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A marriage of convenience was far from the Knight's mind when he took the gone Queen's throne. Her body mysteriously found under the peak of a ravine, decomposing against the shallow waters, bloated, barely recognizable by her parisian green dress and red locs of hair.
A new king should be crowned by sundown.
He wore her crown with remorse and despair, while musicians sounded the trumpets and archers lit great bonfires with their blazing arrows. The howling of the far away wolves under the full moonlight mixed with the sung spiels of spiraling drunkards and the sweet yodeling of whores, now free to wander through the cover of the night.
From the small window, all the way to the top of the castle, the new king observed his new subjects. He could see his former brothers and sisters waddling through and away, till the first rays of morning sunshine lit the horizon, subjugating his people away to bed and work.
The king then kept his eyes on the horizon. With a deep sadness, he finally keened away to his quarters, the purple of his cheeks cradling his lashes.
Wandering his finger through his satin covers he thought about the sharp line, separating green from ashy brown, that seemed to cut through his borders.
"Oh, whatever shall I do." He moaned. "I can barely live without her majesty's aura embellishing my presence. Since I was a boy, all I did was to honor her name. And for it I shall die." Roll around balls and ballads and meetings, hallways and fairs until his bare bones perished. Why, until his skeleton felt faint enough for even his spirit had more substance.
For much too long he went and withered away under clerics and nobles and merchants and farmers. He sponsored poets and painters and sculptors and wasted away his welcome.
"You need to marry, your highness." Said his advisor and his wife, the cook, the maid, the gardener and the general. And so he did.
The Baron wasn't so bad, really. He conversed well, he was strategic and had connections. He had resources, and his reputation seemed to be ascending. He did look brutish, and act brutish, and he did have a rather unconventional obsession with knives, but he was also committed to the kingdom, first and foremost.
Still, he was mysterious. And rather large.
So, once night came with her shimmering cape, and the castle grounds still rattled with music and dance, and after his servants prepared him for bed, his white night gown clinging against his skin, muscles oiled and feet clean. So, once they lay side by side for the first time. A body that ripped open by surprise, so incredibly heavy against his own, drawing blood just for them to drip on the covers to be discovered by morning and never be touched again.
The Baron's large hands left imprints on him after that night. Just once, as his body floated down through the wind he could still feel the choking grip that would have caught him in life and will haunt him in death, until he was able to pass over.