The Red Queen Read Online Free PDF

him, and had much neglected him during his boyhood, rarely visiting the nursery quarters. The prince had needed some boyish comforts. This is how I saw it, when I was younger.
Lady Han had been dismissed from her post two or three years before our betrothal because the king and Lady SŏnhŬi seemed at last to have become aware that her influence was unhealthy. But the damage was already done. The first seven years of life are the important ones, as I believe the Jesuits say.
When the revered sage Mencius was a little boy, he played at funerals. His mother did not approve, and took steps to divert him from these morbid preoccupations. She was quite right not to approve, in my view. She was a more attentive mother to her son than the Lady SŏnhŬi was to my husband.
Although our lives were largely separate, some hours of contact were permitted to my betrothed and me, and we, too, played military games and fought little campaigns on the schoolroom floor. I think these contacts were against the strict etiquette of the court, but nevertheless they took place. Many things took place that were not in the rule book. There were many blind eyes at court.
These, too, were exciting and at times feverish games. The prince would rescue me from imaginary rival factions and carry me safely on his back, piggyback style, to his kingdom. I have to admit that I loved this game. I clasped him tightly round his waist with my legs. In ‘real life’, my family, the Hong family, was of the Noron faction of the Old Doctrine, which had long been in conflict with the Soron faction of the Young Doctrine, but in our game the crown prince and I made up other, more poetic names – I was of the Crimson Petal faction; my enemies were of the Black Bough. Occasionally the crown prince would take on the role of one of the enemy, and he would pretend to capture and then to torture me. He invented ingenious tortures of a pre-pubertal sexual nature, and I willingly complied. He would pretend to bind me fast, with silk sashes, and, while I was thus bound, he would caress me through my garments and insult me with mild abuse. Then he would make me kneel and lift my skirts, and caress me beneath my garments. Then he would pretend to behead me – our kingdom, alas, was only too familiar with beheadings.
These were forbidden games, and we would cease from them abruptly when interrupted. We were spied upon both overtly and covertly for most of our young lives. But he was the Crown Prince, and I was to be the queen, and we were married, so we were permitted some licence, and some private time together. My most intimate servant, Pongnyŏ, who had been with me since my birth, would occasionally turn a blind eye to our activities and let us frolic unseen. Pongnyŏ was only a slave, though she became my lady-in-waiting, and was many years later, after the tragedy, elevated to the rank of palace matron. In those early years of my marriage, those unconsummated years, she was my constant attendant. Another of my early attendants was Aji, the wet nurse who had breastfed me as a baby at my maternal home. She came with me also to the marriage pavilion. She, too, was discreet. Aji and Pongnyŏ tried to shelter me and the Crown Prince, and to prepare us for the ordeals ahead. Both lived to old age. Both outlived the Crown Prince.
I was to be the Red Queen. In play, the Crown Prince used to call me his ‘little Red Queen’. He liked my red silk skirt. I liked the name he gave me. I was vain and I was theatrical, and I was fond of my status when I was a little girl.
The Crown Prince played with my younger brothers, too – those two little brothers who were so similar in feature and so close in age that some mistook them for twins. They enjoyed visiting the palace, though they always had to be on guard. My husband, who was not much older than them, used to tease them and encourage them to overstep the invisible mark that proclaimed him as a prince and them as commoners. They were