Prologue: Destiny is Not Fate
In Brittania, many believe that the male line of the royal family was cursed as far back as the legendary union between King Geoffrey and Queen Aethel.
When King Geoffrey slew Queen Aethel’s champion knight in the first battle to draw blood between the northern and southern kingdoms, she put down her royal dignity to appeal to the sea goddess Calypso for vengeance. The grieving southern queen swore that if the south was taken over by King Geoffrey, the first male heir in the line will perish before the peak of their youth until her people finally overthrew the regime. Taking pity on her, Calypso granted the boon.
Yet, the flaw in Queen Aethel’s appeal was that she did not give a blood sacrifice in exchange for Calypso agreeing to the request. All sailors knew that they had to spill blood as part of asking for the sea goddess’s assistance. Queen Aethel didn’t know this fact, but Calypso would have Her blood. Thus, when Queen Aethel lost the legendary swordfight that made her the bride of the northern king, she unwittingly fell under her own curse. She finally paid for it with her blood when their firstborn son died by strangulation from his umbilical cord in the womb. Queen Aethel never told King Geoffrey about the curse because it was too late to take it back.
Thereafter, the curse was passed down the long line of Brittanian rulers who eventually learned through hearsay and tragedy what their illustrious ancestor did. It became an accepted fate that the firstborn heir in Brittania would die in the womb, as a child, or before the peak of their youth. They would then be replaced usually by a second stronger son or a willful daughter who went on to have glorious or inglorious reigns. Nothing could be done about the curse because Brittania would never go back to the ancient days of being an island made up of splintered dominions.
King Henry himself was a second son who became king when his older brother died a year after marrying very young to Queen Caterina. Although he always dismissed the curse as only a myth, his outward denial of it didn’t stop King Henry from being obsessed with having more than one son to possibly take over the Brittanian throne. That quest led him to infamously have five unfortunate wives and only one son to show for his bloody efforts by the time he died.
