"realpolitik" | Queen's Thief, Attolia & Eddis, advice

[betony]

Title: realpolitik
Fandom: Queen's Thief series, Megan Whalen Turner
Characters: Helen, Queen of Eddis; Irene, Queen of Attolia (sort of)
Content Warnings/Spoilers: mild dream creepiness (?); none past The Thief, but probably can be read without knowledge of canon.
Word Count: ~750
Disclaimer: All characters and concepts, as well as the quote included, are the creation and property of the brilliant Megan Whalen Turner.
Summary: The Thief of Eddis is not the only member of the Royal Family to have nightmares of Attolia.
A/N: This is my first attempt at canon-verse Queen's Thief fic, so please feel free to provide any canon nitpicks, complaints of ridiculousness, or any other constructive criticism necessary.

"At Eddis's coronation Attolia had poured her advice like vitriol into the ear of the new queen, watching her face whiten, viciously satisfied to be the one to tell the girl what the world was like when you were a queen."--The Queen of Attolia, HarperCollins, p. 298

The night after her coronation, Helen dreams of her throne room. The chamber is dark, and she is barefoot; as she enters, she sees there is a serpent draped over her throne. It is a monstrous thing, as thick around as a newly felled tree, and it is a beautiful thing, all scarlet scales with eyes like gunpowder, and it is also the Queen of Attolia.

Helen accepts this as meekly as she has everything else today: come here, swear this, make sure your crown doesn’t droop so, dear. But nevertheless, this is her throne. She can hardly avoid it forever, as much as she wants to. Helen takes in a deep breath and keeps on walking.

“Little Eddis,” the serpent rasps as she approaches. Its voice is lovelier than Helen would have expected. “How young you are.”

(“Cousin Eddis,” Attolia hissed in her ear through a smile, “how little you know about being Queen. Please, let me enlighten you.”)

There’s no denying that. “Yes,” says Helen, and adds, as she had not that morning: “But so too were you.” But that was all wrong. Attolia has never been young in any sense but the strictly chronological. She might have been carved out of the Hephestial Mountains themselves and blessed to life like the folktale of the sculptor’s bride for all Helen can imagine her young or innocent, and Helen had met the Princess Irene once as a child.

(“Your barons, gathered here around you? They’d all as soon see you dead, and one of their sons—or daughters, at a stretch—on this throne instead. If you're lucky, they'll only scheme to drain your people of what little they have. If you're not, they'll plot to destroy you as well”)

“You fear me,” notes the serpent with pleasure.

“I fear I’ll become you,” Helen lies, giving the serpent a wary look.

The snake flicks its tongue out lazily in her direction. “You will,” it said. “You won’t have a choice. You are Eddis now.”

What a thought that is, to put herself in the same category as the Queen of Attolia! After all, if Attolia is this gleaming terrible serpent that rests another’s throne as though it rightfully belongs there, Helen, by comparison, could only be the drabbest and smallest of mud snakes.

(“Your cousins? They’re all, to a man, thinking how unfortunate it is that you are not more beautiful. Not that it matters; they’ll offer for your hand in a matter of years regardless. An heir, an assassination, and they’ll have the power they seek, even only as regent.”)

“I’m Helen, too,” she protests. The serpent only chuckles.

“If you continue to believe that, you’ll drag your people down,” it said. “Helen will always be weak, selfish, and afraid. Eddis will always be alone. Is it really so difficult a choice to make?”

Put like that, it isn’t.

(“And your ministers? They might support your claim now, but the minute you cross them, they’ll leave you to fend for yourself. The minute they see you worry about that, they’ll have what they want most: to rule through you.”)

The dream shifts and changes around her then, and Eddis’s court appears around her, all unaware of and unconcerned about the monster in their midst, but there nonetheless. Agape looks up from her embroidery with a smile, the Minister of War stands tall and strong at Helen's side, and brash young Gen, reckless even in her dreams, scurries across the room with a wink. Stealing earrings again, she thinks indulgently, and starts dreaming up excuses to save him from the consequences he so richly deserves.

The serpent’s attack is as sudden as it is violent. One instant Gen is racing towards the doors; the next, the serpent’s heavy tail swings out and knocks him flat. Gen, sprawled on the floor, looks up at the creature with the wonder of a mouse bespelled by its gaze as it uncoils itself from Eddis’s throne to approach him.

Helen wants to scream. Eddis presses her lips tightly together to preserve what’s left of her dignity.

“I will take what you love and Sounis will have the rest,” the serpent says, standing over Gen now as a tall woman with cold eyes, “and Helen can do nothing to stop us because Eddis will not allow her. That is what it means to be Queen.”

The next morning, Eddis does not shout, does not shrink from greeting the Attolian Queen over breakfast, does not flinch at how Gen always seems to be underfoot when Attolia is nearby. But this too is true, that not until the news comes that the Attolian delegation has crossed the border does she trust herself to sleep again.

She's never needed a lesson twice.