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The Fourth Son

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You have to love the way things can go from bad to worse to utterly impossible.

I’m not one of those people who can write the typical fairy tale “I found a prince to marry, the dream of every young girl.”

No, there has to be a conspiracy theory involving a whole bunch of conspirators that might not be conspirators but an over-active imagination and reading too many thriller books in his spare time.

Why can’t it just be an avalanche and a few missing people?

Perhaps the problems are who the missing people are.  No, not the ordinary people who are not really missing but just thought briefly to be; it’s those other people.

The ones that make the story more compelling, not just an hour and a half of Hallmark movie fun.

So the inevitable happens: the king dies earlier than expected, actually while the prince is on his way home in the “corporate” jet, and a few other problems present themselves and things get intense.

Don’t they always?

Hang on, what happened to Ruth?

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The Fourth Son

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Let’s get a Lear jet and fly out.  That should make an impression.

It does.

The morning our and the evening back

While in the air on the return journey, after a successful day of trying to explain where his country is and what relevance it had, other than that oracle of oracles, the internet said, a problem erupts back home.

It makes the relevance of his return all the more imperative.  That’s just while he’s in the air.  When he lands, the problem becomes a disaster, and by the time he goes to a press conference, the first and only one without much training, he is shoved into the spotlight as a result of an impossible situation.

It is the first of many for the young prince, a principal spokesman for his country alongside the ambassador.

What happened to stargazing on the roof and relaxing with a cold bottle of beer with the most difficult problem; whether hw would be able to see the stars.

It was time to find the witch who had cast a hundred years of bad luck on him.

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The Fourth Son

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If Ruth is going to join the prince, for whom it is decided that he must now go home, his time of freedom is over.

However, it’s not because of the media. It is because the King’s health is failing quicker than expected, and the new king is about to be crowned.

An abdication, a coronation, and a reshuffling of Royal responsibilities.  Our prince had been hoping his escape could have been longer.

Now, there is just one small problem

Ruth’s family. They live out in the Midwest, and a telephone call to say she’s marrying a prince and moving halfway across the world is just not good enough.

Of course, the prince is an old school person. He would like to ask permission from the father to marry the daughter.

A visit he’d arranged.

Another small problem is that mother and daughter are at war.

Well, which mother and daughter are not regularly at loggerheads over everything?

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The Fourth Son

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There are some things troubleshooters can’t easily troubleshoot, and not one of the methods of solving the problem is shooting the problem.

Being an egregious member of the media might warrant such action, but foreign nationals are not immune from prosecution diplomatic immunity or not.

Our runaway prince in hiding could only do so if he remains with a personal body guard, a member of the Royal Guard, Cherise.

She keeps him safe and out of trouble, but this time, the mess is too big to handle using the usual methods.  She allows the two to have their moment in the restaurant, and then it is off to a safe house

There will be no going home because if the media can find him at a restaurant, then home is no longer safe.  The principality had a consulate and a private residence for the king on state visits.

There, Ruth will have to decide if this is the life she wants.  Notoriety, no such thing as privacy, hounded by the media, and no secret left hidden.

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The Fourth Son

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Where does he come from?  Of course, it’s a little principality in Europe where there is scope for so many and now so few.

It’s in the mountains, home to a family and a group of people who had been exiled because of certain beliefs, long since forgotten, bordering one side with Germany and the other France.

Interestingly, indeed, when taking into account world wars and neutrality and its history, it had some fascinating tales which no one has ever been able to verify and never will

What they are will have to wait until you read the story.  But is it incidental to the tale? Yes, but in a way no one could ever imagine.

Oh, and just yo make things interesting. There are two, the other, sharing a border with Italy and Switzerland with a history that is far more sinister and equally as unverifiable.

It was fun creating them.

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The Fourth Son

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So here’s the thing.

Our protagonist’s parents have decided they want him back home, and he’s not playing the game

They talk to some reporters, and a large weekend spread about the royal family is published with photographs.

If he’s not coming back, then everyone should know who he is, and the media will then hound him into returning.

Royal parents are like that.

Of course, there is always one reporter who puts two and two together, one who had no compunction in hounding the victim to the ends of the earth for a story, and one who does.

Confronting him and his girlfriend, in his favourite restaurant, on the day he decided that it was time to make his intentions known.

Even knowing that ousting was going to be sooner rather than later, it’s still a shock, to him and his girlfriend Ruth, who is very dismayed at the braveness of the media on pursuing their pretty.

But the jig is up.  No matter how many denials, the truth is the truth, and now a whole restaurant full of diners is left to wonder.

His charmed life till now is gone.

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The Fourth Son

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It is sometimes quite strange where the ideas for a story come from.

This one started with a man on the roof of an apartment block with a telescope, a place where he can seek refuge from work and people.

Being in New York, of course, made it all the more impossible to get a clear night and a clearer sky, but perhaps it was more about the solitude.

Then I read about the planets lining up, which doesn’t happen very often, and you know the saying, when the planets line up, maybe. .

So, I had my protagonist.

Now, I needed someone to interrupt the solitude and then focus him on the notion that when one door closes, another opens.

Of course the protagonist who is hiding something out of the ordinary, someone with a secret, and someone who has feelings for another who in the greater schene of things in his life, is someone who would not be ‘the right choice’.

Except his position allows him the freedom to choose whom he wants.

A scare finds him beginning to realise that he can not remain behind that veil of anonymity for much longer, and one way or another, it is going to be exposed.

But, by the time he decides to make his feelings known, his secret is no longer a secret.

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The Fourth Son

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This store started out as When The Planets Align.

I had this cute idea forming in Mt head as a short story for the A to Z blog, about a man of Royal blood living anonymously in America, away from the mechanations of a Royal life.

After all, he was the fourth son, and reading and hearing so much about Prince Harry being a ‘spare’, I wondered what it would be like if you were the third spare.

So far down the inheritance ladder that you were basically worthless for anything but donning a suit and smiling.  There was only one king, the eldest son.  Any chance of everyone dying so he could take the throne was unbelievable.

It could never, ever happen.

Could it?

And yes, you can guess where this is going.

Never say never ..