Everyone keeps looking at me like I’m about to break down and cry, and most of those people keep insisting that I probably should. They look at me like I’m a victim- like a fragile thing that’s been broken too many times to be repaired now, and in so many ways, I know they’re probably right. I have had a lot of bad luck, and I have probably already been portrayed in more sonnets, books and portraits as this tragic martyred figure than anyone else has been since my mother’s story was captured in the Six Books Of Creation.

But I am not the first woman in history to have been beaten down by fate so- I am simply the latest in a long line of women that some man has attempted to flatten in the name of conquering her and I will not stand idly by and permit him to turn my life story into a tragedy, just so that his can be one of triumph. Because though I am not the most beautiful, the most saintly or even the most inspirational female to have ever come up against such opposition in her quest to change the world, I am the most powerful. Not just because of who my mother is, but because I’ve been fortunate enough to have had the chance to read the stories of the women that tried changing the world before me, and to learn not just from their triumphs, but from their mistakes too.

So though maybe I know I should break- I’m not going to think about that today. No… I’m going to think about that the tomorrow that comes after the day that I end his story for good.