Shattered Glass

As Queen Cinderella examined her own reflection in the full-length mirror, she flinched but she dared not look away.

Her naked face, once the fairest with the most exquisite features of the kingdom, could be mistaken for a violent artist's piece of work. The pale complexion was a canvas for the new wrinkles and the permanent purple bruises.

There had been times when the young Cinderella's figure was praised and envied by everyone who had caught even a glimpse of her. But after three pregnancies and children, how could she avoid the saggy skin, the stretch marks and the gain of weight? She kept hiding behind the rigid corsets but she was still ashamed of her middle-aged body.

She had become a completely different person with a different body and a story that could break hearts.

Seven years after her wedding, Prince Charming's father succumbed to a long and slow terminal illness. Between his coronation and becoming an orphan, our Prince, or should we say new King, lost some of his sanity.

Stress, depression and frustration gnawed him continuously until he changed... for the worse.

It started slowly with him being angry at little things and finding mistakes in everything the Queen did. Pregnant with her third child during those days, Cinderella tried to manage her own mood swings but to no avail.

When her frustrated mood first clashed with the King's anger at her negligence towards the discipline in the palace, she saw the King's evil. At first the slap from her robust husband startled her. Her head spun with dizziness as she steadied herself by clinging to the nearby bed. When the stinging pain settled in, she couldn't stop the tears from streaming off her eyes. The acknowledgement of her husband's dark side finally arrived as the King left his pregnant wife cradling her aching cheek, never apologising.

After that, nothing was ever okay for Cinderella. The physical abuse only went worse with her finding it more and more difficult to hide her bruises from the people of the kingdom who respected her. During her third childbirth, she almost died. Put under intensive medical care for weeks, she suffered so much pain that she once wished for death but her maternal instinct stopped her. She loved her children but eventually, she lost them.

The King was a totalitarian ruler, feared by his people. He even controlled his own children who grew up learning to use power for their own advantage. This unfair advantage made the children happy. They loved their father for the privilege he had passed on to them and to them, their mother was simply an ornament in the kingdom.

Cinderella stared at the mirror a little more, comparing her life as a maiden to her current one, wondering which one is worse. Sure, she was tired of living the life of an ornament but what else could she do? She never learnt to stand up for herself. Also, she had to be an exemplary queen for her people. She had to be there to protect them and her children. Though they did not respect her, they were her beloved children. Who would catch them if they ever fell?

She was no longer the young, beautiful "Ash Princess" as her father-in-law had once called her. She could no longer call her Fairy Godmother who had died soon after her marriage.

Her magical glass shoe had, after all, cut into her own feet.