“Do be quiet, Henry, dear.” Catherine speaks up, then. “Mum—” The queen holds up one wizened hand to silence her. “I thought we had been humiliated enough in the papers when Beatrice had her little problem. And I made myself clear, Henry, years ago, that if you were drawn in unnatural directions, appropriate measures could be taken. Why you have chosen to undermine the hard work I’ve done to maintain the crown’s standing is beyond me, and why you seem set on disrupting my efforts to restore it by demanding I summit with some. . . boy—” here, a nasty lilt to her polite tone, under which Alex can hear epithets for everything from his race to his sexuality, “when you were told to await orders, is truly a mystery. Clearly you have taken leave of your senses. My position is unchanged, dear: Your role in this family is to perpetuate our bloodline and maintain the appearance of the monarchy as the ideal of British excellence, and I simply cannot allow anything less.” Henry is looking down, eyes distant and cast toward the grain of the table, and Alex can practically feel the energy roiling up from Catherine across from him. An answer to the fury tight in his own chest. The princess who ran away with James Bond, who told her children to give back what their country stole, making a choice. “Mum,” she says evenly. “Don’t you think we ought to at least have a conversation about other options?” The queen’s head turns slowly. “And what options might those be, Catherine?” “Well, I think there’s something to be said for coming clean. It could save us a great deal of face to treat it not as a scandal, but as an intrusion upon the privacy of the family and the victimization of a young man in love.” “Which is what it was,” Bea chimes in. “We could integrate this into our narrative,” Catherine says, choosing her words with extreme precision. “Reclaim the dignity of it. Make Alex an official suitor.” “T see. So your plan is to allow him to choose this life?” Here, a slight tell. “It’s the only life for him that’s honest, Mum.” The queen purses her lips. “Henry,” she says, returning to him, “wouldn’t you have a more pleasant go of it without all these unnecessary complications? You know we have the resources to find a wife for you and compensate her handsomely. You understand, I’m only trying to protect you. I know it seems important to you in this moment, but you really must think of the future. You do realize this would mean years of reporters hounding you, all sorts of allegations? I can’t imagine people would be as eager to welcome you into children’s hospitals—” “Stop it!” Henry bursts out. All the eyes in the room swivel to him, and he looks pale and shocked at the sound of his own voice, but he goes on. “You can’t—you can’t intimidate me into submission forever!” Alex’s hand gropes across the space between them under the table, and the minute his fingertips catch on the back of Henry’s wrist, Henry’s hand is gripping his, hard. “T know it will be difficult,” Henry says. “I... It’s terrifying. And if you’d asked me a year ago, I probably would have said it was fine, that nobody needs to know. But... ’m as much a person and a part of this family as you. I deserve to be happy as much as any of you do. And I don’t think I ever will be if I have to spend my whole life pretending.” “Nobody’s saying you don’t deserve to be happy,” Philip cuts in. “First love makes everyone mad—it’s foolish to throw away your future because of one hormonal decision based on less than a year of your life when you were barely in your twenties.” Henry looks Philip square in the face and says, “I’ve been gay as a maypole since the day I came out of Mum, Philip.” In the silence that follows, Alex has to bite down very hard on his tongue to suppress the urge to laugh hysterically. “Well.” the queen eventually says. She’s holding her teacup daintily in the air, eyeing Henry over it. “Even if you're willing to submit to the flogging in the papers, it doesn’t erase the stipulations of your birthright: You are to produce heirs.” And Alex apparently hasn’t been biting his tongue hard enough, because he blurts out, “We could still do that.” Even Henry’s head whips around at that. “T don’t recall giving you permission to speak in my presence,” Queen Mary says. “Mum—” “That raises the issue of surrogates, or donors,” Philip jumps back in, “and rights to the throne—” “Are those details pertinent right now, Philip?” Catherine interrupts. “Someone has to bear the stewardship for the royal legacy, Mum.” “T don’t care for that tone at all.” “We can entertain hypotheticals, but the fact of the matter is that anything but maintaining the royal image is out of the question,” the queen says, setting down her teacup. “The country simply will not accept a prince of his proclivities. Iam sorry, dear, but to them, it’s perverse.” “Perverse to them or perverse to you?” Catherine asks her. “That isn’t fair—” Philip says. “It’s my life—” Henry interjects.