CHRONICLES OF A USURPATION

CHRONICLES OF A USURPATION
The Shakespeare Day story 2015
by Sandra Dermark


Dearest Elisabeth, Astrid, and Rainer:
Had I not found this story during my pursuit of forgotten tales, these Shakespeare Day celebrations would have been as tiresome as a rainy Good Friday.
Ever since I started this Erasmus, I have been looking for more forgotten stories than ever before. And I hoped with all my heart that the quest would not be an unfruitful one. Roaming the streets of old pre-industrial Leipzig, where Bach and Goethe have walked before, and having at least learned to understand that challenging curse known as the Saxon dialect (my greatest hurdle to fit in and reach what I sought). One day, I entered one of those quaint bookstores when a little thin leaflet of a book caught my eye. "Chronicles of a Usurpation" was written on the cover, in French, in lovely Art Nouveau letters. "CHRONIQUES D'UNE USURPATION", printed in Paris in 1899. Honeysuckle motifs lined the covers. Mesmerized, I caught the booklet and opened it, and then started reading. I was struck. An irresistible urge to read the book took hold of me by surprise.
At dusk, I returned home to the tiresome GDR-era Plattenbau, so different from my usual daytime hangouts (the sacrifice one has to make to study at the Leipzig Uni), with the little pale green book in my contented hands. How much did it cost? Thirty euros. You may call it a bloodletting, but I call it a sacrifice.
So now I'm sitting before my laptop, in this Leipzig Plattenbau, as the April rains pitter-patter restlessly against the window-panes. In my hands, the little Francophone booklet. On my mind, the idea of translating it into English, into which I have found no translation. So I have decided to do it (after all, a story from those days is in the public domain).
Hope you enjoy the story as much as I have!


CHRONICLES OF A USURPATION

I.

"And why should I?", Charles inquired, shiftily looking down.
"Why? The war is over, and we have won! And our general has just married for love!", he received for a reply. "Why else celebrate this evening? The other officers think so."
"The other officers." Charles lifted his face and looked at his second-in-command. A freshly-baked lieutenant aged eighteen (and, previously, a student expelled from university for being a freethinker), who had arrived at this distant fortress shortly before the end of the war, Charles had finally managed to find a place where he could fit in. He was most certainly dashing, tall and lean, and broad-shouldered, with a shade of golden peach-fuzz on his upper lip, a cascade of golden locks tied up with a satin ribbon, and lovely eyes the light green colour of peridots. His looks certainly fit the uniform like those of none other: the breeches were scarlet and tightly-fitting, the doublet was the lovely colour of his eyes, and the coat was white as snow, lined with silver lace and crowned with glittering epaulets. Shiny black knee-high boots with silvered spurs, a cockaded tricorn hat, a sharp rapier of piercing steel, and a couple of pistols engraved with flower motifs completed his attire. No surprise than the few local ladies, his own men, and every other officer from the colonel to his fellow lieutenants, loved him completely.
The sun had already set beyond the bastions, over a night sky lit by blazing fireworks. There was a marquee in the middle of the courtyard, and there is where we lay our scene. Other lieutenants were sitting at their tables, with little steel cups full of the region's best fruit and flower liquor in hand. Yet Charles was not allowed to indulge in such pleasures. He was on guard duty that evening, for his commanding officers had decided that he had proved himself worthy of such a responsibility. This was the first time in his life he had been entrusted with an assignment of such degree, one that, ironically, distanced him from the other lieutenants. Should he take the orders or revel with the others?
The decision that Charles would make would change two worlds, the one within him and the one around him, at the same time, shaping his destiny and making history as well.

It was a realm among many others, a young realm, which had been created less than two decades before. A modest realm, yet prosperous and in peace, filled with hopes and expectations of becoming a great power. Nothing had troubled it during its brief history, save a couple of foreign invasions the decade before, and each one of them had been successfully expelled after a few skirmishes.
The ruler was a queen as young as the realm, who kept her court on the fortified northernmost and highest peak in the lands, in what appeared to be a grand palace, even a little ostentatious, from without, yet was a fortress, and a nigh inexpicable one, within. Those walls had withstood many a collision, though the front during the war was in the provinces while the Queen remained at her court, and there, she sat upon her throne since early childhood, having become exceedingly clever and knowledgeable about the history and the lore of all the realms on that continent, as well as the best and most righteous way in which the State should be ruled, from the council of regents and tutors that had hitherto always reared her within those walls, and whose purpose to guide their Liege would soon come to an end, for now Her Grace would be able to put the knowledge she had acquired to a good use. And, though the throne was uncomfortable and the crown weighed heavy upon her, she had resolved to carry out her reign the best way she could, with the aid of a young boy, the son of the regents' leader, who was destined to marry her: a lad her age, wise beyond his years, who had often found it hard to rein her in until those says, when it was crystal clear that both of them were pleased with each other, and their reign would be a glorious and lasting one. Little did they know of what soon would happen to both of them. 
The young ruler was called Reason, and her prince's name was Conscience.
Still she saw, through the twin windows on the front façade of her hold, the development of the other realms beyond her own, and she heard the words of their rulers through a device that had been installed in the throne room, and all that with a curious touch of wistfulness. 
However, she would soon unleash a chain of events that would bring a tragic misfortune upon both the realm and herself, not to mention her fiancé as well.
It all began with a lack of water, both for the court and the smallfolk, but it would end in a far more catastrophic way than anyone would expect...


II.

The sun had already set beyond the bastions, over a night sky lit by blazing fireworks. There was a marquee in the middle of the courtyard, and there is where we lay our scene. Other lieutenants were sitting at their tables, with little steel cups full of the region's best fruit and flower liquor in hand. Yet Charles was not allowed to indulge in such pleasures. He was on guard duty that evening, for his commanding officers had decided that he had proved himself worthy of such a responsibility. This was the first time in his life he had been entrusted with an assignment of such degree, one that, ironically, distanced him from the other lieutenants. Should he take the orders or revel with the others?
"Why? The war is over, and we have won! And our general has just married for love! Why else celebrate this evening? The other officers think so." He still reflected upon Jamie's words. The ten year older sergeant was a veteran of the wars, about as tall as his commanding officer, dark and sunburned, with a scar from his forehead to his left collarbone. Everything that the Fates had given to Charles (nobility, good looks, education, innocence, confidence...) had they either denied to Jamie, or had been killed within him by the horrors of war. Thus do the powers that be ruin the lives of us smallfolk, and such is the power of that harrowing experience. It came as no surprise that the scarred sergeant admired, but also envied, the still untouched lieutenant, for not having been struck by such suffering, and sought his commanding officer's undoing. Therefore, if anyone should bear the weight of the cross for all of the events that now unfurl, it should not be Charles, but rather Jamie, whose insinuations opened the curtain on these cathartic scenes.