In the Indifferent Reign the callous Queen Darta

In the indifferent reign the callous Queen Darta, she kept her slaves near the edge of starvation and owned their possessions as she owned the entire valley of Reignhorn. Reignhorn legendary kingdom of the Martyr king Rudolph, a Hemophiliac, that is never knew when to stop bleeding for his people until he himself bled to death. Then neither did he know how to select a queen, naïve in love, exasperated by all his worldly knowledge he kept arriving at impossible relationships, first he would marry to save an entire land from an ill fated King that had molested his people enough to win their mutiny, King Rudolph appropriated the lands from willing peasantry and this gallant act won him fame, but the cost of keeping unruly peasants far exceeded the benefits of the larger Kingdom. Within one calendar the Kingdom managed to collapse into ruin, famine, disease and discord; neither friend nor foe knew each other better, malice was found in the kindest of hearts.

Who was she? How was it that he came to find her, and how did she see herself as Queen of the Reignhorn kingdom, in the midst of its dreary retreat from prosperity? This is what we shall endeavor to answer and we shall start with the death of the first Queen of Reignhorn, Queen Emelda. It shall be said here early on that neither Queen fit the King, and neither Queen fit the Kingdom Reignhorn, but then neither queen had either or both of those interests in mind.

Queen Emelda was brought before the King at the young age of 12, twelve lovely years behind her she was ready to bring forth an heir to the throne and if not immediately at least a princess that could be married off for peace or bounty. The king then was all of eighteen years of age, well within the bounds of any drinking age in any worthy place of the civilized world. When Princess Emelda saw the young King she was dazzled pretty, she practically melted at the thought of a thousand fat pigs and twelve cows being sacrificed at their wedding. She saw the ruby studded sword, the collection of geology upon his crown and tears caved all over her blossoming cheeks, though for some strange reasons her cheeks were those of a skinny girl and concatenated as craters might the surface of a planet, though from here no one knew a planet or an asteroid nor that the two could meet.

The only one that took notice of this shameful situation was Dwarfof, a humble man, a brilliant man, a king maker, a helper, a political fixer upper, a man that would have himself been king, had he not been born to his nurturing and loving and idolizing mother Lucinda, who left him that perpetual dolphin smile. Lucinda was the King’s tailor, and some say she sowed the seeds of the kingdom, and some said she meant well, and certainly the King thought so, which was why he made her son his closest adviser and now before his soon to be queen, Dwarfof watched with bobbing head and tears, bound for the ground, over an obstacle of a face.

All of these are very interesting happenings and we are not going to dwell too much on any of them because we must get to the end of this story so that the reader can be amazed quickly of how dazzling world events unfold and how little thought goes into them thus it is all so incomprehensible that we can pre warn you that there is only repetition here, and little new insight other than a mere reaffirmation that everything is just as it seems it is, only more so than we would like, for surely we would all like things to be very, very different were it not easier to just let them be, as indeed they must.

Dwarfof would have been kinder to the flirtatious princess had he known that her time on earth would be short, once robbed of her virginity by King Reignhorn not two years would click before her expiration. This is not necessarily a sad thing, and the reader should not draw any sentiment from it, simply Emelda was the type of princess that didn’t know how not to exceed herself. Once she was made queen of Reignhorn, she thought that such meant the Eunuchs were hers, the palace was hers, the peasants were hers, and to this she added a venomous naiveté, she was deliciously on holiday from awareness and so bound to a rather unflinching collision with reality.

Reality came the day that she stepped on the toe of a rather young and unpretentious girl, well when I say that she stepped on the toe I don’t mean that Emelda herself stepped on the girl’s toe, it was rather her carriage that stepped on the girl’s toe. The girl actually lost it as the wheel created an unnatural separation through a rather dull stretching process, as occurs when hundreds of pounds of wheel crosses over a toe. The unfortunate part was not the girl’s loss of her large toe, something that would cause her to wobble as she walked for the rest of her life, rather the unfortunate part was that the unpretentious girl was no other than a future queen herself, now peasant girl Darta.

Darta had been made to be queen, the universe was not going to have it any other way, actually Darta herself wasn’t going to have it any other way. She was forced out of her house by her mother Isabel when she was found fondling her mother’s husbands attributes. Some how the girl had gotten it in her head that to reign in the house she needed to reign in her father in much the same way that her mother did. Her mother of course was like all mothers which meant that she wasn’t going to lose, and so she ejected her daughter Darta out of the house, and the girl only considered herself unfortunate but not beaten.

This meant that little Darta had to go from home to home as maid servant and attempt to conquer the man of the house, only to find herself unduly expulsed by the wife. And so she went from household to household wrecking her virginity or better said, her chance to be queen. Until one day, crossing a muddy and heavily trafficked road, a Queen’s carriage tore her big toe off. That day a very angry and toeless Darta picked herself off the ground, opened the fine lady’s carriage door and helped herself to her face smacking her as one would something one didn’t want to see ever again, and this she did until the bleeding from her foot was sufficient to empty her brain of any thoughts.

As he was alarmed of the incident by the faster than light word of mouth, The king was rushed to the scene his Queen Emelda now frugally hoisted by life, littered with fleshy crumbling dumplings on her face, an eye hanging perhaps still functional, though greatly unsightly. But instead the King of Reignhorn saw the fainted girl Darta, a girl that was of robust stature and possessing a warrior body combined with raw earth woman. Then he looked at his dainty fragile Queen Emelda, laying there uncomfortably close to death, her slayer looked rather invigorated by the mud and the missing toe. King Reignhorn picked up the toe, put it up to the light of day, this swirling mass of flesh with a rather large and improperly kept nail, some bone still in play, and muddy bloody red, and before his people the King of Reignhorn committed an unspeakable act, he took a bite of the toe, took a bite, and ate it.

After the nauseating experience, which even peasants that ate pigs blood and pig’s tail, and pig skin and pig gut and pig feet, were themselves startled, the King lifted the remains of the toe on high over his head, and proclaimed, “People of Reignhorn I give you your new Queen!”

It was right there and then that amidst a clamoring silence and the fainted Darta that Dolphin-faced Dwarfof cringed into the conversation. “Sir it is hardly worthy of me to point out that this is a peasant girl and most likely she has not kept her self clean.” The king leaned over, “she has been run over by a carriage I don’t expect her to be clean.” “Sir,” the brittle Dwarfof continued, “it is possible that she has been spoiled by other man.” The king did understand this, he looked up at the well lit sky blue, clouds here and there, then as if given some kind of Sun power, “you will make her pure, you are my fixer man, you will make her pure.” Dwarfof knew better than to contradict the King of Reignhorn, he repeated almost expressly to convince himself, “I will make her pure.”

And it was how Darta first got the odd chance to take revenge on her mother, though as she was in a royal bed recovering, she had nothing to do with the happening, this was all Dwarfof’s actions, defined as an erasure of past happenings. There would not be a man in the Kingdom of Reignhorn that would be able to say he had been with the future Queen Darta, and so most unfortunately, from her father and beyond, in many houses where she once worked as a maid, laid a trail of widows and dead men, all the way to where she got her toe cut off.

Dwarfof conceived of the purifying ritual and soon it was well known about the town that there had never been a man, a husband, brother or son that had spoiled the princess. Once this was clear, the King of Reignhorn was free to marry his toeless Queen.

But happiness was not to be, or at least not to last much longer than did the goats and pigs that were sacrificed in honor of the happy couple. As it was that the King seemingly fell sheepishly to the sword of a man his age, in the now famous battle of Arangura. Where a King fell on his own sword. And thus begun the precipitous reign of Queen Darta over the lands of Reignhorn.

Queen Darta or The Toeless Queen as she was better known by her people, did not waste any time in demonstrating her ambition to be the peoples queen, to love them all to death if necessary, as she was fond of the idea that her people should love her ambition as much as she did and so they should go forth and conquer other kingdoms and hoard from other lands.

It was soon noted that King Reignhorn had done the world a wrong cleaning up this peasant girl and making her a Queen. But Dwarfof was cleverer than those who made those comments, he was loyal to his Queen because he knew that she had made her self such regardless of the King. It had been a more or less smooth transition and Dwarfof thought it right for the times, Queen Darta was a ruffian that didn’t have to be nice it times that were not so nice anyway.

Dwarfof saw this in his Queen and he mesmerized those that would listen pointing out that by accident or fate Reignhorn was destine to meet her and to serve her. And so it was that with him as her ambassador of goodwill, she sent off her goodwill wishes to other Kingdoms, hoping for peace and prosperity under her barbarity. The other Kingdoms did not react calmly to the suggestion of a larger and prosperous Kingdom of Reighhorn, and so they stopped trading goods and services, and ceased all travelers from there, and mostly just asked Queen Darta to keep her big toe out of the greater world.

And so it was that the difficult times arrived, the erosion of the economy was a logical result, farmers could produce but they could not sell abroad, the Queen got her portion of everyone’s farm production but she didn’t pay, so pig farmers had to content themselves with eating their pigs and grain farmers ate a lot of bread but there being no money for exchanging the goods, or not knowing they actual worth of pigs and cows that other Kingdoms didn’t want to buy, reasonably because they didn’t want to make Queen Darta strong and mighty but rather weak and powerless, and this the wreck the nice devastation would paint itself on canvas had there been time of loafing enough to create the ideal conditions to give birth to artists or wandering minds.

As the town and farming economies reached almost total collapse, lacking the movement of goods, the people began backbiting one another, until very much the Kingdom of Reignhorn became known as the Spiteful Kingdom of Despise. In order to find blame and to show that she was doing something to correct the problem that she had created, Queen Darta was not short on finding the responsible parties, one by one many of the most prestigious families found their sons and fathers meeting the hangman, each undoubtedly guilty of having advanced diseasce, famine, wickedness or surely of outright betrayal of the Kingdom. Tis was just like that.

But as there only so many evils to contain within a kingdom soon Queen Darta mounted herself onto a regal white horse, carrying with her all the rubies and gold that a horse could carry without tiring from the crossing of a bridge, and led her envious warrior army into the Kingdom of Arangula where she would avenge the self inflicted death of her husband and take the land for her people. Surprisingly she was victorious. The Arangulas were not a violent people really, they had had much success with bountiful lands, and had amassed considerable winter reserves and so life was not for them painful and so they did not know how to endure pain, and so they surrendered, knowing not how costly that surrender would be. Their Royalty was soon beheaded and the eldest son of any family was put to death, and the second son of any was allowed to live with a sworn alliance to the queen, and forbidden to marry as Queen Darta had a natural distaste for wives and mothers.

And so one by one the towns were transformed into Reighhorns, and with the enlargement came prosperity, though no one felt safe everyone was relatively well off, and so comfortable under uncomfortable circumstances. Many came to love their Queen, having made them wealth and titled nobility, but no one knew why she did what she did, whom did she care about and more disdainful was the fact that Queen Darta had no King, no man, and no heir apparent!

This was the true concern of the people. “What will we do if the Queen dies?” “There is no natural successor.” “It is irresponsible to risk our Kingdom by not producing an heir.” And so Dwarfof would repeat this to the Queen, “These are the very things that they are saying, and it troubles me too your Perfect Highness that your blood not reign in Reignhorn till the end of all the days and nights, till the sun whimpers.” “Dwarfof, there is no man to breed me!” “But there must be someone your Greatness, there must be someone we can merit with your essence, posterity needs your boldness of blood, your enduring heart.” “Well then what am I to do, I will not court from other Kingdoms, those are tainted, from my land whom might you say is worthy of me.” Dwarfof kept his words in his head, so many gallant men had been culled at the peak of their Baron essence. The town was diminished to mostly single women that were mothering children that were being whisked to the country side to keep them away from the Toeless Queen. Then it occurred to him. “A contest to marry the Queen.”

Queen Darta had no tasteless sensation for it, she simply loved the idea of all those men competing to win her. She did not acknowledge the fact that any male in her Kingdom would be coerced to participate, as insulting the Queen was equivalent to punishment by death. And so through the good administration of Dwarfof begun a search in earnest for the man that would be King. Parties and festivities were arranged all over the land, more pigs and goats lost their lives than had been lost in all of the existence of the Kingdom of Reignhorn three times over. And here and there every male paid homage to the Queen and begged her to consider a serious marriage proposal. The forty four year old Queen made it impossible for anyone to really get to know her, though largely well known throughout the Kingdoms, no one really knew who she was, except maybe Dwarfof who kept to himself, and served her loyally. Was he in love with her? No, he was simply a professional patriot in service of his Kingdom, he didn’t work for anyone but the King and Queen, and this Queen suited the Kingdom, that was that.

Event after event, not a few dunces kept trying to paint themselves King, the sale of fake crowns went up, the number of Royal pretenders consumed the entire town, only one man did dare not to show up for any of the events, only one man was on record as not having proposed to the Queen of Reignhorn. Dwarfof went to his cabin a humble place not very tidy, but comfortable for this one man and so he read the riot act, “by order of the Queen of the Kingdom of Reignhorn, her hand and ring finger poised throughout our lands, you are here summoned to meet her majesty and explain yourself to her, as to why you have not proposed!”

He was an elderly fellow, early fifties, he made wooden toys, and he sat on a wooden stool, as three great soldiers stood before him with Dolphin face reading on, and he accepted the summons and said nothing, just went back to sanding down a toy doll. And this very much repeated itself until the day of the summons was brought to life by a repetitive sunrise, and he walked himself to the castle and said. “I am John, John the toy maker, I come before the Queen of Reignhorn as I have been summoned to her presence.” The drawbridge came down across the moat, the alligators quickly came to watch the crossing man, and then the drawbridge did close. One of the gate guards noted that John was carrying a sack, no one bothered to inspect it, Queen Darta had already killed anyone that had ever wanted to kill her.

“Your highness here is before you the toy maker, your servant John, cometh here today to answer your curiosities and to deliver himself to your will.”

“Well I see he is not so good looking a Rooster I haven’t been missing anything.” A rambunctious chorus of laughs yanked all the attention from the room. John used the noise to bend his knee and acknowledge the respect he had for the Queen of the Kingdom.

Dwarfof eased the situation as was his due, “Explain yourself man John, why have you not proposed to our Queen, why have you not answered the call that has been made to all! Explain yourself now!”

“I forbid myself to think this self worthy of being husband to such a noble queen, nor could I imagine myself being the King of this infectiously warring kingdom, as I have no sword nor arm to grasp its will. I did hear the call to duty which as in all Kingdoms must be inherited, indeed a duty that is mine, only I flinch that I ought to be the royal bloodline; a toy maker you see before you, I scramble for wood, cut down a little tree and make this little wooden toys, see here…” and saying this he took some wooden toys out of the bag, “see this here duck and this here cat, and this here fish, these are some of what I make, though here is a house too, and little children too, and here are some wooden balls….” He pauses and rolls one of the balls towards the nobility watching. “…it is all I do, and never have I been with a woman before as all great Kings have had their bounty full, I kept to myself all my life, and hadn’t really the courage nor the greatness to be King and Husband of such marvelous Queen and Kingdom.”

The queen and the audience of savages was moved somewhat to laugh and to drool over this man, so humble, a toy maker indeed, and he was no more. The Queen however, though some what taken, was still a little insulted. “But that doesn’t give you the right not to ask for my hand, you took it upon yourself to negate me the authority which I have as sovereign to deny you my hand in marriage, you took it upon yourself to decide what it is not yours to deny, if I want to marry you I will marry you, even if you are nothing more than a toy maker, because I am the Queen of the Kingdom of Reignhorn and I can marry anyone in this Kingdom and I am going to marry you!”

The watching nobility was astonished, Dwarfof didn’t comment as he was under the pressure of the pressured situation. Man John the toy maker wasn’t so astonished, he just looked at the queen as he looked at one of the trees that he cut down or like one of his toy pieces.

Unfortunately for King John, his beloved queen and wife died during childbirth, leaving him with a lovely little boy to play with his toys.

…and thus the kingdom went.

RC