When did I stop believing in people? Perhaps it was the day I was born. Perhaps it was at some point during my childhood. And perhaps that’s the wrong way to think about it. Like a newborn comes into the world crying, perhaps it was in my nature from the very beginning. Or perhaps it was something I developed later in life. Perhaps it was the day I, Leyfa Southerndall, decided to kill my own mother.
My mother was the daughter of a fallen noble house, or so she said. I don’t know how true that was. I could have investigated if I’d so wished, but the truth of it wouldn’t make a difference now. Her claims simply remained unverified.
Not that it mattered. The importance of her story began when she started working at the royal palace as a court official three years before I was born. Hailing from a good family, she’d presumably been provided with a certain degree of education. She was also beautiful enough that everyone praised her, so it’s possible she was hired for her looks. Regardless, she served the royal court, where she met the king and began a relationship with him that resulted in my birth. That’s all that mattered.
Of course, my mother was neither the queen consort nor a concubine. My father had a wife and two daughters already. To him, my mother was just an affair. Someone to play with for a night. Meanwhile, my mother had no delusions of affection for him. She’d merely slept with him as a means of gaining power to lord over the people who’d long looked down on her. She became pregnant out of a greedy need for vengeance, and that’s how I came to be.
Unfortunately for my father, I inherited my mother’s selfishness. My mother, the very embodiment of greed, gave birth to a child just like her...but in the image of a royal, with pale blonde hair and deep purple eyes like the abyss. Such features had been passed down in the royal family for generations, and they were especially obvious to anyone who’d ever seen my father or a portrait of the king before him.
At first, my father resolved to settle the matter with money. Most servants were happy to take a sum several times what they’d make in a lifetime and quietly live out the rest of their days away from the palace. But not my mother. She was far greedier than the king expected. She wasn’t satisfied with money alone. Her goal was revenge, and she had no particular target. She meant to retaliate against the whole world that had been so cruel to her.
My mother, over and over again, always said the same thing to me. That I had to seize the throne. That I must do it at all costs, no matter what it took. That no sacrifice was too great. That I had to be the one to fulfill her dream. Such was the curse my mother cast upon me. Where other mothers hugged their children, mine continued to weave her dark words.
A decade passed like that. As I grew older, the king and his court became unable to ignore my existence any longer. I resembled my father so strongly that no one could deny it. I looked more like him than my older sisters. Eventually the prime minister, who worshipped my father, made a move. Since my mother couldn’t be paid off, he attempted to sway her with force. In other words, he threatened us—a miscalculation on his part.
My mother wasn’t the kind of frail woman who could be cowed into submission. She was tenacious enough to stand against intimidation, and she rallied all the noble houses who bore animosity against the crown under the banner of her daughter’s claim to the throne. It was the very definition of reckless. Who in their right mind would challenge the royal family so directly?
Surprisingly, however, there were many who joined her cause. At first, it was a simple alignment of interests between a foolish mother who firmly believed her daughter should rule and power-hungry nobles who’d leap at any opportunity for control. Yet the army they raised under their flimsy banner grew and grew until it reached an unmanageable size. The more people that got involved, the further they strayed from their original cause. What started as a desperate means of self-preservation became a force to oppose the crown became a mob to overthrow it.
My mother wasn’t cut out to achieve greatness. She was never anything more than a shallow woman governed by greed. The more people looked up to her, the greater her misconceptions about herself grew. She genuinely started to believe that she could seize the throne for her daughter. She behaved as though she’d be sitting upon it herself.
But she was oh-so wrong. Even in my youngest years, there was one thing I understood perfectly. My mother was a mere commoner who’d gained a connection to the royal family by way of an accident. She was the lowest of the low and deserved to be walked all over. Yet she could never see herself for who she plainly was.
Eventually, she enacted her self-righteous plan to depose the king. She believed her actions were just. That it was her duty to install her daughter upon the throne. Of course, to anyone else looking on, she was nothing more than a usurper. There was no way she’d succeed. A glance through history could have told her as much. Never had a coup d’état staged by a shortsighted leader with no true following actually succeeded.
Still, she couldn’t see things for what they plainly were. Her inevitable failure would lead to her death and the demise of her dreams. I tried to explain this to her time and time again. I told her not to do anything foolish. Yet each time, my mother replied, “You must seize the throne. You must do it at all costs, no matter what it takes. No sacrifice is too great. You have to be the one to fulfill my dream. And now is the time.” And so my blinded mother chose to push forward.
Her words were a curse that she’d cast upon me since before I was born. She said that I must seize the throne at all costs...and she was right. I deserved it, I was worthy, and I would take it. She said that no sacrifice was too great...and she was right. I would use whatever means necessary, cutting down whomever stood between me and the crown. She said that I had to be the one to fulfill her dream...and she was right. This was the time. And so I chose to sacrifice her—more specifically, to hand her over to the prime minister and my father.
Thus my mother was slated to be executed for inciting a coup against the royal family. After being sold out by a key figure of the insurrection, there was too much evidence against her. All that remained for her was punishment. Meanwhile, I was taken in by my father for choosing loyalty to the crown. The prime minister opposed it, but my father then announced the existence of his daughter Leyfa to the public.
This wasn’t out of any paternal sense of attachment, of course. He’d merely determined it would be less trouble to officially acknowledge me than let someone else with the wherewithal to start a coup run amok. The fool. Little did he know I’d yet to give up on the throne. I wasn’t free of my mother’s curse. When he acknowledged me as his daughter, he was acknowledging my right to succeed him. I was thus one step closer to the crown. I’d done the right thing.
On the day of my mother’s execution, I was granted one last opportunity to see her. With a blade against her neck, she said to me, “I never should have given birth to you. None of this would have happened without you. I wouldn’t have to die like a traitor. It’s all your fault things went wrong.”
But she was wrong. She was the one who’d screwed things up.
“Without you, I never would’ve had any false hope of triumphing over them. Of being able to get what I want. If it weren’t for you...!”
She was wrong. All I’d done was follow her orders. I was aiming for the throne at all costs—even the sacrifice of my own mother. I had to take the crown no matter what. That was what she’d told me. It was the entire reason I was born.
As a royal, it was my birthright to stand above everyone. That was how she’d raised me, and it was how I knew I’d done the right thing. Sentencing my own mother to death was correct as long as it led to me achieving our dream. So I had to become sovereign no matter what. I couldn’t die before then. I would make any other sacrifice necessary. It was the only way to justify her death and my terrible actions.
I was present for her beheading. As her blood sprayed and I watched the light fade from her resentful, glaring eyes, I realized something. She was a fool. The worst kind of mother. She’d cursed me, and I didn’t care... I loved her.
That was the day Leyfa Southerndall came into her own. She was no stranger to atrocity. She cut down anyone who challenged her. She even attempted to assassinate her older half sister. She became a tyrannical princess for the history books. It was sad, but the dream of a mother who’d sought revenge against the world could only be fulfilled with her death.