A/N: I mean, we all know she's dreadful. But a fascinating character study. Slight time-line change so that Wang Jung's birth was around the time of Lady Oh's miscarriage.
She is a princess before she is a girl, a queen before she is a mother. Goryeo has risen, and Goryeo will fall, but not before she has finished with it. She will never be finished. She must never be forgotten.
When she is young, a blackbird dies outside her window. She sees the splayed wings, the loose bones, and she screams.
.
They present her like a flower to the king. Waist cinched tight under ceremonial robes, sleeves as stiff as paper, lips too red. His eyes are heavy-lidded and careless, and she smiles with her gaze turned down, because at least she is beautiful.
Flowers fade; she will not.
The king leans forward.
.
The king does not love her. She should not love him; she has known since she was young that it is far more important to be clever, to be powerful, to be perfect. Her mother never loved her, and that kept her alive.
But knowing is not always enough.
She loves the king, and she bears him four sons.
Loving is not always enough.
.
Her first son is placed into her arms when she is still gasping with pain; she demands it. She is surprised, shaken, by how perfect she is.
A crown prince, she whispers into the tiny shell of his ear. Wang Mu is weak. He will not last forever.
This son, she loves. She loves him more than all the rest, and it uses up what was never a very great heart to begin with.
Her second son is born and he is quiet, with wide, liquid eyes. He follows in his brother's shadow and braids the fringes of her scarves with nimble fingers.
He never asks her if she loves him—this second son, this Wang Yo. He never asks, and that quiet darkness in his eyes, his watchfulness, his self-sufficiency, it is all like her. He is like every part of her except the part that loved. And that part of herself has always been foolish.
Her third son, the one with the wide eyes that smile—this son loves her. Wang So loves her too much.
For that, she never forgives him.
.
The king had a first wife, Wang Mu's mother. And the king had a first—and last—love, the Court Lady whom Queen Yoo hates with a poison like that which pools in the fang of a serpent.
Three sons, she has given him, and he thanks her for nothing.
Omma, Wang So cries, high and sweet (too sweet), tugging at her skirts. She wrenches the papery silk from his hands, and he falls, arms and legs splayed outwards like the wings of a bird.
Who, she hisses, at this son who loves her as she has never asked from him, Who are you to call me that?
Her first is perfect, her second is clever.
Her third, at last, has the heart she believes she can break.
.
The other queen has borne a son, and then a daughter. They are soft and insignificant and she spares them no thoughts, no hope, no mercy. When the king comes to her—as often he still does—she reminds him, with nails against his skin, am I not the only one for you?
Sometimes, he answers her.
She lies to herself, on those nights, that his words are not lies.
Lies, and loving, and even knowing—they are never enough. She is queen, but not the only queen. She always needs something more.
That is power, and it burns.
.
The prince looks pale, majesty, says one of the court ladies. He should not be too much in the sun.
The future crown prince, as she thinks of him, is sleeping under the willow tree. The court doctor who said he was small for his age rots in the ground, poison in his veins. Queen Yoo turns to the court lady and smiles like the silence before a storm. Do you think so? she asks, and that night, the court lady lies in the stables with her throat sliced in a red ribbon from ear to ear.
It was not the queen's hand that did it, but it might have been. As a child, she was swift with her needle—and swifter, when she needed it, with a blade.
.
Her first-born dies from a fever. She had not known she had a heart left—she had thought that it had been all given away, to the king, and that first child, that perfect child—
But she does have a heart left, and it does not break; it burns.
The king's brow furrows when he gazes on the pale body of his son. He turns away.
He turns away from them, the girl who was always a princess and the son she brought to him, for once more mother than queen.
The king will take another wife.
She is screaming, she is begging, she is everything she swore she would never be again. If I do not have your whole heart, I do not need it.
Love is weakness. And so she snatches for the weakest, her third-born, round-faced and innocent, still calling her Omma sometimes no matter how often she slaps him away.
That brings change to the king's face as her beloved child's death did not. She hears nothing, not the pleas of Wang Mu, not the scuffle, not Wang So's screams. She sees only the king, only the man who gave her a child and who let the earth take him away again.
The knife slashes outwards. If she cannot have power, she will have blood.
.
They send him to the Kangs of Shinju. She watches him go with nothing like pity in her eyes. Weak, wounded thing—he cries like a kitten and though the sounds fade, they stay in her ears long after.
Wang Yo asks nothing. He does not ask if one brother will wake or if the other will return; he does not ask if his mother loves him.
He only stays by her side.
He is not perfect. But he is clever, and sometimes cleverness can be enough.
This one, she decides. This one will be king.
.
Court Lady Oh nearly bleeds to death. The child dies; at night, tears slip down the king's cheeks.
She vomits in the morning, and it is not because of guilt or triumph.
She gives birth to a fourth son—her last—and he is not like the others; he is like the first. Nearest, she thinks, to perfect.
Wang Jung. She crushes him to her breast and says, enough.
.
The Kangs of Shinju are mad. The Kangs of Shinju are cruel. The Kangs of Shinju treat him like a dog, not like a son, and they all fear the disfigurement of his face. These are the rumors she hears, and she turns them over in her mind at night. It is a kind of satisfaction, to know that they will mark him, break him, spurn him, finishing the work that she began with the slash of a knife.
The king and her firstborn were loved, not loving.
Wang Yo keeps his own counsel.
Wang So was the only one she could hurt.
.
He returns, time and again, because the king wishes to see him, because his brothers are growing up. He keeps the scar covered. He does not change; he has not changed since that night, except that if he still cries like a kitten, he does not do it in her hearing. He wears his pain with all the fierceness of a wild beast, but if he frightens others, he never frightens her.
She sees the work of her hands written across every inch of him. She is permanent to him, she tells herself, and not as a mother.
That is power, and it cuts deep.
Yet he stills calls her mother, and he still comes to her on his knees, and he still breaks wide open when she pushes him aside.
It is as though he will never learn.
She bites the inside of her mouth until the blood runs, and wonders if power is really enough.