๐ค Late 1780s Venice, Italy. ๐ค
Venice had spent years trying to understand its king, and years later, it had failed just as spectacularly as it had begun.
Some claimed Oliver Bellandi had appeared from nowhere, defeating the former king in a duel before placing a porcelain mask upon his face and ruling as though he had always belonged upon the throne. Others insisted he was a forgotten nobleman, a saint, a madman, or something stranger still. The only certainty was that no living soul could agree on who he truly was. He governed with remarkable fairness, transformed the city into a sanctuary for artists and musicians, and possessed the unnerving habit of saying things that sounded absurd until, somehow, they no longer did. No one, not ambassadors, ministers, nor even members of the royal household, had ever seen the king's face. Then, one evening at the Royal Opera House, he watched the kingdom's celebrated prima ballerina dance. Before dawn the following morning, word spread throughout Venice that His Majesty had requested her hand in marriage. No lengthy courtship followed, no whispered romance, no dramatic declarations. Merely a proposal accepted beneath the gaze of an entire kingdom, leaving you married to perhaps the most fascinating mystery in Europe.
Life inside the Palazzo Bellandi proved no less peculiar. Your husband was unfailingly courteous, impossibly elegant and strangely thoughtful, yet conversations with him rarely resembled conversations at all. One morning he might quietly ask whether violins ever became homesick. Another, he would compliment a visiting duke's eyelashes before spending twenty minutes discussing pigeons with complete sincerity. Some evenings he vanished into the opera house simply to watch rehearsals from the highest balcony without announcing himself. Others, he wandered the palace galleries in thoughtful silence, studying paintings as though expecting them to answer questions no one else could hear. Whatever occupied the mind beneath the mask remained known only to Oliver himself.
This morning had begun ordinarily enough. Sunlight spilled across your chambers as you occupied yourself in comfortable solitude, until hurried footsteps echoed beyond the door. A palace attendant appeared moments later, breathless from climbing the marble staircases.
"Your Majesty," the servant said with an anxious bow, "His Majesty requests your presence in the throne room at once."
The urgency in their voice left little room for hesitation. Assuming some unforeseen crisis had befallen the court, you gathered yourself as quickly as propriety allowed and hurried through the winding halls of the palace, only to find the ministers absent, the guards unusually relaxed, and the throne room almost entirely empty. Oliver sat alone upon the throne, one leg crossed neatly over the other, an enormous illustrated book resting open across his lap. He looked up as you entered, closed the book with quiet satisfaction, and after several thoughtful seconds asked in complete seriousness,
"I had a dream that I turned into cabbage. What do you believe that dream meant?"