A long time ago, a Queen ruled over the lands from her wintery castle. She wasn’t a loved queen. The people constantly protested her decisions, rising up to defend their honour. Eventually, her sister was made the official queen, and the old queen had to hide away in the snowy mountains.

She built the castle herself, using old stones from the mountain slopes, and wood from the dying trees. She wasn’t afraid of hard work. Sun up to sun down, she forged for food and fought to survive. The people thought her long dead, frozen in the unforgiving wilderness. But she survived, building herself up until she had reached the tallest point. She spent years building, surviving, until her lips became permanently blue, and her arms bulged with the burdens of heavy lifting.

Every night, she would look across to her sister’s kingdom, and mourn all that she had lost. She was lonely, with only the birds in the air and the hares on the snowy plains to keep her company. Desperately, she wished to be loved again. To be known. And each night that she spent without another human life, was a night that slowly drove her to insanity.

Eventually, ten years after she had first entered the mountains, her eyes were crazed with loneliness. She gathered up her hunting gear, and snuck into her sister’s land just after nightfall. The heat burned her, for it had been a century since she had felt the warm grass tickling her skin, or heard the bubbling creaks and lakes.

And in the night, using all her trades that she had learnt in the wilderness, she snuck into the castle and murdered her sister. The act wasn’t done in secret, as she left one guard as witness, sparring his life only so that he could be an example.

But in the morning, she was driven out of the castle walls, and back into the wilderness she came from. There, she took her own life, fearing the punishment that would surely come her way.

So there, in the snowy wilderness, the fates of those queens were finally sealed.