The Princess and the Pauper and the Headsman
The Princess and the Pauper and the Headsman
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Everyone knows how The Prince and the Pauper goes thanks to Mark Twain. Now that’s good because it will save me a lot of narrations. This story starts a lot like that but it involves the female gender.
Sixteen year old Jessica was climbing the stairs of a platform in the middle of the town square where her very own headsman awaited. She reeked of sweat, pee, and sewer water. The prison warden was man-handling her and the fifty or so peasants that came to watch actually came to shop at the market and decided to stop by to watch a nobody be executed.
This wasn’t the kind of death she had thought would befall on her because she was definitely not a nobody. She was the princess who traded lives with the pauper for a day but when she came back to reclaim her throne, the impostor accused her of treason and condemned her to execution.
She looked at the people before her. Tears cascaded her cheeks. There was a mix of anger, pity, and sorrow welling inside her. She was angry at the pauper for stealing her throne. She pitied the people before her. This was her people, her people that’ll worship her when she becomes queen but now, her people and her country are on the hands of an uneducated impostor who knows nothing of ruling. She couldn’t bear the thoughts of her kingdom falling apart. She couldn’t bear it being ruled by a peasant not from her family. He had failed her father and her ancestors on the task she was born to do which was to rule. Now, she’ll never be able to do it because this was her end and on her last moments alive, sorrow overcame her and never had she felt so helpless like she did now.
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