It is different in the North. Oh -- would that you could see it! We lived happy lives. [ i lived a happy life, though she would have scarcely admitted so at the time. ] We sang and we danced and we played in the snow. It is the South that is so oppressive. Oppressive in its heat and in its...

[ the explanation is simple. she knows it is. but it's shameful to confess. but perhaps she can fill in the edges of the tale with a simple fact: ] My time in the South was spent in the King's court. And he...my brother and he were at war, you understand.

[ the term political prisoner would be apt here. ]