the little mermaid

epilogue - cordelia

Ivory skin, azure eyes, and light-colored hair tend to elicit a feeling of peace and tranquility. They're features that come to mind when one thinks of an angel.

But Her Royal Highness Madame Cordelia, Ruler of All Seas and All Oceans All around the Globe, who possessed all of these features, was most definitely not an angel.

Cordelia, though blessed with undeniable beauty, did not elicit feelings of peace. Her eyes were daggers - beautiful, shiny daggers, but daggers nonetheless - and they did not hesitate to stab whenever something did not go precisely how Cordelia planned.

Her lips were thin and dark, constantly muttering punishments (only to those who she believed truly deserved them, for she was once the victim of punishment gone awry). She spoke in an outspoken, yet horrifyingly soft-spoken manner.

Her features were sharp - her cheekbones high, jaw line defined, nose pointed, and collarbone protruding from the depths of her black corset that pulled the whole image of despicable grandeur together.

Cordelia wasn't always like this. She used to believe in kindness towards everyone, but her views were changed by people who didn't feel the same way. Cordelia found that sometimes life gets in the way of being a good person (or, in this case, mermaid), and she turned spiteful. For years and years she planned revenge, and when that revenge was finally handed to her, she was happy. Happiness may seem a thing too precious and unattainable for someone as terrible as Cordelia to achieve it, because out of all the souls in this world that deserve to be happy, why should someone who finds joy in taking happiness away earn that very thing?

Cordelia felt that she really did deserve happiness, though. Her life, up until a few years ago when she seated herself on the thrown, was far from satisfying. The days drifted away slowly, along with her quivering soul, like the last remnants of a ship after it had been tossed about by the fury of the sky and the ocean, slowly falling apart. She welcomed the looming darkness of what should lie ahead when she finally gave up, when the ship was no longer.

But that was before she was Queen.

Cordelia had been on the brink of expelling herself from the world when she saw her opportunity. She saw her opportunity to finally achieve vengeance against the one who originally put her into such misery. She saw her opportunity to put him into that very misery, take everything away from him, as he had once done to her. Cordelia saw her opportunity, and she took it.

And she succeeded in her journey for revenge. King Edward III was no longer King. In fact, he was no longer living at all, and neither was his wife, the mermaid that stole all chances of Cordelia ever being with who she thought was her true love from her. She was killed by humans, something Cordelia was completely uninvolved in, but she took advantage of it. She used the King's excessive fear of humans against him, to the point where his own daughter was the very thing he feared, the very thing that caused him to set such strict boundaries.

He never knew this, but the very thought of not knowing made the king go insane, until he could no longer live.

That's when Cordelia took over. She completely took over the underwater government, changed all the laws and social norms to what she believed in, and even began contact with the human governments (who were at this point engaged in a terrible World War. That kind of thing didn't happen in the ocean under Cordelia's strict rule.)

And now she was happy. It wasn't the same happiness she had always dreamt of when she was a little girl, when she dreamed of finding her true love and marrying him and living happily ever after, because the world had mutilated that idea of happiness. She was fine with that, though. She may not have a King resting on a thrown beside her, but she gave up on the hope of true love long ago. She gave up on the hope of a lot of things - companionship, equality, fairness, and, at one point, she gave up on the will to live. But the one thing she never gave up on was happiness. She strived toward this ever-changing goal for all her life, and although the circumstances were by no means ideal, she was finally happy.