Day 5

Pick a character you know and love and make them do the thing you always wished they would. Write trash*. Have a ball. Enjoy it. The world is your literary oyster.

[I didn’t quite fulfil the brief on this one - I wanted to write a good man and really struggled to think of one. I ended up landing on The King of France in King Lear, who only has about 25 lines and almost no character. Still, he makes good choices.]

It is hard to watch our neighbour lose his mind so, to watch him lean towards lies over love. How can he cast away such treasure as Cordelia for the baser metals of her sisters? What inflamed his mind to make such a brutal break from nobility, from good, for the sake of blatant lies. 

By the gods, I love her. I miss her now. Her need to fight for her father and her country, to try and prove that truth and love and constancy are worth more than the squalid baseless words of her debased sisters who, even now, are pitched in pointless competition and rending each other and the country into smaller sadder parts. Their selfish greed and false promises will tear Britain apart as they sit upon their thrones and count their gold. Faithless to their father, their husbands, their country - these monsters have destroyed all that has been built. 

I wish Cordelia could have stayed by my side but how can I not support my love in her fight to save her country? I would lose her ten times over to have her stay herself. I must fight for my country too. I fear the same false faces and worthless lies have seeped across the channel and I feel the fear rise in my people. We all have tasks to do to show that we praise moderate  truths over extravagant lies.