…

The Fourth Son

…

Facing the public was not going to be easy.

For someone who had not had to be the public face of anything and who was living in an environment where in America only two people knew who he was, stepping out of the plane at the small international airport, he is staggered to discover half the principality has turned out to see him.

The fear he feels extends to whether it is going to be a problem for Ruth.

He need not have worried.  She is far more experienced in fronting up to, sometimes hostile, crowds, having worked for an accounting firm that specialised in takeovers, mergers, and bankruptcy.

A crowd of adoring people is grist to the mill for her.

Of course, meeting people who are pleased to see you is one thing, but there’s also the drive to the castle and the people who might not want to see you or make you welcome.

Our new king is not so sure about what his family’s reaction might be, and he was definitely very scared of what his mother was going to do or say.

…

The Fourth Son

…

Perhaps it should be a time to reflect on what has just happened to him; after all, it is an eight-hour fight across the Atlantic, and there’s a lot of water under them proverbially and in reality.

Why did he leave his country and go and live in New York?

It could be said that he was the youngest of the boys and that there was never any possibility he would become the King.  Why stay home and have your three older brothers make your life hell just because they could?

Perhaps.

But explain this: why did he not go home every year, or at any chance he had?  Wouldn’t he get homesick?

And by the time you get to the end of the list of questions and that part of the story you will find out.

There are very valid reasons for his absence, but it was not just to get away.  He spent the last fifteen years studying, learning, and observing, with a view that one day he would return with all this accumulated knowledge. Preferably when his father had passed away.

It was one of those relationships, he hated him and yet he loved him and would mourn his loss.

And on the other hand, would be extremely grateful he didn’t have to see him.

That would have been an interesting moment in time.

…

The Fourth Son

…

All the while we are talking about the nuts and bolts of the story, words are being put on paper more or less at the rate of 1,666 a day.

Of course, chapters don’t magically write themselves into 1,666 words; I wish they did.

That means after 10 days, we should be a third of the way through the story, and we almost are.

I am having fun imagining what it would be like to live in a draughty and cold castle, not for the first time, I have been here before, and what it’s like for the prince who tried so hard to escape the inevitability of his life.

Perhaps a few banquets with dancing might make him see differently.

Maybe waiting for his mother to return to sanity after she couldn’t cope after losing her husband.

Or perhaps discover things about his mother that he would prefer not to know.

Perhaps discovering how far his older brother was going to throw his country under the bus because he didn’t care, might motivate him to institute a few changes.

The question is, can he? 

…

The Fourth Son

…

It’s a question I have to ask.  Why is there a three-star Michelin chef on the Royal Jet?

Are you getting the vibe that this Royal family are rich beyond avarice, their people are downtrodden, and the monarchy should be irrelevant?

Yes, all good topics, and they are to be covered in today’s lesson on the monarchy and the people.

The principality has been around for 800 years, and it is actually the 800th-anniversary celebrations this year.

Once, the whole country was owned by the king and staunchly defended by his army.  Gradually, over time, the need to defend the place was replaced by diplomacy. People were gradually allowed to have their own land, houses, and businesses.

Cue today, and everyone is happy.

The king is largely a figurehead.  The people are represented by a parliament that makes laws and decisions that reflect the will of the prople, the church is the church and not the inquisition,

Nobody wants to invade them because they have nothing of value unless you call their tourist industry and souvenirs worth usurping.  Of course, there are treaties with France and Germany, which guarantees them protection, but there are no enemies.

Or is there?

…

The Fourth Son

…

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?

…

The Fourth Son

…

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.

…

The Fourth Son

…

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?

…

The Fourth Son

…

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.

…

The Fourth Son

…

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.

…

The Fourth Son

…

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.