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Instantly Alexander’s expression darkens. “Of bloody course she did. Do we know how bad it is?”
“I fear it doesn’t look good, sir,” says Jenkins. “We’re trying to negotiate a delay, especially in the aftermath of the incident with Miss Bright and Her Royal Highness yesterday, but I’m afraid the head of the BBC is refusing to reschedule. Or allow us access to the interview before it airs.”
Jenkins crosses the room now, and he wordlessly offers my father a tablet. Alexander accepts it with some reluctance, and I stand, my fury at my parents’ so-called intervention temporarily pushed aside as I lean over to get a better view.
Jenkins has already queued up a video, and when Alexander hits Play, Helene’s face fills the screen, her makeup plain, her hair down, and her blue eyes brimming with tears.
“…spent the best years of my life loving him,” she says in her honeyed voice, soft and sweet and devastating. “But now that I know the real truth of it, I know it was all a lie.”
Her face fades, and then, in big block letters, words appear.
Helene—Her Truth, Her Love, and Her Gilded Cage
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“Your Majesty, we have all watched with shock and awe over the past seven months as the private affairs of your family—of the royal family—have been exposed in a way that the country has never seen before.”
“It’s been devastating. Not just the emotional turmoil, but also that it’s played out in such a terribly public way.”
“It all started, didn’t it, with the arrival of Evangeline Bright?”
“No. That marks the time when the public finally found out, but this particular storm has been brewing for longer than anyone knows.”
“When would you say it all began?”
“During His Majesty’s first year at Oxford, I suppose. That’s when he met Laura Bright.”
“They knew each other at university?”
“Oh, yes. My husband likes to call it love at first sight, and they were together quite a while—years, really. They were even engaged at one point, in the months before Alexander ascended the throne.”
“Yet the public never knew?”
“It was easier in those days to keep secrets, before the invention of smartphones and social media. There were paparazzi, of course, but the intense focus on the family that exists now simply wasn’t there in the nineties and early aughts.”
“One might argue that that intensity exists because of you and your incomparable popularity after your marriage to His Majesty in 2003.”
“Yes, so I’ve been told. But before Edward IX died so tragically and at such a young age, the royal gears turned rather like clockwork. The media didn’t scrutinize the family’s every move, and Alexander and Laura took advantage. She was even a guest at Sandringham the Christmas before Edward IX passed—as Alexander’s fiancée.”
“Yet the public was never told that the then-heir to the throne, the Prince of Wales, was set to be married?”
“No. I believe his intention was to quietly remove himself from the line of succession before the marriage took place.”
[pause] “His Majesty wished to abdicate?”
“Laura had no desire to be queen—it’s a job that comes with a great many responsibilities, after all, and they both anticipated pushback from an American assuming the role. Which I always thought was a rather silly excuse, considering Mary of Teck, who became queen in 1910, was the first royal consort to be born in England since Henry VIII’s sixth wife, Catherine Parr.”
“You don’t believe that was the real reason His Majesty planned to give up his birthright?”
“It played a part, no doubt, but he never wanted the crown in the first place—it was only the tragedy of his father’s death that made him set aside his own desires and accept the throne. He was never happy about it, though. He made that clear when we were discussing the possibility of becoming engaged. Alexander had a particular need to make sure I was willing to take on the duties that he so strongly resented—duties that, by then, had lost him the woman he called the love of his life.”
“Did you know about Laura during your engagement?”
“In a sense. I knew he’d been in a relationship when his father died, and I knew that relationship had fallen apart because of it. He was forthcoming about that much, and I’ve known the royal family for my entire life—our mothers were close friends, after all, and I’ve been privy to a great many secrets over the years. I was aware he’d been away in America with a girlfriend, even though I didn’t know the details.”
“Would you have married him if you’d known he was still in love with her?”
[pause] “No. Looking back on it, I was very much hoodwinked, though I had no idea until more than a year into our marriage.”
