Elizabeth

The great doors of the throne room groaned open on broken hinges, their echo rolling across stone floors stained with ash and blood. Queen Elizabeth did not rise. She sat slumped but unbowed upon her throne, her once-regal gown torn and darkened with grime, her hands marked by soot and the memory of steel. Strands of her hair clung to her face, damp with sweat, and yet the crown—golden, unyielding—rested squarely upon her head as though it alone refused to acknowledge defeat. Around her, the banners of her house hung in tatters, and the silence of the fallen court pressed in like a suffocating weight. Bootsteps approached—measured, deliberate, victorious. The enemy king entered not as a raider but as a conqueror, his presence filling the ruined hall as surely as fire had claimed her armies beyond its walls.