The Woman Wearing the Queenly Mask/Quotes
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"I must hold the country and the soil and for this all my armies, all the Hungarians,shall die before I surrender an inch of it...You will say that I am cruel; that is true. But I know that all the cruelties I commit today to hold the country I shall one day be in a position to repay a hundred full, and this I shall do. But for the present I close my heart to pity, I rely on you..."
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"I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman. But I have the heart and stomach of a King, and a King of England too and I think foul scorn that Parma or Spain or any prince of Europe should dare to invade the borders of my realm."
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Years of discipline and sorrow erupted like a volcano. Shakuntala wept, and wept, and wept, laughing all the while. Not the laughs of gaiety these, or even happiness. They were the deep belly-emptying, heaving laughs of a girl finally able-after all the years she had swallowed duty, never once complaining of it's bitter taste-to wallow in the simple joys and desires of any woman.
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Humans were mind-blind. They could not taste as he tasted, and so perhaps, they did not suspect how deeply wounded their "princess" was. It even made sense, in a way, for the other things he tasted within that mind glow included pride, a sense of duty, a refusal to whimper or plead or beg, and an iron-boned determination to never, ever show weakness.
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"A woman in my place has two faces, one for the world and one which she wears in private. With you I'll be only Sybilla. Tiberias thinks me unpredictable; I am unpredictable."
—Sybilla, Kingdom of Heaven
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The Empress Theodora would never wail. Like any woman, she could have her heart broken. But it was a small, tough, stony heart. It's wounds healed slowly, and simply added more scar tissue.
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Lessa realized that she had at last accepted her role: as Weyrwoman and as mate, to help F'lar shape men and events for many Turns to come-to secure Pern against the Threads.
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