“Royal Idol” CHAPTER 1 — THE ROOM WITH NO DOORS The boy woke to silence. Real silence, not the kind people imagine exists in palaces: the grand echoing hush of marble corridors, the muffled softness of carpets so thick they swallow footsteps, the endless acres of manicured lawns where the wind only whispers because no one dares let it howl. This silence was different. It had weight. It was a wall. And it pressed on his ribs every morning. The Prince lay still beneath sheets that had been pressed by someone he’d never spoken to, in a bed someone measured weekly to ensure he never slept “incorrectly,” beneath a ceiling hand-painted by an artist whose name he was meant to be grateful for but had never bothered to remember. His alarm did not beep. It did not trill. It did not sing. It simply glowed. A soft amber pulse on the antique clock beside him, programmed by his private staff to never startle him, to never disrupt his heart rhythm, to never do anything other than silently remind him that every moment of his life was scheduled—down to the softness of how it woke him. He opened his eyes. The room was still dark. Curtains, impossibly tall and heavy, kept daylight obediently waiting outside. He heard it, faintly, in the spaces between the silence: London, alive, moving, impatient. Cars. Early buses. People rushing to work. Someone somewhere burning toast. Someone arguing about money. Someone laughing freely. He envied them all without knowing their names. Within five minutes there was a knock he did not have to grant permission for, because permission was ceremonial. Everything in his life happened because it was meant to, not because he asked. “Good morning, sir.” James entered first—always first—because James had known him since before the public learned to love his face. James didn’t carry himself like a servant, though he technically was one; there was something steadier, something more quietly paternal. He was efficient in a way that never felt rushed, calm in a way that felt like ballast. He smelled faintly of aftershave and coffee. “Morning,” the boy murmured, voice still thick with sleep. James opened only the first half of the curtains, letting a disciplined amount of light in. Morning spilled carefully, never flooding, never daring to overwhelm. Somewhere in the palace, the Queen was awake already. Somewhere, his father was already in a silent briefing. Somewhere, his sister was likely still asleep but would wake as if she had chosen the time herself. He, on the other hand, woke like a clock. “Schedule briefing?” James asked gently. He didn’t need to. The Prince could recite it without effort. But ritual mattered. “Yes,” he said, sitting up, letting the duvet fall from his shoulders. He rubbed his face and blinked until the portraits on the opposite wall sharpened into clarity. Former kings. Former queens. Former tragedies. Former triumphs. Their eyes seemed permanently fixed in judgment. James read from the tablet. “Breakfast with Their Majesties at eight. School briefing at ten. Public engagement at noon. Lunch with economic advisers—your father requested you attend and listen. Return to Palace. Evening study. Media briefing. Dinner. Then your—” James paused, almost imperceptibly, “private time.” Private time. The phrase always sounded incorrect. It wasn’t privacy. It was simply time during which fewer people watched, but the number never fell to zero. He nodded. “Clothes,” he said. James had already prepared three options; the Prince was permitted the illusion of choice. He chose the least formal, because it made him feel almost real, and then moved through the rest of morning like water being poured into a mold—shaped, held, contained. Breakfast was orchestrated warmth. His mother—Queen only to the world, mother in this dining room—smiled with genuine softness when he entered. His father looked up from the papers only after finishing his sentence, like always, as if discipline in eye contact somehow raised kings. His sister grinned broadly. “You look miserable,” she said cheerfully, buttering toast like she was personally at war with it. “So, a perfectly ordinary morning.” “Please don’t antagonize him before he’s had tea,” their mother said with no real sternness in it. The Prince smiled. It was a practiced, delicate smile that never pushed too hard, never showed teeth unless required, never betrayed anything he did not want public. Except here, even here, he was careful. Walls had ears. Staff had stories. And love in this family came with etiquette built into the bloodstream. “How did you sleep?” the King asked. He always asked like that—precise, narrow, as if the answer was data for a report, not a father’s concern. The Prince swallowed tea and answered in the measured tone he’d learned long before he learned algebra. “Fine. Thank you.” He rarely told the truth. His mother touched his wrist gently beneath the table. The Queen had a talent that not even monarchy could suppress: she still mothered. Warmth radiated through that brief contact—a reminder that if this life was a cage, it was at least shared with people who cared deeply, even if they were part of the bars themselves. The conversation drifted. National matters disguised as casual talk. Public appearances wrapped in laughter. The state of a hospital wing they’d visited. An upcoming charitable foundation event. Their mother listened with heart; their father listened with spine. His sister mocked and adored everything simultaneously, that strange talent of hers to seem both rebellious and incandescently royal at once. The Prince spoke when spoken to. Smiled when he should. Laughed on cue. No cameras in the room, yet he performed anyway. When breakfast ended, the public day began. The palace transformed from home to machinery. Corridors filled with coordinated footsteps. Radios crackled softly in professional undertones. Assistants slipped in and out like thoughts halfway voiced. Security stood everywhere and nowhere, discreet and immovable. Protocol was a choreography so ancient it felt older than language; the Prince stepped into it like slipping into a river that had always existed. Cars. Gates. Photographers already waiting. They shouted his name like they owned it. He saw flashes before sound—light splitting his vision, white eating the edges of the world—and then the walls of noise crashed in. “LOOK HERE!” “SMILE!” “PRINCE! PRINCE!” “GIVE US SOMETHING!” They sounded hungry. He’d learned years ago not to flinch. Flinching read as weakness. Weakness became headlines. Headlines became pressure. Pressure became responsibility. The machine ate everything, even reflexes. He waved with surgical precision and kept walking. Inside the car, silence again—but not the kind he wanted. The insulating silence of armored glass and government engineering, the kind of silence that reminded him he moved through the world inside a vehicle designed to survive violence. James sat opposite him. “Remember to let the press have the angle they want,” James said mildly. “Not too long. Not too short.” The Prince nodded. He watched London scroll past outside the bullet-proof window. Buildings breathed history. Streets held lives he’d never get to live. A man in a cheap suit rushed out of a bakery holding two coffees. A woman wrestled a toddler into a pram with visible exhaustion. Teenagers laughed without restraint. He envied their lack of choreography. School wasn’t school in the way anyone imagined. Private tutors. Security corridors. A carefully curated environment that pretended to be normal but had panic protocols built into the floor plan. Even the laughter of other students felt weighted, as if everyone knew instinctively that his presence bent the air. He did well academically. Of course he did. Failure was not a permissible narrative for him. But excellence brought no thrill; achievement was simply another expectation met. After lectures he did not linger. He couldn’t. He could never blend into a hallway crowd, never disappear, never be someone whose footsteps didn’t echo with national consequence. By noon, he was tired and the day hadn’t truly started yet. The public engagement was a children’s hospital. He liked hospitals. He hated hospitals. They hurt for the same reason they healed: they reminded him life was fragile and unfair and full of people who mattered far more than his ceremonial importance. Children smiled at him like he was magic. Parents looked at him with gratitude and silent accusation, as if begging him to fix things he had no power over. He was polite. He was warm. He remembered names. He asked questions that mattered. He meant every word. Cameras hovered. He bent down to speak to a little boy with tubes in his nose and eyes far older than his years. The Prince’s throat tightened—not visibly, not publicly—but he felt it. The child did not ask him to wave or smile or perform. He simply asked, quietly: “Does it scare you? Being you?” The nurses laughed softly, embarrassed. The Prince did not. “Yes,” he said honestly, though softer than microphones could detect. “But I’m learning to hold it.” The boy nodded as if that made perfect sense. Hours later, after smiles and speeches and the gentle gravity of illness followed him into the car, he sagged against the seat. James pretended not to notice. That was one of James’s greatest gifts: he knew when to talk and when to be the silence that didn’t crush. Back in the palace, the afternoon dissolved into briefings. Economic advisers spoke of numbers that would one day become his responsibility in ways far heavier than a classroom could ever teach. His father’s voice was controlled steel. Decisions were discussed with the detached cruelty that governance often required. The Prince listened, learned, absorbed. His head ached by evening. They dined again. The family laughed again. He smiled again. And then, finally, it came. “Private time,” James said quietly in the hallway outside his bedroom, as if announcing a rare visitor. The Prince entered the room alone. Door closed. Silence fell. The heavy curtains shielded the sky; the city lights outside flickered faintly, distant, unreachable. He sat on the edge of his bed and let the carefully held posture fall away. Shoulders slumped. Jaw loosened. The armor cracked and only a boy remained beneath it. He breathed. He didn’t cry. He rarely cried. He had learned early that tears in isolation only primed tears in public, and public tears became legends, and legends grew teeth. He lay back and stared at the ceiling. Sometimes he imagined what life would be if his name meant nothing. If he could sit in cafés, spill cheap coffee on his shirt, argue with friends in public, get lost in crowds, refuse to smile when he didn’t want to. If he could be clumsy. Loud. Anonymous. Sometimes he imagined falling in love. Not the curated love carefully arranged by diplomats and whisper networks, not the socially appropriate, politically convenient matches his future would demand. Love that happened because someone saw him not through the lens of monarchy but through the fragile light of humanity. But that was fantasy. Fantasy was dangerous. Fantasy made headlines. He exhaled slowly and closed his eyes. He did not know yet that the world would give him something dangerously close to that fantasy one day— not sweetly, not kindly, but with claws of attention and storms of scrutiny; that love would come not as escape, but as a heavier crown. For now, he only knew the room was silent. For now, he only knew the cage was beautiful, gilded, and complete. And for now, the boy inside it was learning how not to scream. CHAPTER 2 - HOW A BOY LEARNS TO DISAPPEAR There was an art to vanishing in a world where everyone was always looking at you. He did not learn it at once. Disappearing was not instinctive; instinct urged the body to fight, flinch, hide, shrink. None of those were permissible. Monarchy trained different reflexes. It sculpted posture. It taught eye contact as weapon and shield. It taught smiles as policy. What no one openly stated (but everyone expected him to absorb) was the skill of fading while staying visible. He learned first in corridors. The palace was a city masquerading as a home. It breathed with hundreds of lungs. Staff marched and whispered and cooked and polished and planned. His presence made conversations evaporate. Laughter would thin, then vanish, leaving politeness in its place. Even as a boy, he sensed it: the way adults straightened, the way heads dipped, the way their warmth rearranged itself into reverence. He hated reverence. It made him feel like a relic displayed behind glass. So he learned to soften footsteps. To lower tone. To be part of the furniture until required. If invisibility was not literal, it could at least be behavioral. He became careful, slower to speak, gentler in movement, a ghost who performed brilliantly only when summoned. His sister never allowed it in front of her. “Stop doing that,” she scolded one afternoon, teenage shoulders squared, arms crossed, hair imperfect in the way only genuinely confident girls allow. “You shrink like fog when someone opens their mouth. You don’t have to vanish just because you’re inconvenient.” He leaned against the carved oak balcony rail, looking down into the grand hall below where diplomats in dark suits moved like chess pieces. “It’s easier.” “Easier isn’t always living,” she fired back. He didn_t answer. She rolled her eyes and nudged his shoulder harder than etiquette would permit in public. “You’re not a myth. You don’t have to behave like one.” He didn’t say it aloud, but he knew the truth: He did. That was the point. *** He was twelve the first time he realized cameras were not machines; they were weapons. There had been a fall. The kind children regularly have: knees too fast, feet tangled, laughter turning suddenly to tears. His knee split open on wet pavement during a school outing, and the shock of pain had been immediate, unfiltered, raw. He cried without thinking. Like a child. Like a boy. And the world ate it. Photographs splashed everywhere: his face screwed with pain, his mouth open mid-cry, guards lunging in, a smear of blood bright on royal skin. Headlines did not say “boy falls.” They said weakness. They said fragility. They said vulnerability in melodramatic language that turned an ordinary scrape into a sign that perhaps the future king was too soft, too sheltered, too delicate. For weeks, jokes. Comedians. Radio hosts. Internet memes before they were even called that. He’d cried less after that. Not because injury hurt less-but because the world punished honesty. Years later, sometimes he still felt the ghost ache in his knee when cameras flashed. *** He had tutors for everything. History. Economics. Languages. Politics. Etiquette. How to shake hands without gripping too aggressively. How to sit as though he owned gravity. How to allow silence to stretch just long enough to signify power without cruelty. How to appear human while never being fully allowed to be human. Lessons rarely ended. He sat now in a sunlit room lined with shelves so old they smelled faintly of time itself. Dust motes floated lazily in golden beams. His tutor, Mr. Harrington-a man with an impeccable suit and a perpetual look of someone who never fully approved of the modern century-adjusted his glasses and tapped a line in a textbook. “Symbolism matters,” Harrington said. “Whether you like it or not. at you, it wants reassurance it hasn’t lost itself.” “I’m fourteen,” the Prince murmured, but quietly. Mild protest, not rebellion. “That,” Harrington replied, “is irrelevant to symbolism.” The boy stared at the page. Kings and queens. Portraits of their young faces hardened by history. Some had loved deeply. Some had destroyed broadly. Some had lived as puppets. Some had broken their cages and broken empires with them. “What if symbolism hurts people?” Harrington looked at him for a long time. For a second, the man’s eyes softened, and behind the tutor’s strict professionalism, he became simply an older human being looking at a younger one. “Then the world will ask you,” he said slowly, “whether the pain is acceptable cost or unacceptable cruelty. You will rarely get to choose your answer. The choice will already have been made by generations before you.” That was the most honest thing any adult ever told him. He did not thank him. He closed the book carefully, as though reverence for a history that had trapped him was still required. *** There were good days too. That mattered. The palace gardens in spring did not care for politics. They bloomed anyway. He liked to walk there with his sister when security allowed distance. The air smelled sane. The sky belonged to no government. Ducks ignored lineage entirely. Sometimes the Queen walked with them, laughter gentler outdoors. Sometimes even the King softened there. The Prince learned to treasure those days with a hunger that bordered on desperation.