//------------------------------// // The Effort // Story: What’s a King Without a Queen? // by theOwtcast //------------------------------// Hours later, I lay slumped on the floor of my bedchamber, discouraged, hopeless and alone, drained by crying out the pain left in the wake of Pharynx’s words. To see him so coldly insensitive to the feelings of others no longer surprised me, not that it had ever really surprised me at all; he was a soldier to the core, the Ultimate Soldier if there had ever been any, and such a trait probably helped him excel at his duty. But to expect me to be so coldly insensitive to the needs and feelings of both others and myself? He should know better by now; had I had the slightest sliver of ability to do that at any point in my life, I wouldn’t be where I was now! I wouldn’t be me! Was this another of his military traits, one that demanded the same heartless efficiency from his subordinates that he’d expect from himself? One would argue that a soldier was supposed to expect such behavior from his or her commanding officers; that such a behavior was acceptable, necessary even, as its purpose was to wipe out all weaknesses that could compromise the army’s invincibility and to prepare the soldiers for the worst of the worst, to help them face the grim challenges and brave the unavoidable consequences of the carnage of war. But did he really need to force the same approach on me? We both wanted the best for the hive and he knew it! But he was right. It hurt to admit it, but he was right. The one thing he’d never have to tell me was that a king’s first duty was to serve his subjects, to ensure their well-being to the best of his ability. By any means necessary, he’d probably add. To him, that would probably mean allowing the army to go all out when defending the hive, and what was pretty much how it had been in the old days. But now that changelings had become more than mindless warrior-slaves to a power-hungry tyrant, the ‘any means necessary’ had to mean more than unlimited brute force; and if a king’s first duty was to ensure the well-being of his subjects… perhaps that meant he had to ignore his own needs for the sake of the kingdom. Pharynx was right. As much as it hurt to admit it, he was right about this. I had to provide the hive with an heir to pass the torch to if I weren’t to carry that torch forever! I had to ignore my flaws for this; I had to force myself to get past the unfairness of having no romantic flavor to present to my future wife and no knowledge of how to compensate for that flaw, whoever she was and no matter how much it would pain her, and I had to grit my teeth and do what needed to be done if I was to have any nymphs! For the sake of the hive, I had to! But how? It felt so daunting, so impossible! How?! Harmony help me… Well, that could have gone better. I dragged myself into my bedchamber and slumped onto the ground, not caring to find a soft surface to land onto. How long had it been now that I’d been at this? Two months? Two and a half? Three? One would have thought I’d have had plenty of time and opportunity by now to at least grasp the basics of courtship, but no! I couldn’t even feign romantic interest regardless of the lack of the matching flavor of my aura, let alone keep a date from plummeting into disaster territory! And the harder I tried, the worse it became! Being completely honest about my motives had proven to be an even worse idea than lying and pretending, and a part of me wondered what a certain apple farmer from Ponyville would have to say about it. Probably nothing good… Either way, I was at an impasse. Finding a date hadn’t been so hard at first, but it had taken less than a week for the word of my pitiable romantic attempts to spread among the eligible females - and the non-eligible ones, probably - and most of them were reluctant to even trot close to me in the hallways, and conversations with the few drones who still hadn’t entirely backed off were getting incredibly awkward and strained no matter what they were about. Even the male drones had started eyeing me weird! No wonder if they’d heard the experiences of their sisters and daughters… I couldn’t blame them - I’d refuse to date me at this point, really - but the fact remained that I still hadn’t found myself a wife and was running out of options! Expanding the pool of candidates onto male drones or non-changelings wasn’t an option unless someone created a spell that would make it possible for same-sex or interspecies couples to have biological offspring, but even with that, assuming I somehow managed to catch someone’s interest, there was no telling whether or not the traditional rules would permit the resulting children to inherit the throne and whether or not their supposed future subjects would accept such a leader! For the millionth time in the past couple of months, I wished I didn’t have to follow a set of rules. Why couldn’t I adopt a nymph who could succeed me at the throne? Why couldn’t I figure out this whole romance thing and become capable of it? Why hadn’t someling else become the king or queen, someling who didn’t have this problem… this fault? My gaze wandered aimlessly around the bedchamber and fell onto a picture frame. I got up wearily and approached it. The photo inside showed Spike and our Ponyville friends, hanging out on a meadow near Twilight’s School of Friendship without a care in the world. They probably hadn’t had a care in the world; they’d beaten every challenge and resolved every crisis that life threw at them, and now, they were pursuing a goal of spreading their message and sharing their experiences with anyone who wanted to learn the ways of friendship and harmony! Would any of them be able to teach me a thing or two? I decided to find out.