Written February 24th, 2017. The title, if translated from Filipino, means, "The Princess of the Lying World". An idea I've been tossing around for a couple weeks now, which is of my own retelling of how the colonization of the Philippines went down in Hetalia terms.

She was his daughter, and he was her father.

She was his princesa, the little girl he cared for. He never wanted her to know what lay beyond the seas which encompassed the boundaries of her isles, never wanted her to know what the reasons behind her seemingly unexplainable injuries were when they appeared out of the blue.

"Papá, what is this?" She asked him one day as she ran up to him from within their house near the seashore, away from the pollution of the capital. Away from the hurt, the pain, the cries, the agony of his daughter's people as his guardia civil persecuted those who dared look at them wrong. Little Las Islas Filipinas, or Maria Clara, as he called her, looked up at España with wide, questioning brown eyes.

She looked so young, so innocent. In human years, most would have mistaken her to be only thirteen years old, teetering upon the edge of womanhood, when in fact she had already been under his rule for more than three centuries.

Three centuries of lies. Three centuries of protecting her from the truth which could break her apart.

Spain pulled his lips down into a concerned frown, watching as blood—as scarlet as the flags her people raised in their outbreaks of rebellion—trickled down her wrist. His gaze flickered up to the confusion upon her face, before her features twisted into one of horror.

She screamed.

Maria fell to her knees, wordlessly opening her mouth in silent shrieks, bloodied gashes erupting through the thin material of her baro't saya. Kneeling beside her, he pulled her close, whispering reassurances in her ear. Feeding her lies.

"It will pass." "You will be alright, mi princesa."

He knew the truth. He felt hollow, holding her like this, knowing that he was the cause of her pain. He was the one who placed those injuries upon her fragile flesh. He was the very root of her torment. Spain knew that it was wrong to conceal everything from her. He knew, and it pained him the most.

He was her father, and she was his daughter.

He was the king in their little kingdom of pretending and lies. He never wanted her to know the monster he really was. He wanted to protect her,

But how could he protect her from himself?

x x x

She was no longer a little girl, but a woman.

She was no prinsesa, but a warrior for her people.

She loved her father, that much was true, and she understood why he tried his best to protect her. But protection wasn't enough. Love was never enough of a reason to set aside all the hurt, all the agony her people went through.

Maria had never even known she had a 'son'—her Capital, Manila—until a frustrated Inglaterra threatened to erase the innocent boy's existence right in front of her. She had never known that her people suffered beneath the hands of her father's soldiers—but that would be a lie, wouldn't it?

She had always known, and yet she denied it. She could never accept that her father was the cause, the root of all her people's agony.

Until she saw him die. [1]

She stood upon the battlefield; no longer a child, no longer his princesa. Her right eye had swollen shut, a thin dried line of her blood marring the skin of her chin, dark hair wild and unruly. She grasped her bolo firmly in her hand, brown eyes dark with betrayal and hurt.

Her father, Reyno de España, the Kingdom of Spain, knelt upon one knee, cutlass discarded to the side. He clutched a bleeding arm, looking up at his daughter, before his gaze flickered away to rest upon the tall form of a golden-haired young man who carried a gun effortlessly in his grip.

She felt nothing and everything at once when he opened his mouth and spoke:

"Lo siento, mi princesa. I only wanted to protect you."

"'Protect me'?" Maria asked slowly, and he flinched, drawing a pained hiss from his bloodied lips as the action moved his injured arm more than he should have. "From what? From who? Netherlands? Portugal? England?"

Her father said nothing, yet his green eyes—eyes which she remembered were always shining, alive and bright with joy—conveyed more than he could ever say. She could see the beginnings of a new wave of tears in the corners of the bloodshot oculars, but she paid no heed to the guilty twinge of her heart.

"You could never even protect me from yourself."

"I tried," Spain whispered, "I wanted to tell you the truth, querida, I did. But I didn't want—"

"To let me go." She finished. Her single open eye glinted dangerously, and she marched forward, the crimson skirt of her tattered attire fluttering about her muddied figure as she moved. Her hand tightened its hold upon her bolo, and with one swift motion, she dug it blade-first into the soil, in between the defeated Spaniard and the blond foreigner—Amerika, she knew him as. Inglaterra's most favorite among his colonies, and the one who had hurt him the most.

Now he was her new tormentor—her so-called 'brother', if the Treaty [2] proved anything. The word tasted bitter upon her tongue.

"But you sold me off, anyway. You didn't care what I, nor my people, would think when you signed that Treaty and ceded me to him." Maria gestured to America, who was looking at her with an unreadable expression upon his face, thin-rimmed glasses glinting amidst the fires raging around them.

"I did what I thought was best." Spain replied, his eyes hooded and downcast as his tears fell. "I always wanted what was best for you, mi princesa."

And she smiled. She smiled as her own tears streamed down her dirtied cheeks and fell to the ground. She smiled as America placed a hand on her shoulder.

"We should go," he murmured beneath his breath, and she dipped her head in a slight nod.

In her free hand, she held her crucifix necklace, one of the many things her father had given her.

"Paalam, aking ama."

end

[1] Until she saw him die. - It's a headcanon of mine that Maria Clara dela Cruz—Philippines—once loved Dr. Jose Protacio Rizal Mercado y Alonzo Realonda, or Dr. Jose Rizal, the Filipino national hero even once in her life. He wrote two novels—Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo, which both tell of the story of the main characters Don Juan Crisostomo Ibarra, and his fiancée, Maria Clara delos Santos. Fun fact: I'm currently studying Noli Me Tangere in my Filipino class.

[2] her so-called 'brother', if the Treaty proved anything. - The Treaty mentioned here is the Treaty of Paris in 1898, where the Spanish Empire relinquished its territories (specifically Cuba), and ceded a few of its colonies (Guam, Puerto Rico and the Philippines) to the United States.

Translation Notes:

Princesa; prinsesa - (Spanish; Filipino) "princess". Mi princesa is Spanish for "my princess".

Inglaterra - (Spanish) "England"

Amerika - (Filipino) "America"

"Paalam, aking ama." - (Filipino) "Farewell, my father."