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Juliette Commagere – Queens Die Proudly

In some alternate universe, where kings and queens still reign and compete with each other over their support of the arts, Juliette Commagere is a court musician, on the payroll of an up and coming king and queen. She’s a bit eccentric, fiddling with the knobs on her synthesizer, but no one minds. She’s not even really dressed well; no colorful dresses like the other musicians. But she’s allowed to push the boundaries a bit, because when fingers meet keys and the vocal chords are engaged, the music is intense enough to be almost spiritual. Some songs carry the sparseness of winter on the melody, the sound of snow whisked off a tree branch by a whispering wind. Others are exhultations about being alive. Those are the ones that swell the hearts of listeners.

But like any good musician, she’s troubled. She’s always been a partisan, an admirer of the former queen (recently deposed in a most gruesome and humiliating execution). So she crafts a song about strength in the face of defeat, the triumph of will when confronted with pure lust for greed. She sings about being terrorized. About torture. About holding on. And the court listens on in rapt attention, riding the current, as the music dies, and she, unhesitantly, belts out her defiance.

And history tells us what happens next; benefactors don’t like to be mocked.  But that one moment of defiance was glorious, inspiring, the portent of martyrdom.