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This is our discussion of the short story....

"Strife Lingers in Memory" by Carrie Vaughn

From the anthology Epic: Legends of Fantasy edited by John Joseph Adams. See the Epic: Legends of Fantasy anthology discussion hub for more info on the anthology and pointers to discussion of its other stories.

"Strife Lingers in Memory" was originally printed in Realms of fantasy & reprinted in The Mammoth Book of Warriors and Wizardry & Vaughn's Amaryllis and Other Stories. It can be read on-line at .

I expected more from this story and it ended really abruptly.
Some interesting parts would be when the queen thought about war and its aftermath and what's more important/significant/longlasting. It kept me thinking about PTSD and stuff but then story suddenly ended, fade to black style.

This is her third story I read, one of them I really loved: Raisa Stepanova from Dangerous Women

I generally like Carrie Vaughn's short stories (not so much a fan of the urban fantasy series she's best known for.)

Silvana wrote: "It kept me thinking about PTSD and stuff but then story suddenly ended, fade to black style.. ..."

I think what Vaughn was going for was that PTSD was contagious, and the loyal wife sort of catches it from years of dealing with her husband's late-night bouts (as well as the need to keep it secret.) It's definitely true that once Vaughn establishes the husband's PTSD and how wife copes with it, she does a very fast forward through the years, as the king gets better. I think she's trying to explain that being a long-term caregiver is stressful, too.

I liked a couple of the comments in the narration:

"Perhaps that was why the heroes in the stories were almost always orphans."

"Our story ended but our lives didn't."

yeah, the bits about hero and his journey's not ending and he continued to struggle made me think. this is one of those "what happened next off screen after your hero won" and it is often not happy ever after, not entirely.