The Red-headed Queens

January 28, 1547, Palace of Whitehall, London, United Kingdom.

Her father had died. Granted, he was not really her father. Sure, he’d contributed to her birth in a small yet significant way but as soon as he declared her mother a witch, he’d ceased to be her father. He’d always resented her and her mother for being just that, a female. But he was gone now. He died at fifty-five, a grotesque shadow of what he’d once been: powerful, handsome, charming.

But it’d been that same “charming” man who’d sent her beloved mother to the execution block along with four other women. Heads will roll as they say… and yet she felt unbelievably abandoned as she kept vigil by his coffin and as she wept she felt more and more alone.

It wasn’t the same with her half-siblings, Mary and Edward, they were orphans too but they had more power. Mary was the eldest and Edward was the boy, besides, they weren’t cursed like she was. Mary was a good Catholic girl, Elizabeth’s greatest enemy and Edward was a poor sickly boy, now the King of England.

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Elizabeth was impossibly removed from them because she’d inherited her mother’s curse. She was a witch.