a comparison that bothered her in the least: isabel’s beauty was a thing to be mirrored at times, but not held over your entire life. it was, like all heavenly boon, a burden. to carry that beauty would’ve required a strength and a determination she did not possess.
004. what is your character’s ranking on the kinsey scale?
a three before her marriage with charles, as emotional bonds were always more readily established with women. she was very fond of all her fellow ladies in waiting when she belonged to the retinue of the old queen, and now she is even more invested in the lives of the younger women she must govern. after her union, it veers towards a two; the idea of becoming involved with someone who would serve no purpose to either isabel or to their duchy seems rather absurd.
005. describe your character’s happiest memory. minimum word count: 150.
tbd. ( i sense a pattern )
006. is there one event in your characters’ life that they would like to erase from their past? why? minimum word count: 200.
tbd.
007. let’s talk favourites! what is their favourite colour, food, and season? what, in a modern setting, would be your character’s favourite song?
she is very fond of cream-white, the nuance you would see, for example, on lacework embroidery and church veils, as opposed to the glacial white of gauze and diamond.
as anyone who spent their childhood winters at court, she is fond of all tastes that forged an unwitting association with the feast days: sweetmeats, sugared almonds, poached fruit.
anything by soccer mommy but with a tad less nostalgia.
008. can you define a turning point in your character’s life?
the first time she understood that it wasn’t only the king’s heart isabel wanted, but also the certainty such a love could secure. the risks she evaluated (and of which she’d been warned by members of their circle) and still deciding to help nonetheless. the acknowledgement that nothing can compare with proximity to a world on the bring of change, except perhaps the sworn devotion to what has still stayed the same.
009. is your character an early morning bird or a night owl? at what time do they get most of their work done?
devotedly a morning bird. even when she had to stay awake through the late, informal parties tat took place in the private quarters of richmond palace, observing and tailing the ends of conversations like licks of flame, she was still adamant on getting up as early as possible.
010 a. what other character, a npc or someone apart of the rp, is your character completely real with? who knows them best, has seen them at their most vulnerable, knows their innermost and basest fears? (b. if your character does not have this person, why? do they long for one?)
charles in recent years, but overall isabel. while her own brother kept to the sidelines and permitted isolde to associate with whoever she pleased, it was out of a lack of true understanding rather than a surplus of it. the older seymour never really did comprehend her; not that it would’ve been possible, when isabel had already taken that role for herself.
011. is your character a neat or messy person?
organized from the standpoint of mental information and daily responsibilities, and certainly preaching tidiness to the ladies she has under her wing, but sometimes erratic with trivial belongings (sheaves of materials, ribbons, letter kits).
012. does your character have any irrational fears or phobias?
nothing other than the common ladylike train of vermin, seasonal diseases creeping into the palace, statute ruin. unless you count childbirth as an irrational fear, in which case, yes.
013. does your character have an underlying passion or trait that influences all aspects of their life?
her need to preserve the status and privileges of those around her. they are inextricably linked with her own: there is no place where charles ends and she begins, no choices isabel makes that does not tug at her own strings. it is not sacrifice, it is not martyrdom. it the mutual egotism that sustains their love, separate and colluded, carnal and platonic.
014. what might your character’s ideal romantic person be?
certainly not charles lmao but she has stopped thinking about that ideal for so long that she no longer has any reliable memories. it might have been anyone: the isolde that concocted it, that breathed lifelikeness into its specter with her own desire, no longer exists. not because of some loss, of an identity shaken by something so great that it has no choice but to shift, but due to the normal workings of the world. the choices she made for herself (was allowed to make for herself) as a woman changed the wishes she’s safeguarded as a girl.
015. describe your character’s hands. are they small, long, calloused, smooth, stubby, dexterous or clumsy? do they wear any jewelry and would they wear polish in a modern setting?
in a modern setting they would wear clear nail polish with a top coat. the sort that almost escapes their glance and certainly the sort that’s easily maintained. as it is, her nails are cut short and kept clean, and her hands are small, powdered, entirely within the confines of the ordinary. they work mediocre well with tasks such as embroidery and are far more suited for cerebral purposes like signatures and different calligraphy styles.
016. how does your character smell? what is their favourite scent?
she is fond of heady, earthly smells, like wood and incense; fragrances that are strong but flowing, associated with the things around them rather than drawing attention for themselves.
017. how would your muse describe their religious beliefs?
pragmatic with a twist (some would call that consciousness, others weakness. she loves people from both those sides.)
018. what rules does your muse live by, if any?
see 013. and like half my bio lol (unbelievable i cbf to reiterate even for my own sake)
019. does your muse overshare, or are they more private?
she can easily give the impression of oversharing when she congresses with the ladies of the queen’s household. however, it rarely happens on its own, or with people from which she expects no reciprocating information. she made that mistake several times in the past with her own brother, and as endearing as the duke of somerset was, he was not one of them.
020. is your muse a gossiper? are they more likely to argue with their fists or tongue? what does their voice sound like?
gossiper druid class, rolls 20 on tongue attack.
021. is your muse a … pessimist or optimist … lover or fighter … believer in happy endings … believer in love at first sight?
she believes in people designing the type of love that’s easiest for them to bear. those who need the comfort of destiny, divinity, external pillars to lay their heads against, rely on love at first sight. some rely on the sanctity of marriage - undeceivable, unyielding. other find comfort in opposite corners: in the absence of love, the impermanence of happiness, the war waged against all things everlasting. she no longer concerns herself with which is true. perhaps she never had: charles and isabel have long settled such dilemmas for her.
022. what sense of humour does your character have?
optimal according to situation. she is not a great wit (think og anne boleyn) but nor is she ignorant to the subtrends and styles in courtly conversation. she is usually most comfortable when throwing back-and-forth remarks with charles or witnessing his sparring matches with isabel, and more often than not she finds things to contribute herself. but she would never try to replicate that sense of humor and intellectual acumen with most members of court.
023. what bad habits does your character have?
complacency, egotism, lack of desire to change perspective, often false certainty, duplicity, drawing out private information, outright lying, us against them mentality.
024. how does your character feel about growing old?
see 002. though she is plagued by conventional concerns such as her husband’s interest in her over the years (at no point in her life did isolde think her unorthodoxy exempts her from the woes of regular women) she finds the scales to be rather in her favor. the idea that she will not risk pregnancy, or an untimely death, is far more appealing than the risk of charles taking up five times more mistresses than decency allows. if she finds she has lost more than she has gained with old age, she will cross that bridge when it shows. she just usually doubts it will.
025. does your character prefer adventure to safety and security?
she married a man that wants to restructure at least 4 governing systems in europe and is mortally devoted to a woman that’s literally just been poisoned..... choose for yourself
01. heavy ( majical cloudz ) // 02. me and my husband ( mitski ) // 03. run me through ( perfume genius & king princess ) // 04. pristine ( snail mail ) // 05. i’ll still destroy you ( the national ) // 06. king arthur - the worthy british ( henry purcell ) // 07. if you need to, keep time on me ( fleet foxes ) // 08. obstacles ( syd matters ) // 09. no plan ( hozier ) // 10. confessions ( badbadnotgood ) // 11. break me ( sharon von eten ) // 12. timefighter ( lucy dracus )
𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐆 𝐃𝐄𝐒𝐂𝐑𝐈𝐏𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍𝐒
pristine by snail mail >>> Pristine, untraced by the world outside you / We could be anything, even apart / I could be anyone but I'm so entwined / And out of everyone, who's on your mind? / No more changes, I'll still love you the same.
this perfectly reinstates the idea that isolde chose, in the full sense of the word, to be married to someone who could make kingdoms spin and topple over. she is not trapped in the role of wife and confidante — she designed it for herself, as minutely as tailoring a dress. she finds relief in not having had to play the lesser games of wolfhall & richmond ( courting, marriage, infidelity ) and this gave her time to focus on the grand game. she aids her husband and is sworn to his cause, their cause, which had been isabel and her scarlet throne. right now, it is the guarding of everything they obtained. she does so not through whispers, not through the subtle shifting of public opinion, but also through her impeccable reputation. she is willing to be seen as a contrast to charles’s impiety, to what the old plantagenets see as avarice. even if she knows it’s far from the truth, even if it implies wringing her false virtues through his flaws.
i’ll still destroy you by the national >>> This one's like your sister's best friends in a bath calling you to join them / This one's like the wilderness without the world / I'm gonna miss those long nights with the windows open / Put your heels against the wall, I swear you got a little bit taller since I saw you, I'll still destroy you
the golden haze-feeling i tried ( hard on try ) to capture in isolde’s bio is rendered very delicately in the first part of this song. i imagine her and isabel had lazy, lavish summers together, and the neville & seymour boys could never hold a candle to their wistful lounging and intricate dramatics. the calling you to join them pictures how isolde already had the faintest outline of what she desired from charles and, more generally, the yorks: power, not gained like a foothold, at the price of her own safety, but secured through proximity, like a flame imbues a naked wall with life. and charles was nothing if not fire. the second part hints at the danger, which ebbed and waned throughout their marriage, the prospect that she could easily be consumed just as she consented to be devoured.
𝐒𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄 𝐌𝐄𝐌𝐄 * / @beauchampx / ❛ who taught you of love? ❜
𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐋𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐄𝐀𝐍𝐄𝐃 𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐎 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐆𝐄𝐑 𝐖𝐎𝐌𝐀𝐍. She smiled, jovially conspiratorial, as though they had huddled to barter in secrets of state. Her silk-tapped feet inched together across the floor, cutting into the distance between her and the Queen’s maid. ❛ T’is not taught, dearest. ❜ The Duchess still spoke on a fluttery breath, though she could see as well as her companion that there was no other soul in the inner parlour. She still remembered being... why, hardly anything over twenty, when any matter could seem arcane, the fruit of a grand collective conspiracy, and matters of the heart more so than most. ❛ We like to believe love is universal, I think. Uniform. That it affects us all indiscriminately, and infiltrates our lives in the very same fashion. ❜ The Duchess’s head angled sideways. She took respite for one moment, to better scrutinize the girl, to see if her words had where to take root. Isolde noticed bright eyes looking back at her, and a face as luminous to match. The thirst within Elizabeth’s question, then, had not been coyness: it was a thinker’s curiosity just as much as it was a maiden’s fascination with the subject. ❛ I, for one, ❜ she picked up, smile deepening, openly pleased to have someone so enticing to converse with, ❛ believe love is tailored differently for each of us. Sometimes it answers to our needs and our nature — in other cases, it uproots them. But who’s to say that is not what was supposed to happen all along? Some turbulence can be good for the spirit. ❜
𝐒𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄 𝐌𝐄𝐌𝐄 * / @hcrryofwales / ❛ to make an enemy of a god among men would be unwise. ❜
𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐄𝐘𝐄𝐒 𝐒𝐊𝐈𝐑𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐔𝐏𝐎𝐍 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐓𝐎𝐍𝐄. It was inscrutable, laced with a myriad covert meanings one could have spent fortnights to unearth — she thought she could guess derision, spite, a portent halfway uttered. Throughout all, she found the tantalizing vein of a boy who believed the world owes him a debt, and became masterful at exacting it. It was nothing new, and yet it galled her just like it did the first time. Sporadic challenges, impromptu confrontations that reared from the gilded corners of his palace, which he prowled like a hybrid between feline and scorpion, ready to prounce and sting all at once. The Duchess primed her lips. They formed a pale rind against her complexion, one neat little trick which usually worked in her favor: it made her seem more guarded, older, an object of forewarning rather than one of desire. Right that very moment, however, she doubted it would serve any merit. ❛ To speak of Gods among men in this age, Your Highness? Seems to me rather fanciful. Vestigial, almost. As if we’re back to scribbling on temples and offering libations for the sun and its cycle. ❜
blanca suarez, 32, isolde seymour. ❝ ⤚⟶ FLORENCE, 1455. thanks is given by the DUCHESS OF YORK, ISOLDE SEYMOUR from ENGLAND. they are at best INFORMED, and at their worst STRINGENT. whilst sojourning in florence, their ambition is to REMAIN AU COURANT WITH THE BACKSTAGE OF NOBILITY. SHE seem/s to remind everyone of BLANCA SUAREZ &&. ALDER PATTYNS RESOUNDING IN AN EMPTY COURTYARD ; THE BUSTLE OF SKIRTS WHEN POCKETS ARE OVERTURNED ; STAUNCH OATHS & UNERRING LOYALTIES ; GOLD SIGNET ILLUMINATING A LETTER . ❞
ay demons, it’s nina your girl, here with my second muse & really excited for this cromwell of a char. it’s a true house of cards dynamic y’all. isolde is basically isabel’s faithful lieutenant keeping to the backdrop, a complement against her husband’s undeterred frontline politics. the abt. page is under construction, as for the wanted connections : lmao just get me the Duke .
From early girlhood, it had always been Isabel. It was the clucking of her friend's lips which brought tittering giggles from her own, opening a deluge of happiness and self-abandon Isolde could never have professed to exist. It was Isabel's mock disapproval, her jests in the dim summer nights when even playwrights slept, her plans and her pride. It was Isabel's endless knack for desiring, for reaching towards further and further stars, and her equally endless ability to love. It was Isabel's folly that had brought them there. It was Isabel's love that safekept her. Isolde never resented her for the role she had to tacitly, furtively take up. If Isabel was to be Queen, she would need someone to bolster her; not openly, as only her brother and her lover could, but from the shadows, from parted lips and newborn murmurs. She would never ask that of Isolde outright: it would be beneath them. Yet the younger woman did it all nonetheless, bending her ear and her spine to the rumors, changing the stories as they lay on their cusp. Spinning subterfuge and pious integrity until they were hoops in the same crinoline. They rose around her like miniature scepters.
The crown came soon enough. Naturally, it was not to grace her own head, but that of her beloved. And oh, Isabel did wear the mantle with more artistry and grit than an entire dynasty before her. Isolde's prize - though it would have caused offense towards their friendship to call it so - arrived within a wedding band. She was betrothed to the Duke of York and received half the country nestled in the nuptial bed. He was at once familiar and a stranger to her - Isolde had known him as a boy, whip-sharp and burning with hidden fires, and she had known him as a grown courtier, prone more than once to wreck disaster upon both their houses. They'd grown up together, long summers stringing between their study and the courtly season, imbuing meaning and brilliance to a world otherwise stale. But she had not, until Isabel waved her silver-tipped hand like a comet across their heads, known him as a man. Sometimes she suspected it was hardly there at all, the humanity in him; but then, if it were a simple man she'd wanted, she would have not chosen this life.
And it is the element of choice that matters most to her. Isolde does not delude herself into thinking she is as ruthless a demagogue as her husband, nor is she able to awake love and devotion with a mere gust of laughter, as was Isabel's way. There were no chances of her ever succeeding on her own; or succeeding and keeping some manner of happiness, too. She thinks herself to be, if noting else, a woman of the world. She wants what they all do, them blessed few who are allowed to want: a secure place, and something to live by, something to live for. Above all, she wants to be able to have a say in what her future might entail - or, at the very least, in the things that pertain to her own indiviuality, like childbearing, like annual retinue, like one's circle of friends. She sees these allowances being gifted begrudgingly by men to their women; almost like trinkets, like divine benedictions. They give them as if they are their own to yield. She can only count herself immensely fortunate that such gifts will always be hers to take, and God's and Isabel's to bless.
