Beatrice et all are attending the theater, her ‘date’ with Bear-Ted. It’s all very public and such, and Beatrice just flibbergits in her thoughts about how she can’t be a normal person and go on real dates and omg you are so boring.

No, really, Beatrice, what is your personality? So far we’ve got: feels pressured to be perfect and bemoans not being normal. But…???? Do you have any interests? Any goals? Any THOUGHTS at all beyond ‘woe is me’? There’s a whole passage in this chapter about how she has no patience for theater or even novels…not because she’s impatient or because she likes non-fiction or anything new like that. Nope. It’s all because “the characters always get to make choices unlike me! Woe!”

I find it really hard to give a damn about this chick when all I know about her is that she wants to kiss her bodyguard. Which, let’s be honest, wouldn’t be hard to carry on that affair if you’d just grow a smidge of a backbone. Can’t sit there and tell me THAT’S never happened in your Perfect Royal Washington family.

So the play they’re there to see is about ‘Queen Emily,’ who was once the only child of a king and then declared herself queen regent after his death, but mysteriously disappeared after only one day. Most likely killed by her uncle, but other rumors abound and also those rumors make it into stage plays a lot. Finally, a worldbuilding nugget that doesn’t make me want to punch a history book.

But even though Beatrice doesn’t care for theater and has seen shows about this character before, this time the opening song about ‘nation-building, love, and sacrifice’ moves her to tears and she has to leave the box. Because, apparently, it’s a love story paralleling her whole “I can’t be with Conner” dilemma.

…props for conservation of action, I guess?

Teddy follows her into the hallway where they have an awkward convo. TeddyBear says that he would want Beatrice to be queen even if it wasn’t pre-ordained, because…

….

…because…????????

Oh and also

Everyone knew that elections only worked for judges and Congress. Making the executive branch pander to the people, go out begging for votes – that could only end in disaster. That structure would attract the wrong sort of people: power-hungry people with twisted agendas.

I have…so many questions.

Sure, it’s true that our system attracts some real shit-heels and I’m not fond of it, but the implication in there is that a monarch WOULDN’T be power-hungry and have a twisted agenda? And you can tell me that’s just Beatrice’s opinion and therefore obviously slanted, but based on the bit of history we’ve seen so far….the book kind of seems to be implying that it actually does work out that way. Yuck.

Also, how do you not have a House of Lords equivalent? What’s the point of having a peerage if both houses of Congress are elected?

TB and Beatrice both bemoan about the fact that expectations exist and how that’s just so very very hard and no one else understaaaaands and apparently that counts as bonding so they go back to sit and watch the show.

Over to Samantha now, who is also at the theater. And also ridiculously obsessed with Duke Bear. Although I have yet to figure out why. Much like Jeff, Teddy just…exists. He also always creepily says exactly the right thing to Beatrice, and I’m not sure if that’s supposed to be creepy or just bad writing, but it makes him very bland when he just exists as a foil to someone else’s emotional flailing, so why is Sam so bummed out over this lump?

The show ends and WE DON’T GET TO FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENED TO QUEEN EMILY. All that carry-on before about how every story gives her a different ending and we don’t even get a summary of how the show goes? RUDE.

At the reception with the cast afterwards, Sam runs into Lord Paddington at the bar. She quips at him for making out with her just to kill time until Beatrice was free, then runs off again.

Forget him, Sam. He and B deserve each other. Utterly dull fops who just do what they’re told and LITERALLY NOTHING ELSE BECAUSE HAHA, PERSONALITY, WHAT IS THAT?

Boring boring stuff with Nina, Sam, and Jeff complaining about the food (????) and going home to order pizza (???????????). Just…just write about regular rich people, I don’t understand what the point of this book is.

Later that night, Beatrice comes to visit Sam. B suddenly starts talking about their Aunt Margaret, who wanted to marry a commoner but was told she’d have to give up her title and income et all for it. Which….really doesn’t make a lick of sense. She wasn’t next in line to the throne, and royals marry commoners, it’s a Done Thing. (The current queen of Norway was a commoner, and she got married 50 years ago.) Sam points out that their aunt could have given up her stuff and married anyway, if she really wanted to.

Sam also mentions “A British king tried to marry a commoner and was forced to abdicate over it. He lived in Paris the rest of his life.” If that’s about Edward the VIII and Wallis Simpson, her being common wasn’t the issue. Her being a divorcee was the issue. The monarch of England is also the head of the Church of England, which at the time frowned on divorce and marrying again while one’s first spouse was still alive. Edward couldn’t marry the divorced Wallis and still be head of the church, so he voluntarily abdicated in order to do so.

Because I’m still looking up royal/commoner marriages, please also have Daniel Westling, who met the crown princess of Sweden when he was her personal trainer and they’ve been married 9 years now. The other princess of Sweden married a Wall Street banker, which is way less amusing. The Duchess of Alba married a civil servant who was 25 years younger than her (85 and 60, respectively).

AAAH, PRINCESS MARGARET OF ENGLAND MARRIED A COMMONER and considering the name this book picked for their Tragic Aunt I find that fucking hilarious. This was in 1960 and her commoner photographer husband was elevated to Earl after their marriage. Princess Margaret gave up nothing. (Although she was stymied over her first choice of husband, eight years earlier, because he was a divorcee.)

I don’t like monarchies as an institution that has actual power, but learning about this is still fun, so why did this book not bother?

Okay, back to the extremely blasé story that we’re actually reading which has no fun scandals. The King and Queen show up looking for Beatrice to gush about how great the ‘date’ went. (Not sure why, since…nothing happened….???) Anyway, they’ve taken it upon themselves to invite T-Dawg to the family’s New Years retreat.

I guess that’s as close as we’ll get to drama from these people.