She was dying.
It was an inevitability—not the result of some sudden ailment or specific threat, but the gradual grinding to a halt of a human body never designed for eternity. Even so, the realization struck me with the force of a physical blow. Somewhere in my mind, I had always sensed a heat radiating from the Queen, a fierce, predatory flame that seemed to defy the very concept of mortality. Despite knowing the truth, I had allowed myself to fall into the illusion that she might actually live forever.
“You’re staring as if you’ve never seen an old person before,” she rasped, her sharp eyes cutting right through my facade. “And here I thought you’d seen quite a few people off by now.”
I remained silent, my inner thoughts laid bare by her uncanny intuition.
A ghost of a smile touched her lips. “I still have a few things left to answer regarding your question of ‘why,'” she said.
Gathering her remaining strength, she kicked back the furs and swung her emaciated legs over the side of the bed. As she sat there, back straight and dignity draped around her like invisible armor, it was easy to forget she had been lying there like a hollow husk only moments before.
“First and foremost,” she began, her voice gaining a trace of its former iron, “I wanted to crush my enemies.”
I let out a startled, dry cough.
“My apologies if my phrasing lacked refinement,” she added, though her eyes twinkled with mischief. “Allow me to rephrase: I wanted to shatter my foes, trample their legacies, and watch as they were ground into the very dust of the earth.”
She sat there, a woman on the threshold of the grave, speaking of total destruction. I could only marvel at her spirit; I wanted to applaud. It felt like reading one of those “satisfaction guaranteed” threads on a modern social media feed—the ultimate “bridge-burning” story. It was as if I were watching a disgruntled employee format every single mission-critical file on the company server before walking out the door for the last time.
She actually did it, I thought. She really went through with it.
If you swapped “resigning” for “dying,” the analogy was perfect. The sheer, radiant will to give her enemies one last “fuck you” on her way out was nothing short of spectacular.
Elizabeth seemed quite satisfied with herself, a look of smug triumph coloring her pale features. “And it appears I succeeded. James will be so busy navigating Irish autonomy that he won’t be able to touch them, and Spain has suffered a blow they won’t soon recover from. It is good news for your Continental Covenant as well.”
“…”
“I have harmed my enemies and aided my allies,” she concluded. “What could be better than that?”
Is that truly it? I wondered. No, that couldn’t be the whole truth. While crushing enemies and helping allies was the bread and butter of any politician, there was something more fundamental at play here.
“You’ve sacrificed your health for this,” I pointed out.
The basic instinct of every human is to survive. Elizabeth Tudor, specifically, was a woman who had spent her entire life fueled by a desperate, clawing desire to live. She was someone who loathed anything that might bring harm to her person.
“Ha! This old body was already failing. Moving about a bit more wasn’t going to make it any worse.”
Hearing those words from her lips felt fundamentally wrong. She wasn’t the type to be so careless with herself—at least, not the woman I had come to know.
“And what of that ‘promise’?” I asked. “What did you mean by that?”
She let out a grin that was almost boyish. “I believe I mentioned it once through Margaret.”
She raised her skeletal arms, showing me the translucent skin stretched over bone. “I said I would repent before I died. Look at me. This is the body of a woman who will soon be meeting her Maker. So, before I go, I decided to do one last ‘good deed.'”
“So… you ended the war?”
It had been a brutal, wretched conflict. In another history, the struggle in Ireland might have been known as the Nine Years’ War; here, it had dragged on for twenty.
“The commander of their forces—or rather, the man who is now King of Ireland—told me to remember those I had killed,” she murmured. “I told him I would. I’ve decided to remember exactly how many lives I’ve extinguished.”
Her eyes widened, bloodshot and intense. “I lived my life shedding an ocean of blood. I did it because I wanted to live. No, I did it because I was terrified of dying. And as the blood on my hands pooled deeper, the thought of death became even more paralyzing. I wasn’t obsessed with life; I was running from the grave.”
She clenched her fists, her knuckles white. “And I am still terrified.”
She was afraid of Hell.
“I don’t want to go there,” she confessed, her voice a fragile whisper. “The thought of eternal flames licking at my soul… it keeps me from sleep.”
“Is that so?”
“It is. So tell me, Nameless One.” She reached out and gripped my arm. Her strength was negligible, a mere fluttering pressure, yet I knew it was every ounce of power she had left in her. She stared into my eyes, her gaze desperate and unyielding. “Can I… can I be saved?”
She maintained that mischievous, boyish smile, even as her eyes pleaded with me.
“Will I go to Heaven?”
I stood there in the silence, searching for the right words to offer her. In the end, I chose the only truth I had.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“…”
“Only God knows the answer to that. So, do not trouble yourself with it.”
Elizabeth let out a sharp, genuine laugh. “Exactly the answer I was hoping for.”
She collapsed back onto the pillows, her face suddenly looking far more peaceful. Her eyelids began to droop as a heavy, terminal drowsiness pulled at her.
“Going to Ireland… stopping the war…” she muttered, her voice trailing off into a sleep-talk. “I don’t think that will get me into Heaven. It would be a farce to believe my sins are wiped clean just because I stopped a war that I started myself…”
“Then why do it?”
She closed her eyes and turned her head away. “Because it was… bothering me.”
“…”
“A woman shouldn’t have things weighing on her mind at the very end, should she?”
“I suppose not,” I agreed. “But doesn’t it bother you to stay here? This isn’t your home.”
“No,” she said, her voice suddenly clear and resonant. “Home is… wherever you feel at peace.”
“…”
“Thank you… for making me feel at peace.”
With those final words, she drifted into a deep sleep. The soft, rhythmic sound of her snoring filled the small room. I pulled the blankets up to her chin, making sure she was warm, and stepped outside. Margaret was waiting in the hall, her face etched with worry.
“How is she?” she asked softly. As a seasoned physician, she wasn’t asking about the Queen’s physical state.
“She looked peaceful,” I replied. “And very resolute.”
Margaret let out a long, shaky breath of relief. I gave her a small nod of farewell and stepped out of the house.
A week later, the Queen died.
A gentle, persistent drizzle fell over Roanoke Island that day.
***
The death of the Queen signaled the end of an era. The Tudor dynasty had passed, replaced by the House of Stuart. James was now the sole monarch of Great Britain—though in Ireland, he remained a co-monarch.
With the change of dynasty came a shift in responsibility. Elizabeth had been able to act with such reckless abandon in her final days because she had no future Tudor line to protect. James, however, was an “at-all-costs” pragmatist; he had a dynasty to secure.
After hosting a lavish funeral for his former political rival, James moved with startling speed. A messenger carrying the news of the Queen’s passing traveled from Glasgow to Madrid. Philip III and the Duke of Lerma, having recently returned to Madrid from the new capital of Valladolid, received the news and immediately understood its implications.
The party responsible for the war had changed.
The Spaniards immediately dispatched Juan Fernández de Velasco y Tovar, Duke of Frías, to Glasgow to begin peace negotiations.
“Spain must recognize England as a Protestant nation,” the English envoys demanded. “There shall be no further attempts to restore Roman Catholicism within our borders.”
“In exchange,” the Spaniards countered, “England must cease all interference and harassment of Spanish Atlantic shipping and colonial ventures. Furthermore, the English Channel must be opened to our vessels.”
“Merchant ships from both nations shall have mutual access to ports for repair, refuge, and supplies. Fleets of fewer than eight ships shall not require prior authorization.”
Clause after clause was hammered out.
From James’s perspective, this war—a product of Elizabeth’s stubbornness—had brought nothing but ruin to his kingdom. Ireland had been devastated to the point of becoming a de facto independent state, and the disruption to British shipping had been catastrophic. Even the vast wealth flowing in from Virginia couldn’t cover the bottomless pit of military expenditures.
Spain, too, found the conflict increasingly pointless. The constant English privateering was a nightmare, and resources desperately needed for more critical European theaters were being bled dry in the Atlantic. And so, the two kingdoms signed the Treaty of Glasgow, finally bringing the long war to an end.
“We’re just ending it like this?” a voice cried out in a London tavern. “After winning so many battles, we don’t even get a copper in reparations? It’s madness!”
The seeds of a new conflict were sown that day. James had prioritized domestic stability and the conclusion of the war above all else, resulting in a treaty that many in England viewed as a humiliation. He believed that with his primary obstacle gone, he could finally consolidate his grip on the British Isles.
He was wrong.
“We cannot accept this treaty! It is a disgrace!”
All of England began to seethe.
“Exactly! It’s preposterous! We can’t even punish the papist traitors now? How is this justice?”
The Protestants were the first to move. One man stood before a crowd, his voice booming with righteous indignation.
“You’re right, Cromwell! Every word is the truth!”
“We must raise our voices in protest! This is nothing short of tyranny!”
The speaker was Robert Cromwell. He stood with his young son, Oliver, at his side. “We want our children to grow up in a pious, holy England! Not in a land stained by dishonor, immorality, and despotic rule!”
“Wooooooo!”
“We will protest! We will demand our rights from King James!”
The “Liverpool Faction,” the very group Elizabeth had acknowledged and shook hands with, formally resolved to defy the King.
Meanwhile, in the shadows…
“We Catholics have been defeated. That mad witch is dead, but now a Scottish bumpkin sits above us, trying to spread his false faith.”
“We must rise up!”
“Yes! To arms!”
Conspirators began to agitate the Catholic populace. They gathered gunpowder, men, and firearms. Using the brief peace as cover, they organized a deep, intricate plot. They whispered a single name with fervor: Guy Fawkes, their charismatic instigator.
James issued royal decrees and sent emissaries throughout England demanding oaths of loyalty, but his words fell on deaf ears. With the Queen’s death, the kingdoms she had briefly sutured together began to fray.
Yet, some still dreamed of a unified future, just as the Queen once had. Someone would eventually break these waves; someone would calm this storm. Someday, these kingdoms would be one again beneath a single heel. Until then, the world waited, nursing the seeds of ambition that Elizabeth had scattered in her wake.
***
“Walter? What do you plan to do with this house?”
Nemo’s question pulled Raleigh from his thoughts. He let out a weary, bittersweet laugh. “This house? Did Her Majesty leave any specific instructions in her will?”
“None,” Nemo replied. “She was merely leasing this land from the Baron of Roanoke. It technically reverts to your ownership, Walter. It’s up to you.”
Walter Raleigh looked up at the wooden residence of his long-time sovereign—and his secret love. “I will ensure that no one ever lives here again,” he said firmly.
“…”
“I will preserve it exactly as it is. Forever.”
Raleigh walked onto the terrace and pressed a lingering kiss to the doorframe. “Rest in eternal peace,” he whispered.
And with that, it was over.