The Red Queen Read Online Free

pebbles and grains of rice. I arranged feasts for my dolls, in the courtyard, under the foxglove tree. Dried poppyheads were my pepper pots, and I shook the black seeds on to my cold little feasts. I begged to be allowed to heat my dishes on a real stove, but this was forbidden. I managed to warm them, slightly, to a tepid state, on the hottest corner of the heated stone floor, and then I would raise them to my lips and pretend to eat. My play did not wholly convince me. Already I knew that play was a pretence, and that sorrow was real. An old head on young shoulders: that proverb from your language would have fitted me well, as it would have fitted my little sister. The Hong children aged fast.
My childhood, happy or unhappy, innocent or fearful, did not last long. Shocking things were soon to be expected of me, things that would now be forbidden by law in most nations on earth. I was to be the victim of advancement.
All these childish times came to an end when my parents put my name forward for the threefold royal selection ceremony for a royal bride. They justified this decision as their ‘duty’, for I was grandchild of a distinguished minister. They said they feared disgrace if I were not offered for the sacrifice, and claimed they were afraid to conceal me. My mother later swore that she hoped and believed that I would be rejected. I do not know how much truth there was in this: certainly she wept copiously when she discovered the way the wind was blowing, and even my father turned pale. I myself had no hopes, fears or expectations. I did not know what was happening. I was the youngest of all the candidates, and the most poorly dressed. I was sent to the palace in a skirt made from the cloth intended for my dead sister’s wedding, and lined with fabric made over from old clothes. I was not quite a thing of rags and patches, but I did not see myself as a possible princess. I was not the material from which princesses are made.
It is impossible to exaggerate the significance of the rigid dress codes of this period, within the court and beyond it. Fabrics held destinies, and colours spoke of faction and fate. Seen now, from afar, from a world from which much ceremonial (though by no means all) has vanished, the rigidity of these rules of dress may seem a psychotic expression of a deformed society. No wonder so many of us went mad. No wonder my poor husband developed those strange and unnamed phobias that were in part his undoing. It is more of a wonder that we did not all run mad.
Nevertheless, despite the poverty of my second-hand clothes, despite the fact that I was merely the daughter of a poor scholar, I was to be the chosen one. I was favoured at the preliminary selection by Lady SŏnhŬi, the mother of the Crown Prince, my bridegroom-to-be. The favours of Lady SŏnhŬi filled me with fear and panic. She was the king’s most favoured consort, and she was an intimidating woman. She had been known when young as the ‘Bright Princess’, but by the time I encountered her she had developed a formidable manner. I was frightened of her.
The prospect of the second presentation and selection, which reduced the numbers of contenders to three girls, filled me with a worse terror. Once more I was chosen. Already the horrors of my new position were clear to me. My father’s house was besieged with fawning relatives and begging servants, but the palace itself, on this second long visit, was certainly no refuge. I remember struggling, physically, with the lady-in-waiting who tried to measure me for my ceremonial robes. I was in a state of panic, and I am afraid that I tried to bite her. I had to be calmed by force. I remember waiting long hours in strange pavilions in the vast palace grounds, sometimes alone, sometimes being patted and stroked and caressed by strange princesses. (My bridegroom-to-be had several full and several half-sisters, some of whom play a sinister role in this story.) I was confined for hours, perhaps