Archive of Our Own

“I knew I’d passed the age of innocence when I fell in love with someone else. ... I doubted. It was certainly not wise. But it was astonishing. It was revelation.”: Mary Howard to Mary Shelton, page 349, Chapter 73, Queenbreaker: Perseverance

Despite the barriers of rank and position, all the factors which make it impossible, two young lovers manage to find each other. And happiness, for a time.

A series of one shots depicting the evolution of Mary and Mark's relationship as inspired by Catherine McCarran's Queenbreaker universe.

Each fic is standalone although ultimately my intention is to show the progression of their (fictional - there is no evidence whatsoever that their real life counterparts were remotely interested in each other at all, let alone acted on it) love affair. Some will be based on particular events in the first novel - the other instalments are yet to be published - but future pieces will depict versions of real historical events that occurred later than the end of Book 1.

The following elements, which are referenced in almost each fic, are taken directly from Book 1 and are not my original concepts:

1. The characterisation of Anne Boleyn (which is not how I personally see her; if I had the talent to write an original novel about her, I would portray her differently - she was not always the world's nicest person and could be vindictive, but I never saw her as negatively as she is depicted in this world);
2. "Pass-the-Time" is the characters' term for court flirtations (and sometimes more) that are not intended to develop into serious relationships or lead to marriage;
3. Mary's nickname in the novel is Mariah (to distinguish her from other ladies-in-waiting named Mary) - though in my series Mark, being a contrary little sod, refuses to call her that - and Margaret Douglas is known as Margot. She, Mary Shelton and Margaret Douglas were good friends in real life but frequently antagonists in this universe.
4. "God chooses whom we love. He never chooses wrongly" is a line from the book which encapsulates the basis for Mary's single-minded determination in canon to make it work, despite the massive obstacles that confront the two of them. I loved this idea (to the point that I borrowed it for a separate fic, which focuses on a different ship and is not strictly part of this fandom), because it gives it more complexity and avoids the overused, anachronistic and tired fictional trope of "but Father, I do not love him!" Book Mary is (as she was in real life) a supremely intelligent, devout and resourceful girl - she comes across as a realist, rather than an idealistic romantic - with a strong self-protective instinct and sense of her and her family's position. She knows the Duke of Richmond is a brilliant match, however she feels about the boy himself, and is prepared to marry where she's told until she falls hard for someone else, becomes convinced it must be God's will that they be together, and in turn convinces the boy she loves. The stories in this series therefore will return to this theme as I see this as a powerful motivating factor for the two of them; it justifies the less-than-laudable things they have to do to achieve their objective.

Most of these fics are from Mary's POV in the first person, mentally addressing Mark in the second person. Both are teenagers during the period of their relationship in this universe: although other writers - in fiction and otherwise - age him up into his mid-20s or even older, Professor Ives's proposition, that Mark possibly was no more than 20 in May 1536 (and therefore in his teens throughout most, if not the entire period, of his career in Henry’s household) always made more sense to me. I've been unable to find a source for the 1512 birth year that Wikipedia gives and which recent secondary sources have somehow accepted as fact, so I disregard that unless someone can produce a 1512 birth certificate for him. (Working on that that basis also renders the relationship slightly more age-appropriate to my eyes, as the real Mary was only about 17 at the time of Anne Boleyn’s fall and therefore 13 in 1532. In my version I've fudged her age somewhat, depicting her as about 12-18 months older than the real Mary would have been.) I've also diverged from book canon in depicting Mark as English-born (the list of dramatis personae in the book describes him as Dutch, which he wasn't - one source suggests he might have been Flemish but the descriptions written by men who actually knew him make no mention of that, which one would expect since they have a go at him over having working class parentage and I anticipate would have been anxious to highlight "foreignness" as another point of difference from his "betters", so again, I place little weight on the "Mark the Fleming" reference unless someone produces a Flemish passport) and having him play the instruments he was actually known for playing (the virginals, organ, and lute, primarily - he is unlikely to have been a violinist though he may have been able to play an earlier form of bowed instrument).