Two matching black and grey crown tattoos with script lettering, reading One King and One Queen, on the inner forearms of two people.

Matching King and Queen crown tattoos

Lettering · Forearm · Black and grey · Photo

Two forearms show a pair of matching crown tattoos, each with the script words One King and One Queen beneath. The crowns are shaded in grey with dark outlines and highlights, and the lettering has bold black outlines. The ink is entirely black and grey, and the two designs sit side by side in a close, centred composition.

Lettering Forearm Crown Script King Queen Couple Matching

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ink ran short two days out of Montevideo, so Hanne mixed the last grey with lamp soot and a splash of ship's rum and told you to stop flinching. You had asked her for a crown. She asked whether you wanted one or two, and you looked across the mess table at Joss, who was pretending to read a tide chart upside down.

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She worked the first crown on your forearm with a sewing needle bound in thread, shading the pearls one at a time while the swell lifted the enamel cups off their hooks. Beneath it she lettered the words in the looping hand she had learned at a convent school in Antwerp: One King. Joss held out his own arm and insisted the Queen go on the left, because the left was nearer the heart. Hanne said that was the sort of nonsense spoken by men who had never had a heart broken on a dock.

For three weeks the ink wept and scabbed, and you kept your sleeve rolled down through the Channel fog so the mate would not ask questions. Joss kept his sleeve up, and whenever the second mate came near he would pull the cuff back as if showing off a bruise. The crowns went grey and then silver under the salt, the way old pewter does.

In Liverpool the customs man squinted at your wrist and asked what it meant. You told him it was a joke Joss had never once won. Across the quay, Joss was lifting a crate of tinned peaches onto a lorry, and when he turned his arm to wipe his brow, the Queen caught the wet light and winked at you.