is there any subject they don't like to talk about?
His father. Oh, if [ he speaks of his father, that’s all right, but others must watch their tongues (starting :12 seconds) ]. The previous Emperor’s ignominious death is a particularly sore subject, to be brought up only at the speaker’s peril. Theo believes firmly that he did what was best for Byzantium, and that his duty is always first and foremost to Byzantium, but he will never believe that -- speaking as a human being -- what he did was right, and fully expects to greet eternal damnation upon his death as a result of his patricide.
Absolutely!! Theo’s very favorite topic is, well, Theo..and Byzantium which is, in his own belief, an extension of the self-same topic. As emperor, after all, Byzantium is his mother, bride, and best self for all eternity. Other topics also greatly interest him, but none so much as these two. A deeply arrogant soul, he is continuously caught up with himself, continuously nursing some consideration of himself, and basking in his own thoughts, hopes, and glories with little note of those applying to others. In short, everything is about him.
what do they do with their hands during a conversation? cross their arms? fidget with something?
In general, Theo attempts an imperial stillness, but when his mind is not still, his body becomes more difficult to master, giving way to his tendency to drum his fingers. He has never yet discovered a means of entirely removing this and, blessed (and cursed) with an active mind, this tendency shows itself a rather great deal.
Theo’s love language is probably physical touch, followed by acts of service. Words at best seem to elude him, he has little time to spare, and gifts are a political tool to be wielded. While he is capable of employing almost all of them -- especially in a dissected, political manner, the mark of genuine affection is touch: something as simple as placing his hand on another’s shows a genuine tenderness from the man which the emperor’s chrysm-touched fingers cannot destroy. Theo is, after all, a person divided: the emperor is his mind; the man is his heart -- and narry the twain shall meet.
All muses have a family of some sort, whether it be a biological one or an adoptive one, and usually muns aren’t able to talk much about them. However, this meme will allow you to expand on your family headcanons! Have fun~
Send me a ♠ to have my muse talk about their parents.
Send me a ♡ to have my muse talk about their siblings.
Send me a ♢ to have my muse talk about their cousins/nephews.
Send me a ♣ to have my muse talk about their children.
Send me a ✎ + a family member that wasn’t mentioned in this post ( grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc ).
His mien was calm, almost warm -- a countenance coachable into whatever expression was required: this was something he had long ago learned to do and perfected at his father’s foot. It was a skill necessary to an Emperor of Byzantium. Oh, yes, he was calm and smiling for all the world to see, laughing even when required, yet those who knew him well saw the stoniness within him, lurking along the edge of his granite soul.
The welcome banquet was a sudden farce, an exquisite shield cast up by a quick-moving ally to stand between his old guests and his new ones, but Theodore had little patience for it. Tonight he was his very sigil: a double headed eagle, sharp-eyed and on the prowl, seeming to look one way when in fact his gaze fell the other way, taking in all around him.
The only outward signal of anything other than merriment was the occasional twitch of his finger, an expression of deep consideration. Turning towards his companion, he arched a brow. “Tell me, now, what do you make of the Tsar’s feast? I must say, it is an impressive feat: I’ve never tasted a more delicious impromptu banquet, nor attended one better organized -- have you?”
His gaze was heavy, resting on his companion for a moment, then, so quickly it seemed almost as if the other had never occurred at all, he smiled, a bright flash. Oh, yes, all was merriment. All was good cheer. What else was there to feel?
They smiled at one another, but the expression on either part never seemed to meet the eye. They stared, too, as if trying to see past the colour of hues but into the brain itself. Marguerite couldn’t quite come to understand why an Emperor of the Byzantine Empire would crave the island known as a Kingdom, but she quickly blamed Alice, for a mother could have a heavy piece on a son’s beliefs and thoughts, and knowing her by story of her half-brother and Marguerite’s husband, she assumed that Alice had raised her children to believe that Cyprus was more than what it had seemed.
What was so grand about it, after all? When the news had reached the priory that she was meant to marry the King of Cyprus, Marguerite had moaned out loud that it was nothing, that she’d die on an island with no way home. But when she had arrived, the varnish rubbed away to reveal the true magic that soaked upon its sands. The birth of Aphrodite. The people. The story of Galatea. The ancient ghosts that walked alongside the present day person! Cyprus was a magical place, for not only its rich minerals and fertile lands, and perhaps Alice yearned for her birthplace as Marguerite had never done. Perhaps she had been afforded the pleasure of knowing where one was pushed out into the world of the living, whereas Marguerite knew little of France at all — only in recent years had she begun to learn what came with the title of de France.
It was for her son, she told herself, it was for all of those children buried there — that was the reason why marguerite would fight for the island till her very last breath. Let them debate, let him sing the songs of how his ancestors had been consummated there, for Marguerite would stand her ground. With annoyance, her eyes flickered up toward the ceiling, staring instead at shapeless colours before she forced herself back to the ground.
He was right, however. His sister would become her own, and his mother would become… yet another branch of her family tree. She ached at the thought, something inside of her curling up into something like a rotting root — and yet, she remained poised, her lips puckered into a stance she hoped was somewhat unreadable, as she dropped her hands to her side. He was a good talker, but he would have to do more to uncoil the belief that his mother had ordered the assassination of her favourite child. With a heavy breath, she stepped closer, the fine line of her neck bearing towards him, as if she were Iphigeania approaching Agamemnon for the slaughter. “I will welcome your sister into my family, as I welcome you, Emperor —” in a display of grandeur, she took his hand into her own with care, her eyes watching his, ignoring the guards that stood around them, readying themselves for the worst, as she rose his hand to her lips, kissing the knuckles of the one born in the purple. She had known, since the age of twelve, to play pretend.
“I seek only your approval of them, in turn. Do you trust my brother? He has a complicated history, but all of us do,” Marguerite mused, running a thumb across his own, before she gently lowered him back to where his hand had been, stepping backwards with her shoulders rolled behind her, standing as if she were a Queen, rather than a sister, a widow and a mother. It was the subject of marriage that turned her sour again, her eyes narrowing to feline shapes before she shook her head with a decisive whip. “Why would someone want me as a bride, when I have played my part? No, your grace, I am not one to speak so plainly to someone I do not know, but I am old enough to know that I am not a Princess one would want. My niece, the Lady de Rouvroy, may be more to your liking.”
Her fingers were cool against his skin, cool, he half-imagined, as the electric blue waters of the Mediterranean must be this time of year. Yet, he found, as her hand clasped his, that her hands were warm. He did not resist. His glance sought hers, the over-bright vibrancy of them which gave one to believe that she were lit up from within, the fervor of her heart and mind illuminating earthly flesh. She raised his hand, imperially perfumed with pine, ivy, bay leaves, myrtle, and rosemary, to her lips, soft as gossamer upon his skin. Her breath was hot.
He nodded in the way that he had been trained to when one kissed the ring, and once again, his eyes found hers. “I am glad to hear it,” he replied. “We will do well together, our empires, and we shall take the rest of Europe by storm.” He, too, knew how to pretend.
After all, he did not trust her. Perhaps it was some inborn instinct, perhaps it was the round of stories that had woven through his childhood warning of the usurping Queen, perhaps it was simply her too-easy capitulation after showing such a gleam of passion. Still, he appreciated the effortless showcase of seeming fidelity, the weaponization of tradition cultural signalling. Whatever lessons she had learned in France and in Cyprus, she had learned them well. His lips looped upward. This was an interesting woman, indeed.
The fact that I am alive, he thought with a twist of ironic humor. Is proof that I do not trust anyone. But instead he smiled, a bright thing, and inclined his head. “Soon, your brother and I shall be joined, brothers in Christ through the matrimony of my sister to him. Then, what is good for one brother shall be good for the other, for rising tides raise all ships.” He paused, thoughtful. “We have, all of us, complicated histories, I think.” Theodore, himself, had after all become the very demon his mother had once decried: usurper, and worse: kin slayer. “That is the price we pay for the laurels we wear at our brows, is it not?”
He chuckled softly. “You misunderstand me, I think, Madame. I do not ask for myself. Oh, my time will come to someday take a wife, but I do not think it is yet arrived.” He suppressed another laugh, thinking how his mother might react if he were to bring Marguerite home as his empress, now to rule over Alice once and for all.
Theodore arched his brow with some surprise as she ventured the Lady de Rouvroy for the role. No, unfortunately, he could wed no bastard: his empress must be of pristine birth, unbridled wealth, and consummate grandeur, and that he should like her was not to be an ingredient worth considering, at all.
“My considerations were for your own future, wondering where you were meant to be dispatched. But, it seems I was entirely confused in my presumptions. My apologies, Madame, for the distressing mistake. I think the rumor must be based merely in my sister’s arrangements, rather than in your own.”
WHERE Moscow Kremlin, Ethiopian greeting halls
WHO Open to anyone who fancies welcoming the Empress of Ethiopia into the fold
The Spanish, the French or the Chinese may have found complaint for the sudden change of climate, but it was Medhan who suffered the most. Before her arrival, acclaimed and sewn in with the French, Medhan had ordered lashings of furs to be brought in her trunks, to warm the dark skin of her ladies-in-waiting who followed her like waves of doves skimming the water’s surface. For the cold, it seemed, penetrated the most prepared for the voyage, leaving Medhan to shiver in the thickest of coats that swaddled her divine frame. Of course, when alone, she wore the coats for warmth, but when presenting herself to the public she would brave the frost to wear a take on the usual costume donned by the state dress of Ethiopia, the blood-red of her dress was highlighted by coins, the netting of a shawl falling over her lap, as she spread herself across the wooden throne.
It was, perhaps, a shame that she was tied to the French Kingdom, having to play a friend to the King, who seemed to think of himself as highly as one ever could. She would rather have had her own apartments, to decorate the Ethiopian quarters with their colours, with washes of oils and bottled scents, to have her following of peacocks and lovebirds singing from ear to ear. But no, her appearance was stripped back, the grandeur of her and her husband’s Empire a ghost of what it really was. At least, she thought, she was close to her daughter - of whom she treasured so passionately, that one would think her perhaps all too possessive of her.
Welcoming the bevy of people within her cloisters, Medhan remained seated, waving a hand towards each soul who approached the new age Queen of Sheba. “Welcome,” she began, using French to her advantage, a language she had taught her daughter. “Welcome, should we begin this hurrah with a game? Tell me, are you any good at archery? Shoot an arrow beyond the slit in the wall, for where I have set up a mark for your aim. Don’t worry, if you were to hit anything but it, I would recompensate…” With her voice a drawl of honey, Medhan rose to her feet, going to her own bow, of which had been carved from an ancient tree of the Wollo state. “I’ve always enjoyed a competitive sport…”
This was indeed a surprise, but not one the Emperor resented, always eager to showcase his skills, always eager to enjoy a little good-natured rivalry. Besides, he hoped this would prove to be the first of many collaborative efforts between himself at the Empress taking up her position beside him. His alliance with France was just beginning and, Theodore hoped, he might extend it by providing a triple alliance with himself, France, and France’s well-established allies of Ethiopia. That would, he was sure, prove a powerful Triumvirate, indeed.
“I, too, am very fond of sport, Your Imperial Highness. I can think of no better way to begin.” A pause. “In any case, so auspicious a meeting between our two great empires does, I think, call for some celebrating does it not? I confess, I’ve long wished to meet with you in person. I believe there is much you and I can accomplish in this world together, should we wish it.”
Taking up his own position, he smiled softly to himself. He had always considered himself particularly proficient in this art and, raising the bow, loosed his arrow. He watched it fly, sailing through the air. It arced, rising, rising. Then, all at once, with a resounding thud, it landed, straight and true.
Smiling to himself, Theodore stood back, and turned to her. “Well,” he said with a bright smile, clearly a man accustomed to praise, and arrogant as a result. When he spoke, it was not merely of target practice. “What do you think? Have I hit the mark?”
Perhaps he had forgotten that his majesty, to be born into the purple, meant nothing to Marguerite. She had, after all, been born into a similar grandeur and had met her full of royal guests… perhaps, she thought, he was unaware of the parade of death that had followed Marguerite from her youth to her adulthood? Either way, she thought, it made no amend to his obnoxious pride of country. And with a stiff lip, she stared at the Emperor, the fire within trying to understand what was about to be placed between them, what deal or whisper was due to unfold between their bodies? Her Greek had Cypriot tendencies and local monikers that wouldn’t have translated well into the Byzantine courtly language, so she tried to keep it as simple as possible, gesturing with the tilt of her head alone as she remained as solid as the honorary title bestowed upon her reign in Cyprus.
“I know, you forget that I sat by my husband’s side as evidence that the French would take his side, a hostage as any foreign bride knows. I lived out those stories, I bore children who were meant to act as Cyprus’ foot soldiers…” Marguerite sneered, raising her chin as to look at him down past her nose, despite his much greater height to her own. She wanted to expand, to tell this man-child before her that Hugh did not only take what was meant to be Alice’s, but he had also traded her life for the sake of the small, but wealthy, kingdom. That she was as much as a chess piece as the rest of them were, that she held no coin in the fate of Cyprus - that she only remained within the aggressive game to defend her own son’s rule. That she would do anything to secure it. Even it it meant pressing a concealed blade against the Emperor’s neck, slicing through skin as she would then do to each of his siblings, and finally to his mother.
At yet, her mouth remained closed, her eyes pierced onto his, an intensity flooding over her which tested at her willpower. Perhaps it was because he had been brought up to believe that he was all the more special due to his time of birth, or a lifetime spent sucking on his mother’ breast, but Marguerite could not help but feel wrathful tendencies towards him. Sucking in a breath of her own, the Dowager of Cyprus (and by blood, Princess of France), squared her shoulders, the clean, stark white of her caulette framing the angular shape of her face.
“Where have you heard this?” She asked, her voice almost hoarse, for no one had told her such a thing. The improper, and casualness of it, left Marguerite almost dizzy, for she broke the spell of Galatea in just a second, her eyes then stern with a glaze of worry reflecting the Russian sunlight. “What do you mean?”
Theodore’s gaze was heavy upon her, anatomizing each shift in expression, reading the language of eye, of body, of motion with acute interest. This was a language in which the Emperor was quite as fluent as any other: perhaps more so. Early on, his tutors had leant him much instruction: “People will tell you more, noble καῖσαρ*,” they would whisper. “With the rest of their bodies than they will ever reveal with their tongues.” He’d learned the lesson well, too, sitting at his father’s foot, observing, observing, observing. Words wheeled round and round and round, but a flutter of the lashes, a twist of the cheeks, a twitch of the fingers spoke volumes.
So it was that he smiled to himself, a strange, knowing kind of smile as she sneered at him and, tilting his head, he observed her. “I believe that you mean what you say. I know that you were there in the aftermath, just as I know you were not there for the war, itself.” He paused. “I, too, watched the devastation of aftermath roll over the other participant, shaping and changing her forever.” He shook his head. “And I, too, was by my mother’s own admission born a foot soldier for such wars. In the end, we, none of us, chose this for ourselves. Unlike you, Madame, I am Cypriot by blood -- and unlike me, you have lived there -- but neither of us chose that path: it was given us by our parents to walk, and we shall never know any other path because of it.”
He paused, allowing his words to waft between them. Then, smiling again, a look that did not entirely meet his eyes, he continued on. “Now, France turns its attentions, once again, does it not? Now, my own blood prepares to sit beside your king, as evidence that we shall take his part, just as you once did for my uncle, siding now with his exiled sister’s children, instead.” He watched her sharply. “What are you and I to make of this? What do you wish, Madame?” He paused. “A war? A reconciliation? I know that my mother, your sister-in-law, can hardly be dear to you, but perhaps your husband’s nephews and nieces might earn another opportunity, even if we are of relation through her?”
Yet her eyes, her face, her whole frame told another story. Wrath, wrath and hate. He met her gaze, his strange smile still playing upon his lips. He admired it: the dedication of it, the certainty of it. Passion rolled from every sinew of her body, and he admired that too: fervor was a beautiful thing -- even when it threatened, but, God, he liked a challenge.
“But I think I understand you. You, perhaps,” he chuckled, softly, knowing his words would gloss over understatement. “Are not a supporter of your brother’s marital plans? Are you so completely your late husband’s in sympathies, and so little your living brother’s?”
He was struck. A chink in the armor. His brows furrowed and, for a moment, he glanced away, as if to allow some privacy. Yet, her words recalled him and he turned back to her. “Perhaps it is naught more than rumor,” he replied, shaking his head. “I cannot think where first I heard it, but certainly it was no official channel. People say many things. Perhaps the rumor has its origin in my Cypriot-French sister’s arrangements, simply confused with the French-Cypriot princess, but I have heard it often enough I confess I put some stock in it.” He paused. “It seems that the notion does not please?”
Extreme ways that help me
That help me out late at night
Extreme places I had gone
But never seen any light...
o baby, o baby
then it fell apart
it fell apart
o baby, o baby
like it always does
it always does...
-- extreme ways, moby
i. emerald star -- lord huron
You're the brightest star in all of the sky
I'll cry and I'll cry if your light ever dies
Oh, what a jewel are you
And, oh, what a fool am I for squandering my love
On an emerald in the sky
byzantium glitters like a jewel. yet, toted around his neck, its glamor is cold, and it is strangling him...
ii. king of the clouds -- panic! at the disco
Heaven knows that I'm born too late
For these ghosts that I chase
With these dreams, I inflate, painted skies in my brain...
I don't trust anything
Or anyone, below the sun
I don't feel anything
At all
I'm king of the clouds, of the clouds...
Some only live to die, I'm alive to fly higher...
I'm ascendin' these ladders, I'm climbin', say goodbye...
And when I fall to rise with stardust in my eyes
In the backbone of night, I'm combustible...
I'm lost but I better find it alone...
I keep searching
ambition percolates in his mind, his heart, buoying him even within its own furious storm. yet, as much as he grasps, it will never, never be enough...
iii. human -- of monsters and men
If I lose control
I feed the beast within
Cage me like an animal
A crown with gems and gold
Eat me like a cannibal
Chase the neon throne
Breathe in, breathe out
Let the human in
to be emperor is to be divine, to be divine is to be cruel. yet, the emperor is mortal, as well, capable of true humanity even in the face of all that haunts him...
iv. beautiful crime -- tamer
If I could take your hand, oh
If you could understand
That I can barely breathe, the air is thin
I fear the fall and where we'll land
We fight every night for something
When the sun sets, we're both the same
Half in the shadows
Half burned in flames
We can't look back for nothin'
Take what you need, say your goodbyes
I gave you everything
And it's a beautiful crime...
Leaving the things we lost, oh
Leaving the ones we've crossed
I have to make an end so we begin
To save my soul at any cost...
I’ll give you everything
This darkness is the light...
And it's a beautiful crime
once, his father looked him in the eye. he asked him an immortal question. yet, konstantinos is now dead and, someday, theodore will follow him, yet the world wheels round again and his family must find they love what they most hate...
v. take me back -- kongos
Can't even taste if my food's alive
Staring down some invisible fear...
I'm guess I'm always tomorrow-bound
How many more till I'm underground?
Oh oh I remember now
Too far below to turn around
Too bright a light to let go now
Take me back my friend...
Now what I'm saying is nothing new
This repetition's right on cue
A wise man said you're amused to death
Too much talk, too much wasted breath
You're overjoyed and over-fed
Over-sexed, you're almost dead
Gotta work gotta stay awake
God I'm tired can I take a break
hope and ambition are murder, a cold kind of murder, and self-inflicted for all that...
vi. addicted to love -- florence + the machine
Oh, you like to think that you're
Immune to the stuff, oh yeah
It's closer to the truth to say
You can't get enough
You're gonna have to face it
You're addicted to love...
If there's some love
There for you
Then you don't mind
If you do
the emperor buries himself in pleasure to escape the void of all that he lacks...
vii. the manic -- amarante
There's a pain I'll carry with me
Through the days I will dream
Of losing you
And losing me
I'm not the man that you will need
I've let you down entirely
You're better off...
I'll let you go...
Kick me out and let me go
You don't need me, I'm an angry soul
Shut me out and lock the door
You don't need me
Pick up all these broken pieces I have left behind
the murder of konstantinos was, in truth, the murder of theodore as well, and particularly when faced with his family, he cannot escape the fact...
viii. hiding -- florence + the machine
I think you hide
When all the world's asleep and tired
You cry a little...
I know that you're hiding
I know there's a part of you that I just cannot reach...
I know you've tried
But something stops you every time
there is a facade behind which he hides, a tall monument to joy and pleasure, meant to block out all that lies beneath it, yet it fails, it fails, it fails...and another wall, still, situated there to pretend that it does not fail at all...
ix. no one’s here to sleep -- naughty boy, bastille
I'm climbing up the walls
What goes on behind these doors
I'll keep mine and you'll keep yours...
We all have our secrets
Behind every door
Is a fall, a fall and
No one's here to sleep
You were always faster than me
I'll never catch up with you, with you
Oh I can feel them coming for me...
Here's the pride before the fall
Oh, your eyes, they show it all
I can see it coming...
As I rise up through each floor
Shit gets dark and you lose it all
the emperor must contend with a bevy of other ambitious monarchs, each competing to rise and rise and rise...and not a one intent upon failure...but each facing it...
x. cold little heart -- michael kiwanuka
Did you ever fight it?
All of the pain
So much pride
Running through my veins
Bleeding, I'm bleeding!
My cold little heart
Oh I, I can't stand myself
And I know in my heart
In this cold heart
I can live or I can die...
Did you ever notice
I've been ashamed?
All my life
I've been playing games
We can try to hide it
It's all the same
I've been losing you
One day at a time...
Maybe this time I can be strong
But since I know who I am
I'm probably wrong
Maybe this time I can go far
Thinking about where I've been
Ain't helping me start
summation: even in the face of horror, there is hope...
Theodore’s face was made for a bezant, made to be sculpted into a mould and punched into a round of softened gold. Helena recalled, once, their mother remarking so as she eyed him––then, a tall, muscular youth, with bronzed skin; a full, bee-stung mouth; his head a cache of chestnut-curls, redolent of the bust of Alexander––and imagined his face embossed onto a freshly-minted coin. She imagined it being bartered at a wineshop in Venice; in the belly of a Phoenician ship; a market in Constantinople; a mosque in Lydia. Helena spitefully envisioned his likeness exchanged for something cheap and filthy: diseased whores, curdled ale, a tooth from a barber’s cart, a vial to stamp out a gouty foot. She imagined it being rolled under a plow, until his nose was flat and snubbed and his eyes melted away under an Angevin sun; or chiming in the velvet purse of a Roman, left at the foot of a cathedral, its great western doors opening to the crush of grime-stained beggars; or flicked up by the Pope’s thumb––upward into the air, glinting as it caught the sun’s afternoon rays, and as it landed Paul would rule whether or not to torch another Holy War. Perched across from him, with one knee slung elegantly over the other, Helena imagined Theodore’s bezant sinking into the frothy depths of the Black Sea; scattering like particles of dust, grains of sand, across a lifeless seabed.
She ceased her fantasizing and lifted to her feet; the thin aches of her brows knitted, evincing the despoina’s discomposure. “You confuse yourself with God, brother,” Helena coolly remarks, appearing to glide lithely toward the window, to the oak intarsia table where the Emperor’s underlings had prepared a magnificent swathe of libations: several carafes, silver cups, olive-pitted breads and honey-glazed cheeses that Caligula’s own tongue would have salivated at the mere sight of, arranged to perfection by a competent Byzantine gastronome. Discriminating hands waft over the spread and pluck up a singular cup; Theodore’s presence had dispossessed Helena of her appetite. She brought the vinous communion to her lips, sampling only briefly, and elaborated, “even you are second to his Glory. Even you are at the mercy of his Fortune. Do you still speak to him, Theodore? Or have you come to rely solely upon your own impulse?”
With her back turned to Theodore, Helena’s lips descended into a glower. She wondered––not for the first time––what Branas had intimated to Theodore, and if his own composure had crackled beneath the weight of the Emperor’s cumbersome stare, if he gazed back at him with eyes that hinted he’d touched the Emperor’s own sister, knew her biblically. She could imagine, easily, the adobes of Branas’ constitution melting beneath the heat of the Byzantine sun, his innards deliquesced into a bath of organs, rotted from the inside out with noxious loyalty. Yet, Helena also recognized Theodore as a self-obsessed man; uninterested in pursuing or exploring a fault in Branas’ demeanor, his so-far unimpeachable loyalty. If only he knew, Helena gleamed, her tongue flicking over her mouth with satisfaction.
Her thoughts turn on a volte-face back to Sophia, to the pride that had swelled in her throat like a tumor as she watched her younger sister make her fraught procession up to the groom’s velvet-draped dais. “There is, of course, the trouble of the Grand Prince’s children,” Helena reminds, turning on-heel to face the Emperor. “What will you stipulate in order to ensure Sophia’s children––our Palaiologan blood––ascends to the throne?”
The stench of lacquer and fresh paint was thick in this room, Helena recorded, appearing to pour out from the freshly-painted walls, the tapestries from which dust had been beaten out and now wafted about the room, the recent coat of varnish on the gold, the silver. Yet, she was certain the lightness in her head was the cause of something else entirely, and succumbed her unease to another drag of wine. “It is the singular thing that yokes us, Theodore, the Empire,” she breathed at last, dropping to her seat. “But when in France...” A bitter laugh rasps in her lungs. “Our Aunt Marguerite––if such a grievous creature can be called that––will stop at nothing to put me to heel. She cannot speak our mother’s name without poison dribbling out from her filthy mouth. God––she may one day choke on it, herself.” Helena prayed soon.
“You forget, sister, though we now own them heretics, my forebears -- the first Roman Emperors -- were gods, indeed. Am I not their God-appointed successor, sent by our Lord to rule over all?” His words were playful, but his look was watching, a glimmering thing that slanted off dark eyes till they seemed to kindle, all their own, his oft-mercurial humor turning, turning, turning within him. His smile was a scythe, inviting, menacing, and then something twisted in him, again, and he laughed. “We all commune with our God, do we not, Helena?”
Yet, for all these words, Theodore felt the beckoning of hellfire, its fiery wrath wreathing his ankles from the bear earth, as if Lucifer would at any moment plunge his crimson fist through the earth’s crust and drag the last Rome’s earthly ruler to be judged before his infernal throne in mockery of the Last Judgment of God. God, Lucifer, and Helena all knew his sins: and they were mortal, an indelible death mark on his immortal soul. He could never escape his guilt.
“An Emperor,” he said, turning to her again, now cold, now warm. “Has all the more to discuss with God than others.” Particularly, he left unsaid, those who had gained their rank through patricide. Oh, yes, Theodore prayed: God simply no longer heard his prayers.
Theodore nodded thoughtfully, catching up a long-stemmed chalice. “The stipulation, thus far, is set to be simple enough. A binding writ must ensure two things: first, the preeminence of the tsar’s own children over his nieces and nephews, and second that only the heirs legitimate -- that is, those of our Sophia’s own body -- may ascend the throne. Further, with this done, all nobles of the realm must make binding oaths to uphold this law, first amongst them the Grand Duke, himself. We may withhold her dowry -- and, indeed, her hand in marriage -- in consequence of this action, and suring up a burgeoning empire is an expensive business. The Tsar will have wont of her and her riches.”
He paused. “Is there something you would...append to this stipulation? Ensuring that her child is the next Tsar is, after all, paramount to the nature of this alliance. Perhaps the removal to Constantinople of the Grand Duke’s children for...further education, might prove most efficacious?” He sipped the cup and placed it down again. “Assuredly, it would prove an...aggressive move, but the children would, indeed, benefit from it, and so would the alliance, buoying both empires. If you were Basileus, my sister, what would your next move be?”
Nodding as she spoke of Marguerite, Theodore ran a thumb across his lip. “She may prove a formidable opponent, Helena, but I’ve no doubt you are up to the challenge. Nonetheless, I would spare you what I can as you ease into your new role. I mean to put a plan in place to help...assuage that situation. This summit promises a bevy of such possibilities, does it not?” He considered. “Rumors say that she is to be wed again. It might prove to best advantage if we can help assure a marriage which will pluck her from the French court and place her somewhere her reach may not much touch us. You are to be Queen of France, Helena: what is your will on this matter?”
At twelve years old, Marguerite had learned of the ill-blood that soaked the Kingdom of Cyprus. The civil war, that had been brokered by Alice of Cyprus, had split the island and its surrounding alliances into a fractured, solemn place. Gone were the days of heraldry and celebration, till Marguerite took her place by Hugh de Lusignan. She would sit back and listen to Hugh’s descriptions of Alice, to the tales spun of her children and the hatred that’d shadow his rule. Marguerite, who had not really heard of Alice till her arrival in Cyprus, was raised to hate her and her brood. And yet, even then, there had been a glimmer of forgiveness on the horizon.
That was, till the murder of her eight year old son, the boy born from sea foam, named after his father, Hugh.
By nature she blamed Alice of Cyprus, calling her name up toward the heavens, before Marguerite could join her ill-fated children, she would take the killer into her own hands, and wash her hands with their blood. Not that she had, in reality, told anyone of this plan. For her brother, King Charles of France, had drawn up an alliance with the Byzantines, marrying the daughter of Alice’s womb without Marguerite’s council. By society’s terms, she was forced to act with a polite, demure nature that the court decided came from her tender, matronly years of being a Dowager. But even then, as she talked to her future sister-in-law and niece by marriage, Marguerite had not sought the company of the Byzantine Emperor, for that would come later, when she had a name and an agent to pin to the wall.
He had called for her before she had called for him, and the fact had sickened her. She decided to forgo her Cypriot colours (olive-greens and mustard-yellows) in a plot to act with confusion, draping herself in the darker shades of blue for France, her hair covered by a modest white piece.
The Emperor’s first words caught her off-guard, and yet, she remained as stoic as possible, her eyes ice-bitten, her shoulders ached with cold. Slowly, as if biding her time, Marguerite looked around them before meeting his own, somewhat warm, gaze. “In another life, your grace? Am I not a little too old to be considered your bride?” Her question was, by all means, rhetorical, for she did not wait for a comeback, instead shifting beneath a layer of fur to join him as a conversational partner, bidding her women to remain by the alcove of wintered flora. “It’s cold, it feels damp and I do not believe we were made for the cooler climate. You must miss Constantinople, as I miss Cyprus… Why did you call to meet me, your Highness? I don’t like to speak in tongues.”
Despite himself, the Emperor smiled, his gaze set upon hers with a kind of measuring glint, lips curling upwards. “Ahh,” he mused. “You are a direct one, I see. That, I’m afraid, is not the Byzantine way.” He chuckled. “Or, at least, it is not the way we generally speak to anyone porphyrogennētos*.” He paused, studying her, doubting very much that she meant to be overawed by the amethyst walls of the chamber in which he’d been born: that was another item of Byzantine right, doubtless unlikely to much stir the rest of the world. He laughed again, a kind of thoughtful sound. Gradually, his expression sobered and sharpened, sharpened into something keen and bright and dissecting.
“There, then, I shall turn direct if you wish it. It cannot be lost on you, madame, that there is...tension in our pasts: your late husband; my aged mother.” He paused, gaze matched to hers, a kind of reading of the eyes, his orbs all fertile soil, hers hungry ocean waters. “Theirs was a bitter war: sister against brother. You and I, I am forced to conclude, have each heard one half of the story: I was raised to believe that a glorious birthright was unjustly stolen from my mother, a keening betrayal by a brother seduced by greed. Doubtless,” he added, arching his brows. “You heard something else, entirely. Yet, soon, your family and mine are to come together.” He smiled, a look that did not enter his eyes. “I wish to know where we stand.”
His look was a long one and, for a time, he stopped walking. Then, smiling, he moved onward again. “To answer your question, I do, indeed, miss Constantinople: my mother, my bride, my sarcophagus. Royal sisters and daughters we expect to cast to the furthest reaches of the world to make their way, but we ourselves,” he shook his head. “We seldom expect to leave and, then, generally only to marry or to die in war. I know, now, that yours is, in this way, the harder lot.” He eyed her carefully. In her own way, she’d gone to war when she’d married: the blood of civil war still very much making civil hands unclean at the time.
“There are some whispers, Madame, that you are to be wed again. Is this so?”
"Well, sister,” began Theodore coming forward, his hands outstretched to take hers. “I must say you perform wonderfully. The Tsar is not like to know what hit him.”
Theodore’s steps were rapid, his grin large, and his voice booming, a kind of triumphant fever over him. The bevy of fetes which had rolled over all at the Russian court had left him in famous good humor, eyes twinkling as he pictured all the opportunities Byzantium was even now boasting as the shared Russian-Byzantine spectacle took all Europe by storms. This was just the message he’d meant to display: unified, bristling power. Byzantium was no longer to be trod upon, no. She was on the move.
Taking both her hands in his, he kissed her cheek. “Are you not pleased? But come,” he added, dropping one hand to turn and lead her along a walk, Theodore’s usual proclivity for action spurring him to walk with her rather than simply to stand. “You must tell me all. What are your impressions of your future husband? Favorable, I hope? Certainly, his appearance is pleasing, I assume?”
Oh, Byzantium -- and thus, no doubt, his sister’s expectations -- was a world away from Russia: balmy and bright and sporting an ancient palace complex with the imperial family at its heart with roots in antiquity. Russia was something altogether different, a spurious conglamoration of fiefs uniting into something brand new. But, then, both his sisters had been raised to be foreign queens -- perhaps something in such training had prepared her for difference, he could not say. His own upbringing had been very specifically tailored to that which he was even now enacting.
He paused, sobering, and turned towards her, a kind of anxiety coming over him as, gently, he squeezed her hand. Sophia was, after all, his baby sister and, in some ways, the only sister he had left. How could he leave her to the care of a wolf, if she did not willingly agree to it? “I hope, at any rate, sister, that you can see yourself being...happy, here?”
This was to be a historic meeting. Though Theodore had heard much from his mother’s lips of Cyprus -- a home he had never seen -- it had seemed almost a fantasy, a fairy tale land serving the likes of Heaven or Eden, but one which his mother never ceased to remind him, he by rights ought to inhabit -- ought to rule. Marguerite Capet and her husband, however, had stepped into his mother’s shoes, stealing the realm away by conquest. Oh, Hugh was already ruler by the time he contracted his French bride to join him upon his ill-gotten throne, but the fact was that Theodore’s mother had always resented the other woman who dared call herself Queen of Cyprus, and she had taught her children to do so, too. Theodore had lived long under the certainty of pressure: someday, he must reclaim this birthright. Yet, reclaiming Byzantium, alone, was proving challenge enough.
By now, Marguerite was the Cypriot Queen Mother and Princess of France, and Theodore was Emperor of Byzantium, but both now had blood links to the throne of Cyprus and, soon, to France as well when Helena became its Queen. This was not simply a historic meeting: it was a delicate one, as well.
The gardens of the Kremlin gave up their last blooms, bright vestiges of a summer already decaying. Many of the plants here were foreign to the Byzantine Emperor -- vines and verdure meant to withstand coldest winter -- where Theodore was accustomed to sunny Constantinople. He wondered, in a kind of vague way, it Marguerite felt the same, or if the soil of France produced plants more of this stock, as well.
It was a fleeting thought, chased away by her appearance. He couldn’t say what he’d expected of the so-called Galatea. Oh, the mythological statue’s beauty had been said to be beyond compare, but what does one expect of a statue made of flesh and bone? To Theodore, raised with enemy eyes, it meant cold, but that was not what he saw now. Her skin was white as marble, it was true, but her eyes flashed blue as the electric waters of the Mediterranean, and her hair was black as raven’s wing, and there was some fierce command in her eyes that brought a smile to his features, for Theodore in truth liked nothing so much as a challenge.
Closing the gap between them, his smile turned welcoming. “Your Grace,” he said. “I confess, I have long wished to meet you. Fate, after all, has long cast our lot together. Had things been different, I might have been ruler of Cyprus, and you might have thus proved my bride, instead.“ He chuckled softly. “Though my mother, I confess, views it in quite another way.”
He paused, watching her, curious to see what -- if any -- effect this might have upon her. Meetings of this kind were, of course, chess: a rook to capture a knight, a pawn to take a rook, on and on and on again till one king or the other fell. That was how he had been raised to see them: but was that the actual fact? He smiled, bemused, eyes gaining the beauty of the gardens around them.
“Tell me, Your Grace, what make you of this tsardom? To me, it is at once everything and nothing that I expected it to be. Is that not remarkable?”
