Chapter Text
The story everyone knows is wrong. A lie recorded and spread by a self-proclaimed victor. The tale of Alice in Wonderland is just that. A tale. A document of history. The telling of a war through the eyes of a perceived hero.
Little do you humans know that our story, the real Wonderland, is far from the ‘truths’ you’ve been told…
Wonderland began as a ruling of two kingdoms. The Red Kingdom and the White Kingdom. One promoting free will and celebrating madness, the other pushing for order and control. In a world were no one dies, Madness and magic run wild and societies revolve around what one can do and how best to succeed in what they want lives be dammed; the Red Kingdom was a clear favourite of the people. No one wishes to be controlled, to be told how to live and what to do. Who wants to be punished for murdering their neighbour for slighting them?
The first war – the Great War – brought the isolation of the White Kingdom and its Queen. A place restricted for the order the rest of Wonderland rejected. As a result, the Red Kingdom degraded down to what is now known as the Kingdom of Hearts.
Wonderland works by strange ways. Strange rules and stranger perceptions. The land could not be ruled by one kingdom. No no no, the Kingdom of Hearts would only rule the land its city occupied. Any other land outside of it belonged to the wild things and the villages. A neutral land.
The Hearts could not be alone. Then they’d be just as isolated as the White Kingdom. So, Wonderland gifted the land with a second Red Kingdom. Also known as the Kingdom of Diamonds.
Two Red Kingdoms, one representing Madness the other Sanity. Two sides of the same coin, sharing the same reds, golds and whites of their playing cards. A King and a Queen to rule side by side.
Wonderland was not finished with two. Of course not. Where was the balance in two Red Cards?
And so the Kingdoms of Spades and Clubs were born. The Spades to care and facilitate the resting dead, the Clubs to nourish and promote their rebirth. Together they were the Black Kingdoms – the Black Cards.
With their Royalty finalised, Wonderland thrived. Citizens moved between the kingdoms depending on how they wished to live. The lands not claimed by the Royal Cards was free and usually overgrown for the animals. It was a peaceful land of madness and magic.
…then…
Alice arrived.
A girl from the human world parallelling their own. She was the very first Dreamer. A human who possessed their Wonderland counterpart’s body, taking over until that human were to perish in their world. Once they were gone the Wonderlandian would return and continue on with life. No one remained dead in Wonderland after all.
Alice entered our world and perceived it to be wrong. She stumbled across the White Kingdom early into her decent down the rabbit hole. The White Queen provided her with the support to take out the Royal Cards. How could there be order and justice in a world where a Queen could murder multiple people in one day without anyone batting an eye? Surely the citizens feared these monstrous rulers?
Alice believed herself to be a saviour. She and her ragtag group of rebels spread violence across the land. They slaughtered anyone in their way, believing them to be on the side of the Queen of Hearts. She targeted our beloved Heart, blaming her for the way Wonderland was due to her public executions and mad personality.
Alice ripped her way through Wonderland. She killed three out of eight of the Royal Cards. Destroyed many of the kingdoms, leaving wastelands behind. She killed all the Jabberwockies and all the Butterflies. Her magical sword enabled a permanent death for normal citizens of Wonderland.
For the Royal Cards they…changed.
That is how I came to be here. Alice murdered me on my looking glass. Fragments of the mirror have melded into my heart. I am trapped in a limbo of Wonderland and Humanity. When I sleep in Wonderland I awaken in the human world and vice versa. I have not slept properly for three human lifetimes.
You are the firsts to figure out that I am not human. You are the firsts to accept me for who I am.
“And who are you?”
…the Queen of Spades.