Royally Screwed
an excerpt

Royal Palace
January 5, this year
I'd like to tell you that I was there for the conversation, but at the time my parent's advisors felt it was best that I be kept unaware. I would find out about it soon enough.
“What do you mean we're broke?” my father demanded.
“Your Highness, please understand, this day has been coming for years. The most recent decline in shoe exports, the worldwide shortage of hops that's tripled our beer prices, it's left us without a sustainable tax base to support your family's lifestyle.”
“What are you saying?” my mother asked. I love my mother. I do. But no doubt she was wearing one of her Gucci gowns that cost more than some of her subjects made in six months. I can see her playing with the ten carat ruby ring she wore on her right hand, a present to herself after a tabloid said something unkind about her most recent hair style.
“I'm saying,” the Royal Accountant continued, “that unless the Royal Family's expenditures decline, substantially, or we find a new source of income, the Parliament will have no choice but to cut your stipend.”
“But the people expect us to provide our current level of grandeur,” Father said. “It allows them to feel pride. Our presence provides a certain amount of stability. Honor!”
“Yes, Highness, but your subjects are about to find themselves in an economic recession, with a government that can no longer afford to support basic services. The Parliament will have to cut costs, and they will have no option but to reduce funding to the Royal Family.”
“But that's...that's...not fair!” Mother cried.
“Fair or not, it is inevitable.”
“How dare you come into our home and tell us what we can and cannot do! Out! Get out!”
I missed this little tirade, though I'd seen its twin on many occasions. No, I was upstairs, in my quarters, trying on a gown for the next party we were throwing. My network of spies, or servants as my family refers to them, told me about all this much later. Too late, as it turned out.
******
My name is Dana Ingrid Dewitt, heir to the throne of Fordlandia. I've been a princess my entire life. I've known nothing else. Not that I didn't dream of other options for my future. Or other places. It wasn't what you'd call a normal childhood. When I told my mother I wanted to be a professional assassin, she'd laughed and hired the best ballet instructor in Europe to come and train me. When I was twelve and somewhat awkward and covered in acne, they sent me to a special clinic in Switzerland.
“Princesses do not blemish,” my mother told me.
“Then what are these?” I asked. I pointed to the cluster of white heads on the tip of my nose.
“A temporary condition.”
I traveled the world. Under armed guard. I had a tutor who taught me languages, etiquette, history, etiquette, art, science, and etiquette. But my heart was never in it. Ballet lessons taught me that much. Six months of leg cramps and falling down only proved I wasn't the reincarnation of Grace Kelly. Come to think of it, I don't believe I actually enjoyed ballet. Not even watching it on television. I seem to remember my mother telling me it was something I could do, then she did what she always does: she made it happen.
I always wanted to be a fireman. Or a police officer. A rock climber. That last one was never going to happen. Coordination was something that centuries of intermarriage had weeded from our gene pool. The same was true for skin pigmentation and hair color. In a few more generations, we'd be albinos. Short, flat chested, borderline alcoholic albinos with really good taste in shoes.
But change was coming. An influx of new genes was just what the Royal Geneticist ordered. Or he would have if we had one. I was of age, and there were certain expectations involved. It's funny how in one of the few non-tomboy moments of my childhood I had an epiphany. I was a princess. I didn't have to imagine it. It was all too real. I had, within my power, the ability to live out my own fairy tale. I could find a prince to ride in on his white horse and whisk me into his arms. He'd look into my pale blue eyes and whisper those magical words, “You wanna get a pizza?”
Did I mention that I was ten at the time and had just discovered boys?
We'd been on a goodwill tour to England. We were at yet another ball, filled with graduates of the same etiquette program I'd been forced through since the day I was able to say “salad fork.” I stood next to my parents in a receiving line, pumping the occasional fist and getting my cheeks pinched by someone's creepy uncle who was still on the guest list even though his own family tried to have him committed. A pair of German bankers were chatting my parents up, and I did what I always did at moments like this: I wandered off into my own mind. It was there that I got to play cowboy or lion tamer or bartender, and no one could tell me I was slouching or that it was unladylike to belch.
The I saw him. Red hair. Goofy smile. Tall (compared to me). Dashing. And, like me, stuck in a world of someone else's choosing, stapled to the wall of family duty and national honor that had plagued my existence. A comrade in arms.
And he was cute.
Prince Harry was older. Not by much, but it was enough. It took me the rest of the evening to muster the courage to speak to him. He was polite, humoring the little girl with the funny accent that wanted to go out into one of the many rose gardens and build a fort. I think I called it a fort. I may have called it a summer cottage by the sea with ponies and a picket fence and a football pitch. I was a little nervous. He declined. He was very sweet about it, and since then he's been nothing but nice to me. But at the time, I was devastated.
Later my father told me Prince Harry was out of the question.
“He's in line for his own throne. Just like you.” I cried. My father, not the most emotional of men, displayed a rare smile for his only child and patted me on the head before wandering off in search of my nanny.