Phillipe was in his chambers, the marital chamber that he shared with his wife, Henriette. It was night, he was in his silk dressing robe, and when he woke up, he didn't feel anything beside him.

"God, Henriette, must you struggle so hard to lay still?" he groaned, mumbling tiredly. He sat up in bed, grabbing a candle from his bedside table, and lighting it. But, he didn't see Henriette.

He saw red. Phillipe saw crimson blood, staining the pillow on Henriette's side of their shared bed. It trickled over the mattress, on the bedsheets. He followed a trail of her blood down the hallway. Before he reached his brother, Louis', bedchamber, he was stopped by one of his brothers — the Kings — advisors.

As the King, his brother had infinite power over France and anyone who inhabited the halls of the castle, anyone in France, any nibbles who resided in Versailles. But he didn't expect to be stopped from entering his brother's room, especially when his wife was missing, with a trail of blood leading to said room.

Phillipe didn't care much for Henriette. She hadn't provided an heir for him, so she has no value as a woman, in his eyes. But he didn't want her dead, that would break the tie that he and his brother had to the English, since Henriette's elder brother, Charles, was the King of England.

Phillipe argued with the advisor for a little, and eventually won. He was the second in line to the throne of France — he always got his way.

Phillipe was informed that Henriette was ill. Gravely ill. He came into his brother's chamber, where Henriette was laying on the King's bed, a doctor beside her. She was incredibly pale, she had been throwing up blood.

One could only imagine she'd been poisoned on her journey back from England, when she went to speak with her brother, acting as the Ambassador to France.

The doctor has told Phillipe, and Louis, that there was nothing she could do. That this would probably be Henriette's last day. Henriette coughed up blood. Phillipe wanted to roll his eyes. The woman would drop dead before he got an heir? At the bare minimum, he would've wanted a daughter. A son, preferably. But no, he couldn't get an heir.

Phillipe went to hold her hand, stroking it. Her fingers were ice cold, he really couldn't care less, it was just a show he had to put on, as her husband. Phillipe's thoughts were plagued with the obvious step of him getting remarried, to help France politically. He could only imagine who his next bride would be.

Henriette tried to hold her husband's hand as tight as she could. Phillipe wasn't looking at her, just at Louis, who was stood opposite Henriette, who was effectively dying in his bed, with no signs of recovery.

"Henriette, dearest, you'll be fine. " Phillipe said, taking a deep breath. God, he thought. No heir. No heir.

Phillipe could probably complain about that to his dying wife, it's not like she had the energy to argue back.