Princess Izzy and the E Street Shuffle (3 page)

But again, even if you are as much of a fan of Her Highness as I am, you can dwell on these things for only so long.

If you ask me, too much was written about the cloudy morning when she wed the prince, and the blustery afternoon when it became
apparent that she had lost him. To understand Her Royal Highness, you must consider for a moment the early months of her marriage.

There was, of course, the honeymoon. I’m not talking about the deliriously romantic nights the couple spent in the quaint
and picturesque village of Positano, Italy, where, with the help of sunglasses and the unflappable townspeople, the royal
newlyweds roamed the streets freely without interruptions and ate at ordinary tables without reservations.

In those entire two weeks, Isabella was struck only once by her new status. Walking down a steep hill, she caught a glimpse
of a girl in a second-story window. The girl stared quizzically at Isabella, who smiled and waved. A look of wonder and amazement
passed over the girl’s face, and Isabella saw her turn and shout to her family: “Principessa! Principessa!”

But the honeymoon I was talking about was the honeymoon with the press, with the people, with the advisers, with the world.
Everyone wanted her to succeed. Her success would benefit the nation. And everyone was acutely aware of what a difficult transition
she faced.

For though Isabella grew up around the royal family, right in the heart of the castle as often as not, even she did not know
what it meant to be royal. As the prince’s friend, and later as his date, she was often photographed going into various parties
and dinners. As she got older, it was not uncommon, when standing in line at a bakery or theater, to hear a few whispers around
her, as people sought confirmation that the woman ahead of them did look a bit like that woman Prince Raphael was said to
be dating.

But it was only as the rumors of the engagement began mounting and were eventually confirmed that she started being followed
by the photographers and openly gawked at by strangers. For several weeks, even that wasn’t so bad, filled as it was with
optimistic good wishes and refreshing enthusiasm.

It was only in the last few weeks before the wedding that she had any real hint of what would await her. That was when she
began to notice how some of the articles about the wedding would include snide comparisons about how many meals for the homeless
the cake budget would buy. And after a small misstatement regarding a historical fact at the dedication of a war memorial,
and that rather splashy spill she took coming down the castle’s grand staircase at the annual theater festival, a couple of
newspapers even took to calling her “Dizzy Izzy.”

“But I hate being called Izzy,” Isabella complained to friends, rather missing the point.

Even so, things weren’t all bad. At least not compared to how they could have been. For a while, Isabella was even able to
continue meeting her sister and some old primary-school chums for a weekly brunch at a small sidewalk café, which was, fittingly
for the new Princess of Gallagher, located in the Gallagher neighborhood, along the picturesque banks of the Kloster River.
Soon, though, photographers—lured by the image of young women wearing straw hats and sundresses while sitting outside sipping
imported ciders and eating spring rolls with the river traffic rolling behind them—began camping just across the street, snapping
away at every bite.

The castle advisers, a group of stodgy and conservative men, wrung their hands and insisted that Isabella bring her friends
to the castle for lunch. But Isabella ignored them, arguing that she would not live in fear, that the photographers would
get bored eventually, and what would they gain anyway? Proof that she ate?

During one infamous row on the subject, Sir Hubert, the head of castle operations, angrily put his foot down, saying, “I’m
afraid, Your Highness, I must put my foot down. The café luncheons will stop.”

Isabella stared him down with cool disinterest before mustering a rather nonegalitarian response: “That’s interesting. Because
seeing as how I’m the future queen, and you’re nothing but hired help, I’m afraid I must put my foot down and insist the subject
not be raised in my presence again.”

This caused, as you might imagine, quite a stir at the castle. And it speaks volumes that of all the goings-on during what
came to be known as the “Isabella years,” that particular confrontation was the only showdown not widely reported. Apparently,
the people fond of leaking scuttlebutt weren’t so fond of leaking their own comeuppance.

Even the queen, perhaps remembering the bullying she took in her own days as the Princess of Gallagher, was said to have enjoyed
this little exchange, though she naturally feigned shock when Sir Hubert reported it to her.

But Hubert eventually got his way, and the luncheon custom was abandoned after the unfortunate incident in which the princess’s
sister, Lady Fiona, made a rather amusing crack about the prime minister—which, thankfully, the reporters did not overhear—and
Isabella burst into laughter, blowing her water right out of her nose. I’m sorry to put it so bluntly, but there is no discreet
way to get the point across.

Like so many royal crises, this one seems in retrospect a bit, shall I say, overblown. But it is hard for us to imagine what
it was like for someone of Isabella’s upbringing—she always curtsied when appropriate, knew her way around a twenty-seven-piece
place setting, and generally had impeccable manners—to be plastered on the front pages of the tabloids with the headline:
THAR SHE BLOWS, MATEY
.

And while the advisers and the royal family and the commentators all publicly expressed the “Well, it could happen to anyone
and why don’t they leave her alone” sentiment, privately, everyone was rather aghast. For the picture was, and I don’t think
I’m exaggerating, absolutely revolting. Her face was contorted. The spray was oceanic. One of her chums was reeling back as
if she’d been shot, a look of abject horror on her face.

The queen in particular was beside herself over the whole event, imagining the antics at upcoming state dinners as prankish
foreigners tried their best gags in an effort to prod Old Faithful into a repeat performance. “And
do
remind me to give the princess handkerchiefs for Christmas,” the queen sniffed to a lady-in-waiting.

All the tabloids reported that Isabella quipped afterward, “At least they got my good side.” But she didn’t really say that.
That was the line Secrest and Raphael came up with to spread among the “friends” who would leak quotes to the tabloids. The
advisers and Rafie hoped the comment showed a jaunty, self-mocking attitude that would please the people, rather than make
them feel guilty for buying up the tabloids and snickering at the picture. The things Isabella really said were almost too
pathetic to repeat. She cried and carried on and kept telling Raphael that she was a miserable wife and a miserable princess
and why couldn’t they leave her alone for one hour a week and it didn’t matter, she might as well do what the advisers wanted
and give up on the luncheons because her friends would give up on her soon enough if that sort of nonsense continued.

Raphael was sympathetic about the photo. (It could, after all, happen to anyone.) But he was mystified about why she wouldn’t
just have the luncheons at the castle. The prince had only briefly experienced, on his honeymoon and other foreign trips,
the freedom of being able to walk in the street and to browse at shops and eat in restaurants without a fuss. It was, he supposed,
fun in its way. But it didn’t strike him, at least not in those days, as something you needed to do all the time.

Instead of moving the luncheons to the castle, Isabella gave up the ritual altogether, trying in vain to explain to Rafie
that the feel of the luncheons—five independent women carving out precious time to meet, stand in line for fruit plates, and
giggle at one another as they tried to adjust the table umbrella—would be utterly ruined if situated in the Glassidy Gardens
with butlers tending to their needs.

“Explain it to him, Secrest,” she’d say. “We’re modern working girls, aren’t we? You understand.”

And Secrest—who was enough of a modern working girl to know that she would get nowhere by pointing out that Isabella wasn’t,
strictly speaking, working—would demur and flee the room.

In the days that followed the “thar she blows” photo, Raphael stayed up late each night, indulging his interest in the mechanics
of communication by reading a speech therapy text called
Enunciation and Pronunciation: A Layman’s Guide.
Between chapters, he would pause to think about his conversations with Isabella. He decided she needed to take up an interest
herself and stop being so ridiculous.

And Isabella? On most of those nights, she went to bed thinking . . . well, to be honest, Isabella was thinking of Geoffrey.

I
guess I should explain before going further that I believe in princesses. Princes, too, of course, but especially princesses.
A lot of people don’t, you know. Not these days. Not for a long time, really. We look back on the biggest royal weddings of
old, watch the video of the outpouring at King William’s mum’s funeral, and we say those were monarchy’s glory days.

But that’s revisionist history. We forget that there were protesters at those weddings and that people thought Will’s father
should step aside, giving up his place in the line of succession. If European monarchies ever had glorious days, they were
not as recent as that. I’m not sure there was ever a time when the very concept of a monarchy was not ridiculed and mocked—at
least behind the king’s back.

Anyway, it’s not that I believe monarchies are a good way to run a country. I don’t. And it’s not that the wealth of the ruling
classes doesn’t appall me. It does.

But my belief in princesses relates to my belief in good stories. It seems, for whatever reason, that every time you create
a princess, you create a start to a good story. I guess it’s because, not to put too fine a point on it, women’s lives are
more interesting than men’s. Oh sure, if you review historic events, you’ll find that men have, more often than not, played
key roles. But day in and day out, women have been where it’s happening. They’ve been giving birth and nursing the dying and
debating the symbolism of name changes at weddings. Men, meanwhile, have been collecting paychecks and dabbling in office
politics. Ho. Hum.

That is a gross stereotype, but I’m sure you see my point.

When a prince marries a less noble woman, which princes often do, the prince is always baffled that the crowds love the princess
more, line up to see her, give her flowers, gush, and carry on. Meanwhile, the prince himself—the heir to the throne, no less!—is
almost ignored. But it only makes sense. People look at the young princess and wonder, “How will she do? Will she bring out
the good in her husband? Will she bear an heir and raise that child to be good and kind? Will she keep our fashion industry
humming and give us a bit of spring on gray winter days? Will she inspire us?”

For the prince, they say, “Stick with dark suits, stay out of trouble till your dad dies, and please, try not to cheat on
the pretty young thing.”

I’m not saying it’s right. But that’s the way it is.

You may wonder, as you continue through this story, who I am. You may ask how I know the things I know: the secrets of the
castle. You may question my motives for revealing all that I am about to reveal. But I think when the story is done, you will
understand. You will see that everything I have documented here, I know either firsthand or from long, detailed, soul-searching
conversations with others who know it firsthand. But more important, when this story is done, you will understand what exactly
it is that I owe Isabella and what she owes me. You will see why I must write this story while I’m still alive to write it.

For in the end, the story is not completely Isabella’s. Cruel as it is, princesses do belong, a little, to all of us. As a
child, I was raised on fairy tales. Although, even as old as I am, I was raised on the less troubling modern versions, not
the ones in which women are forever getting their feet lopped off and practically killing one another for a shot at the prince.
Despite a fair diet of glass slippers and ornate coaches and magic spells, I didn’t realize how much I loved princesses until
adulthood, when my women friends and I, young and consumed by our careers, would gather for weekends at fancy hotels. We would
splurge on expensive wine and sit in hot tubs and agonize about our futures and our pasts. We were surprised at how often
the conversation would turn to the royal family.

Back then we talked mostly about Queen Regina, whom we had started following in her days as Princess Reggie. Our male friends
assumed that we liked her clothes and her style, and she
was
rather something, and her clothes
did
interest us. Remember when she made red polka dots all the rage? My, my, I had this one dress that . . . Well, I’m getting
off track again. Suffice it to say that the highest compliment a smart suit could draw was the simple “very Reggie.”

But mostly, we were interested in her story. We wondered if she really loved the king. And did it break her heart when Rafie
was a child and would dream of being an astronaut or a firefighter or a software designer or some other decent profession
and she had to murmur softly, “Silly boy, you’ll be king, of course.” Did she mind terribly that even her father’s funeral
was not private? Or did she no longer notice the cameras?

And what of her much younger sister, the glamorous Lady Carissa, whose engagement to a Bisbanian count was called off on the
very eve of the wedding, requiring embarrassing explanations to four kings and five queens, all of whom had traveled to the
Selbar Isles for the occasion? What was the secret that Carissa revealed to her fiancé on the night before her wedding? And
does it haunt the queen to this day? Does it explain why Raphael was never once publicly seen, nor even privately photographed,
with his aunt, who was herself photographed quite a lot for the next several years, until she started putting on a bit of
weight and took to wearing sweatpants in public?