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Bertha’s voice Canterbury, Kent c. A.D. 580
I hadn’t expected to fall in love when I first heard the plans for my arranged marriage.
Receiving the news in my quiet Parisian home, I’d been heartbroken, devastated. To marry the prince would mean leaving almost everything behind: my home, my friends, my family…
I think I’d always known, deep down, that this would be my fate. So many of the girls I’d grown up with, my sisters and cousins, had been sent far away to marry princes or kings they’d never met, and that had often been the last I’d seen of them. I’d heard bits of news here and there, when one produced an heir or another’s husband had died unexpectedly. Very occasionally, maybe once or twice, one would visit the Parisian court with their husbands when there was business to be done amongst the men. But really, once they married, they were gone from our lives.
I guess I’d allowed myself to dream, after my father’s fall from grace and then his death, that I might have escaped this future. That no one would want me. That I’d be allowed to live out my days as a spinster princess or royal abbess instead. I couldn’t see any value, for anyone, in marrying the daughter of a dead excommunicated king, who’d only really ruled a part of Francia anyway.
I’d allowed myself to dream, perhaps ill-advisedly, and then watched as my dreams came crashing down around me, piece by piece.
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