In England, Susan is no queen: she cannot make or dissolve laws, dispense justice or grant mercy, collect or remit taxes, declare war or make peace, sign treaties or raise tariffs; no trappings of power are hers, and instead this world consigns her to play a silly schoolgirl who will grow to be a decorative nonentity, of note only for the children she may have or the background support she may give an enterprise organized and directed by and for the benefit of men.

She refuses to dwell on the loss.

Susan will take the rules England sets down and play by them to win, play so well that no one will outflank her or stand in her path; and once she triumphs she will be a queen once more in truth (though perhaps not in law), and can at last overturn this stifling, tilted board to build something better, truer, deeper in its place.