The Petulant King
A difficult labor—30 hours!—and someone has to make the terrible decision. Right there in a Buckingham Palace bedroom, with mother and child etherized upon the table, deft hands make the cut, the unwilling baby is tugged out—and it’s done.
A boy! Clever girl.
To sleep, to sleep, to sleep.
Posted on the gates of the palace, a handwritten announcement:
Her Royal Highness the Princess Elizabeth Duchess of Edinburgh was safely delivered of a Prince at 9.14 o’clock this evening. Her Royal Highness and the infant Prince are both well.
They are both children of empire, princess and prince, though as they lie there recovering, that empire is receding, the long, melancholy withdrawing roar audible even above the cheers of the crowds outside the palace.
They have been chosen for the same fate, but only one at a time can live it out. This will at once draw them together and complicate what will be a strange and mutually disappointing relationship. In just three years, Elizabeth will become the 25-year-old Queen of the United Kingdom, but Charles won’t be King until he’s 73. What must it be like to watch yourself fade into a middle-aged man and then an old one, but still your life’s work has not begun? He is only hours old, and at the very
