"The executioner was drunk. I paid him with the only jewelry...

"The executioner was drunk. I paid him with the only jewelry they let me keep. Mother’s necklace. His axe was…imprecise. The first blow cracked the bones in my left shoulder. The white dress I wore soaked red with my blood. With each missed killing stroke, the crowd cheered and laughed. For them it was good sport. […] For me, it was a pain and terror so deep that I lost everything I was. To kneel, bound at the hands, in my befouled undergarments, and know the butcher wasn’t finished. […] The child I was born, for all the things she had done…she left me as I waited to die. And I found the banshee."

- Jeannette, Secret Six Vol.3 #12 

This speech haunted me for a long time…it’s based on some actual beheadings of the aristocracy.