Gloriana is a chronicle set in 1660 in the Isles of Albion, an Antiterra where the Queen, Shakespeare’s Virgin Queen Elizabeth, never died and is celebrating a century on the throne.
| Setting | Albion, 1660; outskirts of London |
| Spanish entry | Gloriana |
Setting
Mundus alter et idem: the other world’s Elizabeth died around 1600 after fifty years; this one reigns on, so Cromwell never ruled, and instead of the Restoration comes an unending golden age.
She is said to be an elf queen, a disguised vampire, a “clean” queen, or simply potion-preserved; all may be true. She is also called Erzsébet (Hercebeta). Her plate shows her seated in a wheel-like ruff, red-haired, pearl-laden, hand on a golden orb and a closed book; only the face is young.
Church and State are joined, and wars are religious (the god of flames, of the holy cross, of the wheel, each claiming to be the only one), over who is a heretic. Fantastic races exist; dragons, unseen for some 250 years, are eastern rumors. There are artillery and fire furnaces; technology and fashion resemble The Three Musketeers. The protagonists are wretched commoners; the rich hold most magic, power and longevity.
London’s third ring (Hyde Park, Paddington), near-countryside, holds the famous gallows and, beside them, the German taverns, the Noviskrug, refuge even of the hunted; one, formerly the Golden Fortune, is now Miseries and Misfortunes. Plague kills half of everyone, leaving a sweetish stench; hence the danse macabre murals.
The arc
- A refusal to toast the centenary, with a broken glass.
- At a weeping boy’s plea, the night rescue of his father, Oliver Cromwell, from Tyburn Hill, the execution ground; flight with him and his son Richard to the hills of Suffolk, beyond Essex, where they received treasure and buried a fallen companion in “the tomb of the unknown child”.
- The abandoned monastery near Cambridge (ghouls, the ghost of Abbot Dr. Butts); a barge down the River Lea; the militia against Lord Rochester; the crypts of Warwick castle and the Kingmaker.
The chronicle was left unfinished.