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Briar Rose Quotes

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Briar Rose Quotes

“So it stunned Briar silent when Köning handed her a list that had been decided on by all the vassals, debated over in a prior meeting and compiled so they agreed on her best qualities. Self-assured Thoughtful Passionate Envisions a peaceful future for the empire And the one that set her mind spinning, dazed: Fearless She looked up at the vassals. "Truly?" Köning, already shuffling through a stack of parchment for his next set of notes, half looked at her. "Which one, Your Majesty?" All of them. They saw her this way? They barely knew her. They had only seen her in passing these few weeks, had only interacted with her on the periphery. So were these attributes truly hers, or were they things her vassals hoped she could emulate? Fauna, who hovered just behind Briar's chair, placed a hand on her shoulder. "You have displayed all these traits in your time here, Rose," she whispered softly. "They honor you by recognizing what you are." She used the name that Briar's aunts had called her by. That only Briar's aunts had called her by. Briar Rose had been her full name, but Frieda had thought Briar sounded more interesting, thorny and sharp, and so Briar had acquiesced to being Briar because she had been about six and had wanted so desperately to be interesting. But she realized, hearing Fauna say Rose now, that the split of who she was had happened even earlier than she had realized. As a child, she had been Briar to some and Rose to her aunts and Briar Rose to even more--- Had there ever been a time in her life when she had simply existed? Briar sat down the paper with her best qualities, eyes blurring as she read it over, and over. Were these the traits of Briar? Or of Aurora? Which would best win empress?”

Self DiscoveryLeadership TraitsPrincess AuroraBriar Rose
Book:A Sword In Slumber
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“She was here, fighting to be empress. Facing the ghosts of her past. Yes, she still had moments of doubt and indecision. Yes, she still wrestled with her instincts versus the choices advised. But she was making choices, learning from those choices, and growing. She was taking pieces from each mistake and each horror and all of the people in her inner circle, and she was evolving. She wasn't the old Briar Rose anymore. She hadn't been for a long, long while. Yet neither was she this new Queen Aurora. Perhaps all these labels only hindered her. Perhaps it was far easier than they had all made it out to be. Perhaps she was simply Briar, and what that means could change daily.”

Making ChoicesLearn From Your MistakesPrincess AuroraBriar RoseEvolutionary Potentials
Book:A Sword In Slumber
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“Peasant to princess to queen to empress. To spring from the first to the second was an act of God. To leap all four in a single year--- it was impossible. And yet here she was, living her impossible life, Briar Rose the peasant bard, Aurora the princess, some new furious woman the queen. What version of her would rise up once she became empress? How many different versions of one person could she hold within her body until she broke from the strain?”

Identity CrisisPrincess AuroraIdentity AlterationBriar Rose
Book:A Sword In Slumber
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“She would be crowned empress this morning. She smiled, watching her reflection in the mirror, seeing a glimmer of the peasant bard in the crook of her grin, but the composure of a princess, too, and the stature of a queen, for however short a time she had been each. There was no looming shadow behind her, no waiting other self who might swoop out and consume her. Going forward, she knew she would be a balance of these pieces, somehow, some way. She could be many things all at once.”

Princess AuroraMultifacetedBriar RoseCrowned
Book:A Sword In Slumber
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