[Fic] The Queen and the Soldier: Cruel Hope and Gray Despair

[springgreen]

Spoilers: For the entire song
Disclaimer: Not mine!
Summary: Hell's queen is its ruler and its most enslaved soul.
Notes: Written for Avendya for Yuletide 2008.

Read Cruel Hope and Gray Despair

Series information

"The Queen and the Soldier" is a song by Suzanne Vega (lyrics), but my favorite version is the cover by Kate Rusby and Kathryn Roberts. coffeeandink introduced me to it, and I love it to pieces and keep almost requesting it for Yuletide and then not. The fandom as far as I know has one other story, edonohana's lovely The Queen Knew She'd Seen His Face Some Place Before.

Some commentary

The requestor didn't have much in the prompt outside of filling in the details of the song, and edonohana had planted the idea of reincarnation in my head, since the cover of the song ends by repeating the first verse. And I loved that she had set hers in India, and I want to write more POC, so I was noodling about for settings. And then I had the absolutely cracktastic idea that the queen would be queen of Hell and that the battle in the song would be her rebellion against Heaven, and things sort of went from there.

I suspect I like this fic far more than it deserves, but oh, I don't care! It has overblown prose, a cold heroine who is queen of Hell, reincarnation, fallen angels (both the queen and the soldier), a romance with a far more powerful woman, and did I mention Heaven and Hell? I wanted to make both the queen and the soldier POC as well, but also did not want to make them recognizably from a certain culture, given that the whole fallen angel/Hell thing could be seen as an unfortunate commentary. I tried to fudge by making the queen's black skin a marker of her status as an angel (albeit former), and I really wanted to play with the standard associations with white as good and black as evil. I am not sure I ended up succeeding though.

This may be the most id-tastic thing I have written since high school.

Comments

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

That is very id-tastic! I like it. It appeals to my id too.

(Also, thank you!)

[springgreen.livejournal.com]

Hee, I am glad! I am not sure how well the story works for people who don't have my id, but oh well. I totally want more of it anyway.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

It is fabulous, id-tastic or otherwise. Awesome.

[springgreen.livejournal.com]

Thank you! It is a bit scary exposing one's id like that.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

It generally gets good results, though.