Letter 5

This is my personal letter to Lady Alexandria, the information here gathered from surviving scholarly accounts, but the emotion purely driven by my own pen. If her soul is still out there, please know that I still weep for them.

- E. Celestina

My heart breaks for you.

There are perhaps only two tragedies in this world that no amount of wisdom nor divinity can ever fathom: the death of one’s child, and the death of one’s lover. Your husband, known now as Constantinus the Joyful, was said to always ride into battle with a smile upon his face. Every general, every legionnaire, every centurion could attest to this. Perhaps a part of it was his enjoyment of battle, yet more so it was his love for the life he was defending—you so included.

You must have recalled, as you watched his closest men carry his casket through Exeter’s streets, the days of your first meetings. He was a precocious young man, son of a great father, yet the pressures never fazed him. Even through his rigorous training, he would find time away from the Gardens to speak to you, a mere second daughter of a middling bloodline of legionnaires and garmentmakers. You made sure his efforts did not go unnoticed, and in both of your free young lives, must have held many late nights that turned to mornings.

Though, he being the son of the Emperor meant many other eyes aside from your own gazed upon him. Every day, you would find him turning down offer after offer—fathers who were willing to give him a fortune to take the hand of their daughter. Such acts filled you with simultaneous parts of envy and pride—a gut-wrenching will to push those suitors away, yet satisfaction that despite all their efforts, his eyes never left yours.

When the great Pompeiius passed, you held him in your arms as he sobbed with the Empire, the great leader buried with all the funeral rites you could provide for him. That same year, he rose as Princeps, and betrothed you to marriage. Children, however, was not something he could bless with you just yet. “Father’s death has brought unrest. I must quell it first, then we will bless each other with sons and daughters.” You thought this to be backwards, for what if he perished before you could fulfill your duty? Yet he always returned, and he always tried.

Trying did not mean succeeding. Fifteen years, and nine lost children wracked upon both of your souls. No words I could gather could possibly reflect a fraction of what you felt, and perhaps lost feeling of, when the babies you love emerged sick or stillborn. Yet your husband, even in the grief that tore into your soul, never let his resolute smile falter. It was all for you—doubtful he felt no pain or suffering, but he maintained those smiles for you. He kept trying for you.

Thus on the 403rd anniversary of Exeter’s founding, your lives were both blessed with Julia. Your husband, for her sake and yours, wanted nothing more than to keep Julia safe. You, after years of turmoil, only wanted her to stand tall. “You will shine forever”, you told her, when she was only minutes old.

You placed her in rigorous schooling. You gave her the finest minds as tutors, and let her amongst a cohort of boys who no doubt would push against her for her gender, yet you held firm in your belief that she would emerge strong.

At the same time, you watched as your husband left for emergency after emergency. In your daughter’s adolescent years, he was slowly less and less present to watch her growth. Every time you watched her victories in the Wargames, you thought:

“She smiles little, but she has the same smile as you, my husband.”

And on the day you wanted him home—to watch his only child bear her greatest victory up to that point, he was not. Yet, you reassured yourself it would be all right. During every hardship, he always smiled. After every battle, no matter how brutal, he always held joy when others could not.

Your joy never came home.

And, as the funeral rites concluded, and the casket of gold and laurel lowered into the grave for thousands upon thousands to witness, you finally let it all go.

Decades of it. Of worry, of love, of anxiety, of pain, of uncertainty, of emptiness, erupted with a cry louder than the fifty thousand that witnessed the procession.

You must have remembered those words upon the cliffside.

“You will suffer. Whether you fall or you remain, you will suffer.

Only one of these choices will deliver a tomorrow.”

Yet as your beloved became buried under earth and rock, you could not fathom if a true tomorrow would ever come to you again.

Next to you, your daughter stood as you fell to your knees. What, do you wonder, was she thinking as the pyre burned above the Princeps’ tomb?

Naught would knowing her mind help you. Perhaps the answer could only be found tomorrow.

This is my personal letter to Lady Julia; to the young lady who just learned of her father’s death. May you shine brighter than the stars forevermore.

- E. Celestina

You would never have known it, but on that day, you became Britannia’s youngest sovereign. No King, no Regent, no Lord, and no Princeps ever had a youth that matched yours. Such is what added to your legend, but in reality, it was a burden that no child should ever have had to carry.

You entered the arena, seven days before the news of your father, expecting to become Centurion Legati. Seven days later, you became not the commander of thousands, but of every military soul that existed in Exetia, and the guiding voice for the millions upon millions of citizens you had to protect. You were fifteen.

You watched, three days later, as your father’s casket was solemnly carried through the streets by his imperial guard that would soon become your own. You watched as they lowered him into the earth, encasing the eternal throne he would now lay upon in dirt, and lit the pyre that marked his passion and eternity. You were fifteen.

You felt, at your feet, your mother grasp the ground haplessly as she cried and cried and cried with sounds that would burn into the deepest parts of your mind forever. You felt her grief, yet you could never fully empathize with it, nor could you. You were, after all, fifteen.

Three days later, the ceremony of your ascension came.

The Pontifex lowered the laurels upon your emblazoned hair. As you felt it approach your head, you recalled the laughter of your father on those still lakewaters. You recalled the warmth of his hand. You recalled the last time you saw your parents kiss, and though embarrassing it may have been before, you wished it would happen again, only to see your mother receive the joy he always gave her.

Yet, as the leaves of gold fastened in your locks, you swallowed it all down. Your worry, your love, your anxiety, your pain, your uncertainty, your emptiness—you kept it in the chambers of your heart as you faced the peoples you now had to stand before.

They cheered your name. They lifted their hands as you lifted your own. They roared as you roared your first declaration as the first among equals.

Thus, from that point forward, you bore the weight of the world.

Thus, from that point forward, you brought the empire its final, burning, blazing dawn.