The chapter opens with America asking Silvia for private lessons.  Of course, it marries that request with a backhanded insult about how Silvia is so vain that she’d jump at the chance to have someone “hang on her every word.”  Because the only way some other woman can be better than America is if she’s not.

Oh, and the cherry on the cake is that she doesn’t actually care about these lessons.  She just thinks that protocol is so paint-by-the-numbers that it’ll be a nice bit of no-thinky, since all her other thinky things are making her brain hurt.

I really don’t want a queen who thinks that “the steps for proposing a law” are a no-thinky thing.  Heck, I don’t even want one who thinks manners are like that.  Each situation is different, and adhering to a strict, unbending set of rules is how you insult everyone by accident. 

It’s like Picaso.  He learned the basics and how to follow the rules of painting, of course.  And then once he got really good at that, he said “Snazzy, time to put some creativity into it.”  She needs to know these basics, yes.  But she’s going to be terrible if that’s as far as her thought process goes.

Silvia is overjoyed at the request, probably because she can’t read America’s thoughts.

“Oh, this will be wonderful.  Finally, one of you understands how important this is!”

Doesn’t sound much like someone who just wants attention.  Add “bad judge of character” to the list of reasons America shouldn’t rule.

In fact, can we just match up Silvia and Celeste and have the book be about them?

So America studies, and then some undetermined amount of time later, they have another group class.  Silvia mentions that the queen needs to be in charge of some sort of project/committee, and the current queen started up a program for “training families to take care of the mentally and physically infirmed members” so that said members wouldn’t be dumped on the streets.  Apparently a program for assisted living was too much for her to figure out.

It’s hard to tell really what’s going on here, because we have exactly two pieces of information when it comes to persons with disabilities: the families need training, and a bunch of disabled people are Eights and don’t work.  We don’t know how severe these people are, if it includes all disabled people, if for instance a blind person isn’t allowed to teach a classroom, if there’s any hospitals or services for these people.  And since we don’t know anything else about the subject, all we can go off of is what we’re told.  What we’re told paints a pretty bleak picture: if you’re any kind of disabled, you can’t work and you can only be a financial and emotional drain on your family.

There is a whole range of disabilities, from people who can function and live independently to those who need every little thing done for them.  THE VAST MAJORITY OF THIS SPECTRUM IS ABLE TO CONTRIBUTE TO SOCIETY.  There is, in fact, a very small slice of that group that can’t do anything, but isn’t so bad that they need constant professional help.  If the queen really is concerned with keeping people from becoming homeless Eights, then she could have set up assisted living services for the HUGE number of disabled people who are fully capable of holding down steady jobs and just need a little help managing their independence.  Having someone stop by once a day to make sure bills are paid and food is cooked.  Training someone to work with a service animal or other adjustments so they can live independently after that.  Group homes where they get more consistent supervision but they’re not locked inside and kept from working.  Just like there’s a range of disabilities, there’s a range of ways to help each person.

And if someone really does need constant help, don’t put that off on a family that, most likely, has to work 16 hour days just to make ends meet.  I mean, I’m kind of afraid of what a mental institution would be like in this world, but can it be any worse than just throwing them out on the streets?

But enough of that self-centered assholery, back to the story.  The girls all have two weeks to come up with a similar project and a plan for how to enact it.  Well, that shouldn’t take too long.  Project Leave Everyone At Home probably took all of five seconds to hammer out.

Celeste speaks up to comment that the project is useless, because apparently she doesn’t want to do any social improvement projects as a queen.    America realizes that she’d be a better queen than Celeste, and I think it’s supposed to be some sort of self-esteem-gaining moment, but a tree would be a better queen than Celeste.

America gets excited about the project and showing off her chops for all of a paragraph, then one time-skip later, realizes she can’t think of anything.  Despite all the shit she’s seen and complained about, she can’t think of one solitary thing that might be improved in her society.  But Kriss has her idea and is plugging away at it, so America is jealous. 

Halfway through her two-week allotment, she still doesn’t have anything, and she tells Maxon when he comes to visit her.  She lists off all sorts of problems but says she has no solutions for any of them.  As she lists off all these terrible parts of being poor, I…have nothing.  I don’t know what’s keeping these problems in place.  I don’t know if people are being paid little because they suck and need job training, or if it’s because there’s a wage-cap.  I don’t know if she could fix it with a social program or if they need administrative changes.  We simply don’t know enough about the world to make sense of it.  And, well, given what we know of America’s ability to think and observe…I’m not really willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.

Maxon shrugs all that off and wants to talk about her instead. He wants to know why she didn’t come running back into his arms after seeing that Marlee was “okay.”  Completely missing the point that being whipped and demoted and forced to change identities is not exactly okay.  America misses that point, too, because all she talks about is how unsure she is about the position of princess.  And it’s entirely because she’s poor.  Or used to be.

Elise might have been a Four, but her family is was different from most Fours.  They own so much, I’m surprised they haven’t bought their way up yet.

So, really, it seems like all those poor Sevens could benefit from someone introducing the idea of unions.  Or just giving out classes on contract negotiation.  We still have absolutely no indication that the poverty is anything less than people saying “nope, I don’t wanna pay you.”

Maxon says they’re getting down to the end, and he doesn’t want to keep her around and send home someone who has a real shot if she’s just going to bail in the end.  He basically gives her an ultimatum: say yes or go home.  She decides on go home.

Hey, didn’t Maxon say she could stay until the final three, even back before he fell in love with her?  He didn’t have any problems narrowing it down to “two real choices and her” back then.