Um einen König Zu Befürchten:
To Fear a King

April, 1540

They bustle around me, talking so fast I barely understand their words, a language I barely know. Fabric is tossed around and ribbons of silk played with. Lace and pearls lay haphazardly on the dressing table and the floor, the pearls rolling carelessly. All of the chiffon and velvet threatens to suffocate me, but they will barely notice if I am still breathing. When I mutter something in my native tongue, the maids titter and giggle, whispering their own judgments about me.

My brother, the duke, told me as I left that I should be overjoyed. That this opportunity is a blessing and that I should be grateful. Instead, I feel homesick, unbearably lonely, and unwanted. Most of all, I miss sister Sybille. I had been told that marrying this man was one of the best things that could ever happen to me. All I feel is regret and anger. Never to be happily married in this lifetime. The declaration on my wedding band is a mockery. God send me well to keep indeed.

Every day he is reminded that his only son, his heir to the Anglo throne, is ill and that his daughters are daughters, as if it were a bad thing. This obese man is full of rage and lust, nothing more. He rarely bothers to speak with me and the only maid I trust, the one who has been with me since I was young, tells me of rumors. Rumors that, even though we are married by the church, he refuses to consummate the marriage and he will soon annul, or worse, divorce me. Over my smallpox scars!

To go home and share the embarrassment of what happened would bring disgrace upon me and my brother. Yet, as the gossip continues, I feel an odd sensation within me. A flicker of happiness dances within my chest, the rumor its partner. I know I shouldn’t feel this way, but to leave this man and this foreign land and go back to Deutschland would lighten my soul. I long for home and my head aches as much as my heart. There are no words to express the weight I feel in my Englisch prison. I am Anne, a princess from a land with a rich culture and people rich of heart. I do not deserve what is happening to me now. This treatment is unfair, like this King.

He is King Henry VIII; a king of England, a powerful nation, under God, with a most powerful church. What does he need me for when I always see him eye and flirt with the ladies of the court? I fear I may end with the same fate as one of his previous wives, the other Anne. I do not wish to be beheaded and forgotten, a mere memory of a mistake.

Queen Anne

née Anne of Cleves