She lay in the middle of the grand bedroom, drowned in blankets. The doctor held her head in his hands in despair.

Her face was paler than a full moon and her thin lips were quivering as her body made its last attempts to prolong the fragile life it somehow sustained.

I stood in the corner of the room with a small notebook and a pencil chewed beyond recognition in anxious anticipation of my great responsibility.

Suddenly the retching woman clutched at the doctor above her, and at a look from him I took the few furtive steps to take me to her head. I knelt by her side and moved a long strand of red hair from her eyes as I waited for the voice that had inspired thousands to battle.

The alteration was shocking. This voice that had lead thousands to war, now left her lips as a quivering whisper that resembled her brother’s in his last days. “All my possessions for one moment of time.”

And with that her eyes closed for the last time and I wrote out carefully the last words of the most beloved queen of all.