Scene rewriting from studied fictional works

¶ … fiction: Richard III's seduction of Anne

Before you judge me too harshly, please understand that I was very young when I was betrothed to Edward, the son of the former king. I never really knew him, not as a man. I married before I even had the ability to dream of what it was like to have a romance with someone of the male gender. Most of my life had been spent amongst women, hearing horrible news of war, crouching in fear, learning various feminine accomplishments like dancing and sewing, and studying books about divinity suitable for the feminine mind.

And just as quickly as my marriage was created as the result of an alliance in war, my husband's life was cut short by war. I was only a girl, and yet a widow. How tragic is war for women -- denied even the ability to fight, we can only see men fall and die, like the noble and gentle, virtuous King Henry VI, as well as my husband. My husband seemed like a good man, from what I knew of him -- really, he was only a boy when I lost him to Richard's wrath. Of course, you could say that I was only a girl, but women, even protected women like myself, often seem older than men of similar age.

I just want you to understand the vulnerable state I was in when I met my current husband -- I had seen the man I loved most and respected die in the form of Henry IV. I had seen the husband I had only begun to try to love die -- and did not have memories of peace in my young head. To live was to fear. To live was to obey men -- either the king, my father, my boy-husband, or the men around us. How alone I felt, and angry at a world that manipulated women, and promised to protect women if they married, but then did not! Curse men, and curse war, I thought, as I said:

Cursed be the hand that made these fatal holes!

Cursed be the heart that had the heart to do it!

Cursed the blood that let this blood from hence! (I.2).

I felt like a bloodless ghost myself. After all, what is a woman, particularly a woman who is associated with the House of Lancaster, in a society supposedly at peace, but dominated by the name of York? The white rose breathed its deathly perfume everywhere.

Of course I hated Richard, the murderer of my husband. But I should note that I had never hated him for his appearance -- although I called him a lump of deformity. Others amongst my people had said that his appearance marked him as evil, as the spawn of the devil rather than a human man. But his brothers were not so marked, and they killed as well. I have always believed that God's love is given based upon one's character, not upon one's appearance, and I judged Richard by his actions, not his appearance. So I felt no disgust at what I saw when he appeared before me and said:

Sweet saint, for charity, be not so curst (I.2).

The disgust I felt at how he appeared was rooted in his brutality and also how easily he could compel the cowering men to lay down the gentle king's body. Truly, I realized, my father-in-law was no more, he was nothing in terms of the power he wielded in society, even in memory. The miracle of his bleeding wounds brought forth no gasps -- saints are forgotten when new kings rise.

They fear Richard because he is a great warrior, I thought. Although Richard tried to deny it, Queen Margaret described how he slew my husband without pity. Indeed, I suppose the good have no place in this world, no place in politics. Henry VI and my husband should have been monks or shepherds, not rulers. But then what of myself? What will happen to me? I wondered this as I tossed and turned at night. I had already seen too clearly how women are treated during times of war and strife.

There is no place for tenderness in this world, I thought, no place where a woman can rest easy -- and then, for the first time in my life, I felt regarded. I felt as if I was not a woman who was a political pawn, but truly seen as a woman. Richard said, to me, Anne:

Your beauty was the cause of that effect;

Your beauty: which did haunt me in my sleep

To undertake the death of all the world,

So I might live one hour in your sweet bosom (II.2).

No one had ever called me beautiful before -- daughter, yes, wife, yes, and woman, yes, but never beautiful. Oh, I spat at him when he said it -- but he gazed at me with a fixed, hypnotic stare so I could not look away.

And then -- and this was the truly extraordinary thing. This great warrior opened his shirt to me, lay open his white throat, and begged me to kill him. He said he repented of his crimes, the crimes of war -- the crimes, I remembered, that were not specific to him, but had been committed by all soldiers during times of strife. Was he really indeed so much worse for raising his hand against a king he was commanded to kill? After all, it was not he who pitted the houses of Lancaster and York against one another. Who was I to take vengeance, and break the peace by killing him?

What woman, other than Margaret, had held a sword? Certainly not I, with my gentle and trembling girl's hands. Bid me to kill myself, he said. How could I do so, and take such a grave and serious crime upon my soul? How could I inflict more ugliness into an ugly world, and treat Richard so, a man who had been rejected by his own mother, simply because of how he looked?