Chapter Text
For an age and an age, the house of Ashmore stood strong. A noble house in birth, though not so in quality, as they were quite average among their contemporaries and peers. In fact, to some who lived in their fiefdom, they were downright unpopular. Perhaps this was why the common people were so fast to turn on their house when things became dire-when Lady Ashmore was found performing rituals in the woods, she was dragged out to the town square and burned for witchcraft.
The family left behind were stricken with grief, but they needed help and support to continue their rule. Soon, the Lord Ashmore found someone who offered that-a woman who seemed to be in control. Who seemed to keep everything around her steady. Perhaps the Lord should have exercised more caution, but he was desperate. Desperate to keep the fiefdom steady, to regain his good name after supposedly marrying a witch, desperate to give his daughter someone who could be there for her.
He knew not the evil he invited into his own home.
Within a fortnight of marrying this woman, the Lord Ashmore fell dead. ‘Consumption’, the physicians called it. But only four people knew the truth-he had been poisoned, removed both quickly and exactly.
The woman moved into the house with her two daughters. They had secrets indeed, for they had been planning the deaths of the Ashmores and the takeover of their house for a long time now. There was not a bit of humanity within them-for indeed, they were not human. They were monsters, trolls, and the woman was a master of magic and disguise. This troll had stitched together and enchanted a suit of human skin, wearing it to fool the Lord Ashmore before quickly dispatching him and ruling in his stead.
And yet, the trolls fulfilled the late Lord Ashmore’s wish-they kept things under control. The new Lady of the House ruled the fiefdom with an iron fist, ensuring that the rest of the noble population questioned anything. Only her and her two troll daughters knew the truth of what had happened to the previous Lord. Well, them and one other person.
For there was one final cinder of the House of Ashmore that remained adrift in the air. A final cinder with no kindling, no fuel, that stayed alive only for two reasons. One, her own determination. And two, her cruel master’s sadism.
Ella Ashmore was that final cinder. Within weeks the trolls had taken her father, her home, and her life away. They kept her imprisoned within the house for weeks at a time, giving her only the bare essentials necessary for survival. Her Stepmother only kept her alive for a few reasons-for one, there were appearances to maintain, and Ella provided an important connection to the Ashmore bloodline. Two, the Stepmother enjoyed seeing Ella suffer-she considered humanity a blight on the land, and having Ella so fully in her power provided a thrill that few other things did.
But Ella survived. She had nothing left but hope and hatred. Hope for a better life. And hatred for her captors, the three trolls who made her life hell.
The servants who previously served her family were eaten by the trolls, leaving Ella to be forced into caretaking for them. She made their meals, kept the house tidy, and was never provided even a place to clean herself. As for the rest of the town, well, the Stepmother had seen that rumors swirled of Ella going mad with grief. Months turned into years, with Ella occasionally being dragged out of the house, and finding herself isolated from the town.
And yet, she did not give up. She did not lose hope. Even when she was forced to stay in the house past her adulthood, as a ‘madwoman’ could not be set free in the town.
The kingdom of Heriot had long been ruled over by the Talbert dynasty. While they had once been a proud family of warriors and conquerors, now they had become…lax. Their hunger for glory waned and was replaced with hunger for feats, women, and other simpler things. Indeed, the old king of Heriot had led the kingdom to stagnation, and it seemed his son, the young prince, was to continue in the same way.
The charming prince, Prince James Talbert, was not a clever man. Nor was he noble, or prideful, or strong, or cunning. He probably would have killed his father to inherit the throne a long time ago, but he was too lazy to do so. Indeed the man, like his father before him, was not cruel enough to conquer, but not clever enough to rule.
There was but one hope for their kingdom, and that was marriage. The Prince’s main attendant, known only as Tadius, believed that if he could arrange a marriage between his lord and a woman more cunning, he could perhaps save the kingdom by having that woman handle the ruling. And yet, despite being wholly unaware of this ulterior motive, the Prince was unknowingly halting that very plot in its place through his pure idiocy. He was a philanderer, a womanizer, who enjoyed crude humor and was often so undiplomatic that it ruined any chances of marriage. Indeed, the royal family had lost much of their influence and power to the nobles over the rule of his father, making the prospect of marrying into their family much less appealing than it had been before.
One day, Tadius and the King decided that enough was enough. They planned a ball, and invited all maidens both noble and common to attend, in the hopes they could find one who would woo the prince and they could finally marry him off.
That night, the Stepmother began her own plan. For nearly an era she had been plotting the fall of Heriot, the fall of the race of men, so the trolls could rise once again. She took the final two friends Ella still had, Justine and Lucy Grizzwald, and killed them both, before skinning them and making two more skinsuits for her daughters. This destroyed Ella, and to make things worse, the Stepmother ordered her to bury the remains of her two friends somewhere far in the woods.
That night though, was the night Ella had her revenge. For in her despair, one of the Ten Good Gods-the Queen in White-reached out to her and granted her wish, granting her power and strength so she could finally accomplish her desires for revenge. Ella was given three things-two animal companions to protect her, as well as a dress of starlight and glass slippers that channeled the Queen of White’s magic. With all this power, she cleaned herself up as much as she could and went to attend the ball.
Everyone knows the story from here. The starlight cast a glamour over her, making her unrecognizable. She charmed the charmer prince, stealing away all his attention, until he was completely infatuated. She destroyed any chance of her Stepmother’s plans coming to fruition, or so she thought.
In desperation, the Stepmother used her connections and hooks within the palace guards, and incited an attack, with the intent to kill this mysterious maiden who had stolen away the prince. In the resulting scuffle, one of the slippers was lost, and Ella’s connection to the god’s magic was broken. Her animal guardians lost their sapience, her starlight garment faded back into rags, and she fled into the night before she could be recognized.
But even so, the damage was done. Her Stepmother had seen Ella for who she was. Still, the Prince remained infatuated, and insisted that he would only marry the woman to whom the fallen shoe belonged.
That night, Ella was put through agony. The trolls cornered her back at the home, two of them wearing the faces of her dead friends. The Stepmother knew that she could never stop the prince from chasing Ella the rest of her days, and the shoes would burn any feet that were not Ella’s as well. So, the Stepmother determined that all they needed of Ella now was her feet.
I don’t have to describe to you what came next. So I won’t. All I will say is that that night, the trolls took the last two things they ever would from Lady Ella Ashmore.
They took her feet, stitching them to her stepsisters’ skinsuit to fool the magic cast by the Queen in White.
And they took Ella’s life, leaving her to suffer and bleed out in that house.
After that, there was nothing to bar the trolls from claiming both crown and castle. The sister who wore Ella’s stolen feet, Putrice, easily fit into the shoe left on the palace grounds. If that wasn’t proof enough that she was the mystery girl, the fact that they had the other shoe was.
And so, a wedding was finally arranged between Putrice Ashmore and Prince James Talbert. All the nobles of Heriot, from lands near and far, came to witness the momentous day.
But the moment it was made official, that Putrice and the prince were married, the Stepmother finally lunged out of her hiding, tired of waiting around. She and her daughters shed their skins, revealing themselves, immediately killing the prince and starting on the rest of the nobles in the room.
But that was the day you all remember. The day we teach about in our history classes. That was the day our heroic queen rose.
For the magic of the Queen of White was exacting. The spell she’d cast was clear-so long as the shoes remained on Ella’s feet, fate would twist and bend and weave to make her dreams come true. It didn’t matter if Ella’s feet were on her body or not, so long as they wore the shoes, the spell would work.
So, in falsely proving herself and marrying the prince, Putrice had unknowingly allowed the magic to work again. And work it did, until Ella had been drawn back into the land of the living. It was there, right underneath the body of the dead prince, that Ella revealed herself and confronted the trolls, all in front of an audience.
Her animal companions, rising along with her, made quick work of Putrice. Her other sister, Rancilda, grabbed her skinsuit and fled, chased out. As for the Stepmother? Well, Ella was able to command the Queen of White’s magic in one final brilliant burst of starlight, and turned her torturer, her abuser for so many years, to stone.
And after that, Ella was showered with gratitude. When the King died soon after from his grief (as the history books claim), Ella became the new queen of Heriot. Not just because of her newfound popularity among the nobles whose lives she had saved, but because by the barest technicality of the law, she was the sister to the last living queen, making her eligible.
That is the story we all know. The story we all love, that we tell when we’re feeling proud of our nation and history. And yet…there is so much more story to tell. So much that has fallen out of public consciousness.
After her rise to power, Ella ruled Heriot for forty-nine years until her death. And she changed the world a dozen times over in that time, taking a country that was stagnant, seemingly on its last legs, and returning back its power. She gave us reason to be proud of our country, my friends. And it’s past time her full story was told.
So that is what I am here to do now. That is why I sit in my basement by candlelight, squinting over the ink as it drips onto the page.
I am here to tell the full story of Queen Ella Ashmore, the greatest monarch our kingdom will ever know.
Feared by the wicked, loved by the true.
The first and last member of the Ashmore dynasty.