8
" Up in the high palace, my mother is weeping.
She storms and rages. Tears at her hair.
She died thus, driven insane by war and the loss of her ancestral lands.
...
I embrace her. "Mother, why do you rage so?"
"The doings of men have driven me mad. Everyone told me I must accept what I cannot change. But I wished to change what I cannot accept, and that is where the trouble starts."
...
"Mother, do not cry over Wilhelm," I plead, taking her cold hands in mine. "He is not worth it."
"Ah, Anna," she says sorrowfully. "You think I'm crying because I had such a foolish son and everyone knew it. But I'm not. I'm crying because I had such a clever daughter and no one did."
[Anna of Cleves] "
― Candace Fleming , Fatal Throne
11
" I could bear it [the shame] because I knew the truth, child," I say. "There was one of us in that marriage who was old, fat, and smelly, and it wasn't me."
"The King was cruel to speak thus," Alice says, but in a low voice. As if Henry, dead these past ten years, might somehow hear her.
"He was, yes," I say. "But I think mostly he was afraid."
Alice is sceptical. "Kings are afraid of nothing," she says.
"This King was afraid. I know it, for I'm the one who made him so. I made a mistake, child, a grave one."
"What was it?"
"I made my face a mirror when it should've been a mask, and what the King saw there terrified him. He hated me for it, and never, ever forgave me."
[Anna of Cleves] "
― Candace Fleming , Fatal Throne
