The Examination
The examination.
“…M-my… opinion…?”
“Indeed.”
Every eye in the room swung toward me. And every one of them was waiting to hear what would come out of my mouth.
Asking a four-year-old a question like this was already fundamentally off the rails — and this was a meeting they'd dragged me into after rehearsing their own preposterous schemes among themselves, only to turn around and ask what I thought.
“Do… do we really, have to do this?”
“Crooked answers like that are all I've got, you know.”
“Ahem… Perhaps Her Highness spoke so only because she is still young, and wholly unversed in Our Empire's South African policy…”
“Your Majesty, Her Highness is yet of tender years. His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales did not take up affairs of state until he was fifteen. How could a Princess of but four—”
“Gentlemen. Do not interrupt the Princess.”
That was the whole answer, though…? And hadn't I already accomplished what I came here to do?
Hadn't I thoroughly rattled the sensibilities of these nineteenth-century British imperialists — men whose minds no twenty-first-century values could possibly explain — enough? By now they should have understood I was hardly fit material for the throne. What more did my great-grandmother want from me…?
“Tell Me, Princess, why you thought so.”
“Um… well, you see, it's like…”
Shit. Shit, shit…!
Would they strip my place in the line of succession on the spot if I just started flinging F-words around right here?
I'd thought about it — until I looked at the grim men in uniform flanking my great-grandmother on either side, and the bearskin-hatted guardsmen stationed behind each of the old gentlemen seated around the council chamber. Then the thought evaporated entirely.
Royal or not, they had exactly the look of people who'd lock you away in the Tower of London without blinking….
Even in lighthearted romance-fantasy — even in the ones with doomed heroines — it's common enough for a protagonist or a villain who crosses her to get shut up in some lofty tower. And this wasn't even a romance-fantasy. It was an alternate-history epic. Odds were it would only get worse.
So I put my mind to work. Think, damn it…!
I am a modern person. A person who lived in the high civilization of the twenty-first century….
An author forged by the genius-modern-person theory and a devoted diet of the works of people who survived as writers even in fantasy worlds — an author who made a genuine living by the pen! I can think my way through this….
If only it meant getting my great-grandmother to release my claim to the throne, safely, so I could live out my days collecting a stipend and hosting my own cozy little tea parties—
“…Princess?”
“Umm… it's bad when people fight, isn't it…?”
“…Hah…?”
I had successfully produced an answer perfectly calibrated for a four-year-old.
And of course, thanks to it, my great-grandmother and every soul in the chamber was now staring at me with eyes gone cold and sour.
“Ha-ha… Your Majesty, as it seems Her Highness—”
“…And why is it bad to fight? That region holds the largest gold mine in the world, one without precedent in all of history. And would you have Us stand idle while Our own people, who would claim that gold, are persecuted by the Boers?”
“…Pardon?”
But my great-grandmother refused to let me off the hook. The corpulent Prime Minister — who had tried to intervene between us and rescue me — had just realized that this was no ordinary privy council, but a trap the Queen had set expressly to test me, and he fell abruptly silent.
And so I found myself obliged to answer my great-grandmother's question all over again.
“…Um…”
“Speak, then. Furthermore, the Transvaal Republic, having laid hands on a gold mine that ought to belong to the Empire, has the audacity to entrench its independence and draw ever closer to Germany and France. Left as it is, British hegemony over South Africa will be shaken. We cannot simply hand it over because a child dislikes fighting.”
“I mean, yes, but must we really go to war over—”
My great-grandmother, with remarkable generosity, proceeded to explain the situation in South Africa to me. Whether I actually understood any of it was another matter entirely… but I grasped the general shape of it, at least.
The problem was, I'd voiced my objections purely to earn the hatred of those imperialist old codgers. I hadn't imagined for a second they'd interrogate me in earnest.
My brain was whirring faster than it had in ages. If I made it out of this room alive, I swore I would hunt down the 1895 Winston Churchill, steal his cigar, and smoke it myself….
And then something surfaced in my memory. Someone had said it earlier, hadn't they? That they ought to entrust full authority to a certain man named Cecil Rhodes…?
For my great-grandmother — who, unlike other constitutional monarchs, wished to govern everything as though she were an absolute monarch — this was going to make for a thoroughly entertaining story indeed. Time to show her the art of the mask, honed by twenty-first-century hack journalism and forum fabrications…!
“Umm… someone just now said we ought to entrust full authority to a man called 'Cecil Rhodes,' didn't they…?”
“…You refer to Secretary Chamberlain.”
At my words — and at my great-grandmother's — one man seated in the chamber visibly flinched. So it's him, then….
Forgive me, but to escape this room, I'm going to have to sell you out….
“But South Africa is still, rightly, Grandmother's, isn't it…? And the final word on any major decision there rests not with the Cabinet, but with Grandmother herself… does it not…?”
“You see rightly. But what of—”
“But that Cecil Rhodes, and Alfred Milner, said that Transvaal and the Orange Free State must be annexed by force if necessary, didn't they? Did those men ever actually ask the Prime Minister and Grandmother for permission beforehand…?”
In truth, it was nothing more than an elaborate bit of wordplay. All I had done was point out that Rhodes and Milner had floated a scheme to upend everything with a coup before any war had even begun — and anyone bold enough to voice such a proposal at this council could only have been speaking with every preparation already complete.
So I laid that small, crucial distinction before the corpulent Prime Minister and my great-grandmother. Had they intended to report and seek permission before making their preparations — or had they planned to push to the very brink of execution and then seek a merely formal, after-the-fact blessing?
Though honestly… even I wasn't sure. For all that my great-grandmother was a queen closer to an absolute monarch than a constitutional one, I doubted whether even she could call off a war over something like this.
“…Leave only the Prime Minister. The rest of you, withdraw. We shall recess for one hour.”
“…Yes, Your Majesty.”
So apparently not, then.
With a sigh threaded through her voice, my great-grandmother dismissed the assembly, keeping only the corpulent old Prime Minister behind.
I seized the moment without hesitation and made a dash for the shelter of Rose's arms—
“And where does the Princess think she is going?”
“…Pardon?”
“The Princess stays as well.”
“…Fuck.”
I could not hold back the F-words. Thank heaven no one heard me.
From now on, I decided, I'd have to make a habit of swearing — like Corporal No——— from that drama about the army.
“No one else is here now, Princess. Sit at your ease.”
“…Yes, Your Majesty.”
“And drop the formality. You were calling me 'Grandma' in front of the whole assembly not an hour ago.”
“Yes…”
At some point my great-grandmother had come down from the throne and taken the seat of honor at the head of the table, with me beside her. The corpulent Prime Minister stood alone before us.
“You two will be old acquaintances, I expect… He was Prime Minister even when you were born.”
“May Your Highness live ten thousand years…”
“Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, Marquess of Salisbury. Prime Minister for the Conservatives. …Had he managed even half of what Disraeli did, he might have served Us passably well.”
“Your Majesty, if you would — not before Her Highness…”
How can a man's name be Gascoyne-Cecil…? A surname, technically, I suppose?
Absolute nightmare to pronounce….
“It's a pleasure to meet you, Prime Minister…? Or — Your Excellency, the Prime Minister?”
“Oh, dear…”
“…It would seem Your Majesty has not yet seen to her lessons in court etiquette…”
I had thought I was being perfectly civil to an elder, but apparently I'd missed the mark entirely. At my words, the two of them heaved a long, twin sigh and looked down at me.
“…She speaks with the fluency of flowing water, so I began her with statecraft before anything else… She remains unpolished in these trifles. Forgive her, Prime Minister, and move on.”
“…Your Highness, royalty does not — under any circumstances — use honorific speech toward its subjects: not toward a Prime Minister, not toward ministers, not toward members of Parliament. Unless the other party is the sovereign of a nation, a member of the British royal family bows the knee to no one.”
“Oh. Um… yes…”
And this is exactly why, in a hundred years, you people collapse and end up with foreign workers running your London….
“In any event — explain yourself properly this time. There was a reason you have been giving Me the silent treatment these past several days, and you would not have opposed Me for no cause at all.”
“…Your Majesty, are you not being rather too severe in your discipline of Her Highness…?”
For once in my life, I was grateful to old Gascoyne-Cecil. I simply could not get a read on what my great-grandmother — that woman of seventy-plus years — was thinking….
“Um… well, you see… Ah — might there be a map…?”
“Ah, a map? Here you are.”
It had been a stalling tactic on my part, but I hadn't expected the old man to produce one that quickly.
Damn old man….
And so I bent over the map the Prime Minister had brought. Across South Africa, five great powers stood out.
(Map of South Africa, 1895)
German South-West Africa, the British Cape Colony, and the Colony of Natal carved the subcontinent into its largest divisions, with Portuguese Mozambique visible along the far coast.
And there, hemmed in on every side by British territory, sat the Orange Free State and the South African Republic — the Transvaal Republic.
Hmm….
So, in other words: here in South Africa — a region Germany was coveting at every opportunity — the British Empire wanted to complete its hegemony over the whole of the territory. But the Transvaal Republic and the Orange Free State meant to unite, grow in size, entrench their independence, and were busy building a close relationship with Germany…?
And with the gold mines on top of everything, they were a thorn in the Empire's eye just now — so the plan was to swallow Transvaal and the Orange Free State outright through war….
Frankly, if I didn't stop it, in the original history the war would break out exactly as planned, and the Transvaal Republic and the Orange Free State would vanish into the pages of history. Which is what would give rise to the South Africa I know….
My deliberation deepened. What was the optimal move — one that got my great-grandmother to strip me of my claim to the throne, guaranteed my personal safety, and stayed reasonably faithful to the shape of the original history…?
“…Can't we just… leave them be…?”
“What did you say?”
“…Pardon?”
Doubt bloomed on the faces of my great-grandmother and the Prime Minister alike. But I pressed on, boldly.
“…After all, could Germany really spare this much attention all the way out here?”
“…Th-that is…”
“And even so — would Germany truly drag an army all the way to South Africa and wage war on British territory there?”
“…Continue. Keep speaking.”
I took stock of the room. My great-grandmother was watching me with doubtful eyes, plainly unimpressed by my line of argument. The Prime Minister simply looked back and forth between me and the map.
Not bad… not bad at all. If I carried this all the way through — spun out my absurd, starry-eyed idealism to its end — my great-grandmother, having seen that there was nothing of a ruler in me, would strip me of my claim to the throne.
“…Transvaal and the Orange Free State are tiny little nations, and landlocked ones at that, aren't they? Even if they wanted to trade with the world or receive support by sea, they'd have to go through British territory or Portuguese territory to do it. And the reason the British residents of Transvaal and the Orange Free State are up in arms right now is that franchise requirement — fifteen years of residence…?”
“…Fourteen years, Your Highness.”
“Right. Fourteen. The trouble exists because they've ruled that only after fourteen years of residence may a man vote… So what if we simply applied diplomatic pressure to push that fourteen-year bar down, and kept encouraging British settlers to immigrate? Wouldn't they… annex themselves, in their own time? Rushing the board like this is only going to spoil the whole game… I should think. In the worst case, Cecil Rhodes and Alfred Milner — with no support from home and no permission from Grandmother or the Prime Minister — have no guarantee of success at all…. And besides. It's just plain rude, isn't it?”
“…Hoh.”
I had laid out every opinion I carried. To the Britons of this era, for whom imperialism was simply common sense, my position must have sounded like some red weeping and wailing over an imaginary paradise.
“…You may withdraw now, Princess.”
“Yes…!”
Against every expectation, my great-grandmother sent me out of the room.
“Your Highness! Did it go well?”
“Yeah… I'll probably be busy doing nothing but hosting tea parties from here on out, so get the preparations ready, Rose!”
Nestled into Rose's welcoming arms, I returned to my chambers dreaming the happy dream of a princess stripped of her claim to the throne, living out her days as just one minor royal among many.