Fairy Queen

Scannen0017 — Sketch of the main character, Anna-Marie (2014).

Fairy Queen is an in-progress Ed, Edd n Eddy fanfiction, starring the genderbent Edd and Marie Kanker in a medieval setting.

An old hermit queen wants to redeem herself after living her entire life being the subject of jokes and gossip, but ends up in a chain of dramatic events the moment she shows her face again.

It's a multiple chapter story influenced by medieval fairy tales; and covers or hints at mature subjects considered normal to engage in or write about in the time period. Though the story itself is set in that time period, the language of the writing is kept simple and modern for readers to follow.

The first few chapters were published on June 26th, 2014 at Fanfiction.net. The story is scheduled to end after 34 chapters.

Plot

When 48 year old queen, Anna-Marie, discovers her shameful past and unimpressive reputation are still alive in the minds of her neighbouring kingdoms, she decides to use a standard invitation to a bonding ball (an event where princes and princesses find a partner) as an excuse to show up and brag.

The royalty present don't buy into it, and in addition, Anna-Marie enters a hostage scene directed by a barbaric prince, Larie. After he meets up with her, the stranger demands everyone to respect her and she's not allowed to leave for reasons unknown.
The following parts of the story contains major spoilers, including ones not yet written about. Click "Expand" to read, anyway:

After hours of being a prisoner at the ball, the prince suddenly chooses her to be his wife and takes her back to his kingdom against her will. During a pit stop, the prince attempts to have intercourse with her, but her uneagerness causes him to hurt her in an act of rage. As time passes, Larie tries to be more personal and eventually tells her the reason he chose her.
In Larie's chapter it's revealed he was subjected to harsh combat training and had to kill his own siblings as a final test. When he was instructed to kill and burn down his first village at the age of 6, he came across the burnt pages of a storybook, telling the story of "the Fairy Queen"; described to look identical to Anna-Marie, with a fairly identical backstory. The unusually kind character appealed to him and stuck with him for the following years.
While Anna-Marie doesn't believe she is this character, she does grow fond of Larie and is charmed by the fact he makes her feel special. Larie's angry father, king Bobby, tries to test his devotion to her by attempting to hook him up to prostitutes that same night, but Larie dismisses them and shares the bed with Anna-Marie.
When she's also made up her mind about Larie, the king starts to harass her about her decision to stay and warns her she's making a mistake. She doesn't believe his paranoid claims and perceives them as an attempt to break her and Larie up, just to spite Larie, who he has bad blood with.
At one point king Bobby confesses to be in love with her, but Anna-Marie does not answer to his feelings. When she reveals to Larie she had been talking to his father, Larie kills him the same night.
In Bobby's chapter it is revealed that he came from a large and proud family, but was a slacker who evaded his own training and "education". Because he ran away from home for fear of his life, he was urged to create a powerful heir he could gloat with to his family he had abandoned, which eventually turned out to be Larie. But when king Bobby discovered Larie was getting out of control fast and took over his position as leader of his own kingdom, he made a deal with the West country to deliver his son to a bonding ball and let the female contestants earn his trust and kill him in his own home. When Anna-Marie caught Larie's attention that day, it did not only ruin the plan, but it upset king Bobby, who had fallen for her himself. She reminded him of his true love who passed away years ago.
Even though king Bobby later gave his permission to the West to plan a direct attack on his kingdom after the failure of the bonding ball, when he discovered they were also aiming for Anna-Marie, his last written words to them was that the deal was off and he promised their deaths for attacking her.
12 years later it is revealed that Anna-Marie conceived 5 sons at her old age, introducing Lincoln, Larmar, Laurie, Larry and Larson. They are loud and playful children, but respect their mother. They don't feel the same way about Larie, who also has trouble acting like a proper father. Anna-Marie tries to discover if Larie is happy with his family and is willing to take care of them if she's no longer around, but he evades all conversations about her unavoidable, eventual death.
One day, Lincoln asks her about her "fairy roots" and Ann takes these instances to Larie as if they were a funny story, but also with slight worry Larie isn't being clear enough that the bedtime stories he tells the children are just that.
Lincoln asking his mother these questions angers Larie, but he decides to let it go. On Ann's request, he takes their sons out for a bonding activity, but it ends in disappointment.
Not long afterwards, Anna-Marie discovers that the basement has been turned into an eery place of worship, soaked in blood and long deceased corpses. Adding onto that, she hears concerning sounds coming from another room, making it apparent Larie is harming the children, primarily Lincoln, out of a misguided attempt of breathing new life into her. He thinks she is the real fairy queen and blames her ageing face and "fading power" to the births of their sons.
She accepts Larie has issues that can't be fixed, and that same night, wakes the children and escapes the castle with them. She settles down in a faraway village, but this new life gets violently disturbed when Larie and his soldiers show up to attack the innocent residents.
Upon finding her, Anna-Marie and the children run away again. They purposely look for a cramped hideout to make it seem like they can't possibly be hiding there, but Larie doesn't look around for look and instead adapts the concerning strategy of threatening suicide if she doesn't show herself.
Anna-Marie doesn't move and decides to wait it out, until it becomes apparent it wasn't a bluff. As she hears Larie's gasp of death, she hurries out, just to see him collapse onto the ground.

Characters

Anna-Marie

Anna-Marie is the adult, genderbent version of Edd. This character has her own page, found here.

Anna-Marie is a 48 year old queen who has lived alone ever since her parents passed away when she was 20. She is simply called "the queen" in the first few chapters, until she informally introduces herself to Larie and her name is used.

She is portrayed to be a very unlucky, but kind person, who doesn't receive much respect for what she is and does. Her kingdom, a nameless piece of land called "Green Kingdom" by everybody, only has plant life and no actual people living in it, meaning that Anna-Marie rules over nothing. It's one of the many reasons she is not taken seriously by her surrounding kingdoms, another one being that her parents already had a negative reputation. Anna-Marie was never considered suitable for marriage because of her skinny and "unattractive" body frame, though she also concludes that people might think she's boring.
All of these aspects caused her to get rejected at the bonding balls and the continued rejection caused more shame within her family. Eventually her parents stopped taking her to these events and focused on schooling her.

Because of her parents' education and her solitary life, she lacks certain social skills and mindsets, even though it's not noticeable at first. Anna-Marie's hard training as a child turned her into a people-pleaser and she has the urge to glorify good deeds over the bad ones. Because of this, she's vulnerable to Stockholm syndrome.
While she's aware of the effects of her upbringing and possesses a high level of intelligence, she still has trouble changing her ways and thus is often lost in her thoughts when conflicted about something.

She has been able to distract herself from the loneliness and her life in general by spending her days making technical constructions and performing scientific experiments for fun, but her forced meeting with Larie made her think about what it is she wants in life. She concludes she simply wants someone to accept her.

Larie

Larie is the adult, genderbent version of Marie Kanker. This character has his own page, found here.

Larie is an 18 year old prince from a faraway kingdom, and merely called "the prince" in the first few chapters of the story.

He's the son of a feared king and a dangerous character who should be kept satisfied at all time. He enjoys being a bother to people and keeping them on their toes, but his playful side is easily replaced by his manipulative and violent side whenever the wrong button is pushed. It is revealed that he has a serious mental disorder, inherited from his mother.

He was one of the many children of King Bobby, but the only one who ever survived the training exposed to him when he was a toddler, including the death battle he was forced to have with his, at that moment, two other siblings.

His disorder and unpleasant past cause him to become attached to a fictional character from a storybook he happened to come across as a child, and he sees this character in Anna-Marie. While it seemed like she managed to turn him into a better person over time, he's unable to accept she is not the fairy queen and his unwillingness to accept she's a mortal woman made him entertain all kinds of deranged excuses for it -in need of deranged solutions.

Bobby

Bobby is the genderbent version of Bebe Kanker. This character has his own page, found here.

He is the king of a faraway land. He has the same intimidating appearance as his son, but does not present himself as an entertainer to the crowds. Bobby is loud and not afraid to speak his mind, even to Larie, despite being aware of his son's dangerous nature.

He's a man with many regrets, the biggest one being the lazy demeanour he had as a child, in a family that valued strength. It led to the cruel decision of having multiple offspring, keeping the strongest, and having them fight each other to the death, leaving him with the strongest son to gloat with.
After losing the woman of his dreams, then their child to Larie, he became depressed. He initially thought of killing Larie, but his existence was what he'd been fighting for and ended up winning his parents' much needed favour.

Upon meeting Anna-Marie, he saw his deceased lover in her and attempted to keep her safe from Larie behind the scenes, though this only ended up making both her and Larie suspicious of him. He was eventually killed by Larie.

The story insinuates Bobby gets reborn as a steed, which Anna-Marie ends up purchasing.

Trivia

The story was intended for original characters, but the decision was made to use the genderbent version of Edd and Marie Kanker as to spark interest within the fanbase VampireMeerkat had already accumulated;
- These main characters have adapted some personality traits of the characters, though are noticeably different people.
Larie and Bobby's castle, as described in the story, is based on Damy's house, a Lion King fancharacter.
A queen that was killed in the story was first named "Queen Vivian", but later renamed "Queen Karen".