The Dark Queen

Once upon a time there was a small kingdom far far away. The kingdom was ruled by merciless Queen Sylabub, the Dark Queen.  She was a queen who looked into her mirror and saw what she wanted to see and heard what she wanted to hear, and that was, indeed what the mirror spoke to her: “You are the fairest of all, the wisest of all, the best of all queens, good Queen Sylabub.”

Whatever action she performed was right by virtue of her having performed it. By divine right, she ruled the kingdom with an iron fist. Her royal blacksmiths had fashioned an indomitable iron fist she could pound with on the table, or someone’s head, as she saw fit.

Queen Sylabub was compassionlessness incarnate.  Her word was law. She was not a wicked stepmother. She was a wicked mother. She was a mother who treated her sons as royal princes and her own daughters as stepdaughters the way stepdaughters are treated in all the fairy tales since the beginning of time.

For all appearances, Queen Sylabub saw herself as a delight and always always right. There was a song sung out of the hearing of the Queen that is still remembered:

Queen Sylabub sees herself as a delight.
She has great might.
She has no foresight,
Nor has she insight
Nor has she hindsight,
For Queen Sylabub sees herself
As always always right.
For Queen Sylabub sees herself
As always always right.

Where was the King when his wife, Queen Sylabub, treated his daughters mercilessly? He was like all the other fairy tale Kings off somewhere hunting or some such and left his daughters at the mercy of the merciless Dark Queen. He too recognized that the Queen’s word was law and knew naught else to do but follow the Queen’s wishes. And so he blinded himself and did not hear the song sung about him in secret:

Old Blinded King the Gone,
Queen Obeyer of all the throng,
Abdicated His throne
With abandon
And sacrificed his second daughter,
Sacrificed his second daughter to ruin.
Heigh ho, he sacrificed his second daughter to ruin.

The first child, a daughter, being a first child, was somewhat favored until a son was born and took the favor away. Yet, before that, the Dark Queen had means of tormenting the first daughter and the second daughter, for the first son was not born until after the birth of the second daughter, Princess Bonita, the Unfortunate. The first princess was named Princess Betina, the Favored, yet even Princess Betina was not spared the will of her mother, the Dark Queen.

When Princess Betina, the first princess, was barely a year old, and she would cry, as even royal princesses do, the Dark Queen took Princess Betina over her knee and spanked her hard for the very reason that the child dared to cry in the Dark Queen’s presence. This was no way for a Queen’s daughter to behave, as if she were a mere commoner.

In a deep dark royal voice, the Dark Queen said: “Stop crying, Princess Betina, do you hear me? The spanking will not stop until you stop crying.”

Everyone in hearing distance covered their ears until the sobbing noises stopped, and worse, the baby convulsed in silent sobs. The queen dropped the daughter off her lap then and said with a smirk, “You will learn better than to cry.”

The Queen’s lap was not a great place to be.

And then the Queen was going to give birth to a second child. A boy was prayed for. All the people in this dim land by royal decree prayed for a boy.

At the time the Queen was carrying this second child who turned out to be a daughter, a spell had been cast on the Dark Queen.  For a week all she could do was laugh and talk incessantly until the mountains echoed her laugh. Then for a week, all she could do was weep and do nothing but weep until the land was covered with her tears.

The Queen’s physicians consulted amongst themselves with the result that the royal surgeon cut part of a pearl from Queen Sylabub’s throat and gave her great quantities of seaweed for the rest of her life which continued for an eternity.

When the second child was born, she was not a boy but a daughter with beautiful blond ringlets. Her name was Bonita after the fish in the sea. When the baby’s young aunt Glodier came to see her royal niece, Glodier would put her little finger through a curl of Bonita’s, and the curl would spring back. And the child would smile and laugh.

So long as the Dark Queen’s princess daughters cried elsewhere out of her hearing, it was a different matter. Out of the Dark Queen’s hearing, the cries were not to be stopped but ignored. And long echoed the cries of the two princesses throughout the castle.

The kingdom grew darker than ever, so great was the influence of the Dark Queen. Not only were the two daughters not allowed to cry in the Queen’s presence, no thumb-sucking was allowed in or out of her hearing or sight.

For the first princess, it didn’t matter, for she was not a thumb-sucker. For the second princess, it mattered, for the only comfort Princess Bonita had was her own little thumb.

The Dark Queen consulted with the royal blacksmiths and devised a metal device (two of them) that fit over baby Princess Bonita’s thumbs, and the devices were then tied securely with thick cord and pretty pink bows to the sides of the crib to make sure both thumbs were out of the reach of the baby princess’s mouth. No child of Queen, the Dark, was going to suck her royal thumb and make those sucking noises.

Let it be known that the Queen Mother, Queen Sylabub’s mother and Glodier’s mother the same, was quite a different queen. She had never spanked her children, not one of them, nor did she allow the court nursemaids to do so. No spell had been cast on her.

And, yet, the Queen Mother, like everyone else in the kingdom, turned a blind eye and a deaf ear. Probably because of the Queen Mother’s desire not to cross swords with her darkling daughter (whom the court, amongst themselves, called Royal Witchabub) abstained from the rescue of Princess Bonita, the Unfortunate Princess Bonita of the Golden Curls.

Princess Bonita was not unscathed by the cruel activities of her mother, the Dark Queen, who ruled the kingdom in which she lived. She was scathed. Day in and day out, she was scathed because she did not know one day of loving kindness or human regard given to her from the Dark Queen. Not that Princess Bonita would ever acknowledge the cruelty perpetrated upon herself by the Dark Queen, her mother.

At this time, however, the little princess’s ringlets uncurled by themselves.

When Princess Bonita, the doomed second daughter was two, she had tantrums. No amount of spanking would stop them. Not at that time. Only later did Princess Bonita grow silent and motionless.

Queen Sylabub commanded the court physicians to fix Princess Bonita who was having tantrums, for no princess should have tantrums nor should Princess Bonita, the Unfortunate, be allowed to disturb the Dark Queen’s  sensibilities.

After long deliberation, the court physicians saw no cure but that Queen Sylabub herself receive expert counseling to change her view toward Princess Bonita. The court physicians were loath to tell Queen Sylabub the unwelcome news. One physician after another passed the task down to the physician with less seniority than himself until it fell to the lot of the youngest fledgling physician to tell the Dark Queen that she was, ahem, not always right.

The youngest fledgling physician, having no one else to pass the dreaded task to — how his hands trembled and his knees knocked — finally took a few sips of the royal liquor and bravely went to the queen and, with his voice cracking, managed to tell her that the highest court physicians had decided that the best cure for the princess’s tantrums would be for them to administer healing essences to Queen Sylabub herself.

Queen Sylabub snorted in response.  To her credit, she spared the life of the fledgling physician, and only ordered him to be banished from the royal kingdom, never to be seen again.  She announced in her royal coughing voice to all in royal distance: “What idiocy. Princess Bonita has the problem, and the fool wants to see me!” This she announced forevermore.

In a fairy tale, it takes a thrice to tell what takes a lifetime to live.

I forgot to tell you that before Princess Bonita, the Unfortunate, was one-year old, a son was born to Queen Sylabub and King Gone. A son! At last a son. Long live the once and future king. And how the bells rang throughout the kingdom. What rejoicing! There never was such a celebration anywhere in the land.

The royal prince was named Prince Master, the Fair, the Beloved. From the minute he was born, he was treated as a royal prince, and that meant everyone was to bow down to him, including his royal sisters.

It did not bode well for Princess Bonita, one year his elder.  When the Royal Prince was born, Princess Bonita was not quite yet one. When Prince Master, the Fair, the Beloved was two, Princess Bonita was not quite yet three. When Prince Master was four, Princess Bonita was not quite yet five. When Prince Master was five, Princes Bonita was not quite six. And when Prince Master reach the royal age of six, Princess Bonita was not quite seven.

The Royal Prince took his mother’s view of Princess Bonita and, in his child way, was merciless to her. He hit Princess Bonita more than once and treated her worse than a scullery-maid, though to be sure, he did not treat the scullery maids any too well. In fairness to the privileged boy prince, he only copied what he saw, and he remembered well that all were to bow down to him.

One dark day for Princess Bonita, she stood up for herself, for the first and last time so far as is known, and she gave the Royal Prince a punch in the nose.

To the misfortune of all, the Royal Prince’s nose bled and did not stop bleeding, and the court physicians were called in to stop the bleeding. The royal physicians succeeded, but they could not stop the fatal illness that Princess Bonita’s punch had not caused but had called attention to.  There was no one to tell Princess Bonita that her punch had not caused the deadly scourge but had only revealed it, for at court in the realm of the Dark Queen, all attention and smiles were for the dying prince and naught but avoidance for the living princess.

On Prince Master’s sixth birthday, he passed into the nether world, leaving not quite seven years old Princess Bonita to live surrounded by those who, like the Dark Queen, may have silently preferred that it was Princess Bonita’s brother who had lived and not Princess Bonita the Unfortunate whose own curls had abandoned her.

The Queen Mother who had never spanked her own children excused Queen Syllabub for not loving Princess Bonita. She said that Queen Syllabub was not well when she carried Princess Bonita, having had a pearl removed from her throat, and then right away becoming pregnant with Prince Master, the Fair and Future King. The Queen Mother said it was too much for poor Queen Sylabub. She did not get her strength back. She was not well and, therefore, the Queen Mother absolved poor Queen Sylabub from any culpability.

Princess Bonita, for all purposes, spent many of her long days and nights isolated in the Dark Tower. No prince came to kiss her lips and awaken her. No fairy Godmother came with a star-filled wand to dress her for a ball. Ah, but once, however, for a twinkling, there was a glimmer of light.

When unhappy Princess Bonita was about sixteen, a passerby who, from the first moment he beheld her, loved her, and, when Princess Bonita looked into his kind blue eyes, she loved him in return, for he simply gazed at her and knew her sweetness. and loved bonny Princess Bonita for herself just as she was.

But, alas, he was a commoner, and Queen Sylabub banished him from the kingdom forevermore. The idea — a commoner setting his eyes on Princess Bonita, the Unfortunate.

And so, Princess Bonita’s barely throbbing heart was cut in two, the door from the Dark Tower slammed closed, and the key to her heart lost and forgotten and rusted somewhere.

Princess Bonita’s Aunt, Princess Glodia, thought of Princess Bonita, the Unfortunate, as Princess Bonita, the Innocent. Yet, like everyone else in the Kingdom, she did not know what to do to help the desolate Princess. Princess Glodia herself was still a child.

One night when Princess Bonita escaped the castle and spent the night with Princess Glodia, Princess Bonita burst into tears and confessed what everyone knew: “Oh, Aunt Princess Glodia, I am so unhappy.”

“I know, I know,” Princess Glodia said. “I know, I know.” And she held Princess Bonita but knew nothing else to say or do to offer refuge to Princess Bonita.  To this day, Princess Glodia longs to know what she could have done to wipe away Princess Bonita’s tears forever.

And so — even though trains had not yet been invented in the time of fairy tales –  the train of life ran over Princess Bonita and left her wounded, so wounded that she spent too many days and nights isolated in the Dark Tower.

Of course, no one in the Kingdom would make light of Queen Sylabub’s loss of her princeling son, and yet no one could think that any amount of the Dark Queen’s suffering could equal the suffering that Princess Bonita bore under the yoke of her own mother,  the Dark Queen, who continued to look in her mirror and see herself and listen to the mirror tell her over and over again: “Queen Sylabub, you are the fairest Queen of all, the wisest Queen of all, and, most assuredly, the best Queen of all that ever ruled in the Kingdom of Sorrow.”