Chapter Text
At first, Catherine felt shocked at the sight of the woman that portrayed her in the new pageant.
The women that the living chose to play her part hardly ever looked like her, that she had gotten used to a long time ago. It was undeniable that the hue of this woman’s skin and the features of her face were even more different from her true appearance than was usual, but those things alone would not have been so shocking – no, it was the way her hair flowed freely in a halo around her head instead of being properly covered with a hood, and the outrageous garment that she was wearing… Catherine could hardly bring herself to look at it, it was the absolute antithesis of what a good Christian woman should wear. How dared they portray her like that, showing off her legs for all the world to see!
Of everything the living had put together so far, this pageant must be the biggest insult to Catherine's memory. To all their memories! They had been queens of England, all six of them. They had all been born to families of high status – some quite a lot higher than others, but high nevertheless – and raised from the cradle to always comport themselves with dignity. And yet, the living had the nerve to portray them as a pack of half-naked hussies and jesters! If that was how the most noble ladies of the realm of the living really looked and acted these days, Catherine wanted to know nothing of it. Certainly it would not be long now before the End Times began.
After a fortnight or two, however, Catherine started to ever so slightly reconsider her stance.
This was not the first time she had witnessed her likeness being paraded around in a pageant. Perhaps, she thought, her soul was summoned to wherever people most often spoke her name and most often thought about her, no matter how disrespectfully they did that. Maybe this was her purgatory: being forced to watch, time and time again, how the living turned her triumphs and her sorrows into a bit of amusement for themselves. But in time, the Day of Judgment would come. If she managed to suffer through all this humiliation with the same patience and grace she had shown in life, she would then get her reward, and be allowed to join the Saints in Eternal Paradise.
Besides, the shock Catherine felt at witnessing this newest insult to her memory was nothing compared to the shocks she had experienced right after her soul had departed the world of the living. She had thought the horrors and humiliations would end as her life did, but such had not been the case. It had not yet been enough that she had been cast aside for another and banished to die in obscurity – Henry had then opted to show off his cruelty again by ordering the beheading of her replacement, and then again by replacing both of them in his heart with another and by casting both of their daughters aside, and then again, and again… One by one, the queens that had succeeded Catherine had joined her on the other side. Henry had not. After he passed away, they never saw him again.
One thing this new pageant had right was that Catherine and the other queens did not really hate each other. Not anymore. It had been very tense at first, being forced to share this strange purgatory together, but slowly, they had grown to appreciate each other. Maybe, had things been different, they could all have been friends in the realm of the living. As it was, they were glad to at least have each other here.
And if the living had managed to convey the truth about that, could they be right about something else, too..?
Catherine took a new look at the woman that portrayed her onstage. She still found her dress entirely improper, and the sight of her uncovered hair still offended her, but she could also see something else in her. She was young and beautiful. She was confident. Actually, with her straight posture, her golden chains and her commanding voice, sometimes she could appear almost… regal? And she was shown to be determined, just like the real Catherine had been, to never back down. No matter how one felt about the bizarre raiment she wore, the largely incomprehensible words she spoke, and the utterly vulgar way she moved her body, that could not be denied.
Maybe in that determination, the living watching the pageant could glimpse a distant reflection of the real queen Catherine had once been, of the woman that had never backed down an inch even though it had cost her everything.
Certainly this was purgatory and the meaning of the neverending spectacle was to make Catherine repent of her sins. Unfortunately, it looked like she would have to spend quite a while here still – for, instead of feeling humbled by the display and shrinking under the weight of her wickedness, she suddenly felt like holding her head up a little bit higher.