The girl did not guess she made her bed with a snake and was never ready to judge another so harshly and so quickly. He was a master of his craft, a holder of a gilded tongue that spun lies better than it spun truths, a creature of secrets and shadows and a world that the queen barely knew existed, let alone had knowledge of. As for him calling her queen or not... she would never demand it, but she was almost as vain a creature as she was stupid, and so she smiled stupidly as he called her by her title, nodding kindly in acknowledgment or a mild form of preening, it was hard to tell.

But as she chatters on, happy enough to have found someone that will let her talk to her heart's content, she watches him lower his head and ponder the history that the unicorns had created. Of course, the Qian had created some of that history, wresting the Edge from the hands of Mauja and his kin, but that had been a righteous move, a war that had been necessary for right to overcome wrong, for good to prevail against evil, for peace to topple the throne of hatred. Good was meant to win, was it not?

But the question the golden asked then was... curious, at best. She knew the question well enough- what did she know about what happened? But she had never heard it worded quite so elegantly before. What version did she know. For, though she had (obviously) never pondered it before, it occurred to her now that every horse most have their own version of history, their own idea of what exactly had happened. She would tell hers, willingly enough. While she pulled the memory to her forefront, ringing her brain to find the small details that were so often lost with time, the golden continued, giving her a lesson that sounded so much like the type of thing Eva would say to her.

When he had finished with his words, the queen closed her eyes for a moment, the smile that had otherwise been resting upon her face fading to a line, though not quite a frown. “I had only just entered Helovia and jointed the Edge,” she began, opening her eyes to watch him as she told her story. “I thought it was a knight's tournament, you see,” a chuckle given, for her stupidity. “I was so wrong. Farenjer, a unicorn of the Basin, attacked me, though we met later and it turns out he's actually a rather nice unicorn. A crafter... I was a crafter too. We bonded.” Disjointed stories. A specialty of the queen. “Anyways, I guess Illynx and Deimos had their legions attack us,” words specially chosen to try (and probably fail) to appease Thranduil and Eva's scolding voices, “because they were trying to take the Edge over just because we were mostly equines. Which, I don't really get, because I we weren't causing them any trouble but...” she sighed dramatically, but the past was the past and complaining wouldn't change it.

As for Illynx... “I kind of already knew Illynx had this thing where she didn't like horses. You see, even earlier than the invasion, I was just out having some fun on a frozen river when Illynx attacked me and a friend. But anyways, I went sent on a quest by a god to talk to a racist unicorn, so I went to find her.” She paused a moment, to roll her mind back to what she had taken from her conversation with the Gilded Blade. “She claimed that the unicorns were first on the earth, that the pegasi and equines were... blights. Illynx's word, not hers. “She claimed that, for now, she only wanted to contain 'her kind' to the Basin, to prevent them from mingling with equines and pegasi, to purify the land by remaining among themselves...”

Of course, until now, the queen had never considered a connection between Illynx's war and her most recent words. What had changed her mind between then and now? She had not asked, and it was too late now. Frowning for not noticing it earlier, the queen added on, “She claims I am welcome there any time, she tried to negotiate an alliance between the Edge and the Basin, and yet...” The queen sighed. Though she did not know she was being taken, used for information, Thranduil had given her something anyways- a thought she had never had before.

Surely having chattered enough, she decided it was time she hear what the golden stallion had meant to explain. “What is your version of all this then, my friend?”