Princess in Love

we are now forced to watch MTV 2. Nathan knows all the songs and sings along with them. Most of them have dirty words that have been bleeped out, but Nathan sings them anyway.

1:00 p.m.

The food is served. We begin eating.

1:15 p.m.

We finish eating.

1:20 p.m.

I help Mrs. Gianini clean up. She says not to be ridiculous and that I should go and 'have a nice gossip' with Claire.

It is frightening, if you think about it, how clueless old people can be sometimes.

Instead of going to have a nice gossip with Claire, I stay where I am and tell Mrs. Gianini how much I am enjoying having her son live with us. Mr. G is very good about helping around the house and has even taken over my old job

of cleaning the toilets. Not to mention the thirty-six-inch TV, pinball machine and football table he brought with him when he moved in.

Mrs. Gianini is immensely gratified to hear this, you can just tell. Old people like to hear nice stuff about their kids, even if their kid, like Mr. Gianini, is thirty-nine-and-a-half years old.

3:00 p.m.

We have to leave if we are going to beat the traffic home. I say goodbye. Claire does not say goodbye back to me, but Nathan does. He advises me to keep it real. Mrs. Gianini gives us a lot of leftover turkey. I thank her, even though I don't eat turkey, being a vegetarian and am virulently opposed to the mass slaughter of helpless fowls every time a holiday rolls around.

6:30 p.m.

We finally make it back into the city, after spending three and a half hours in bumper-to-bumper traffic along the

Long Island Expressway. Though there is nothing very express about it, if you ask me.

I barely have time to change into my baby-blue, floor-length Armani sheath dress and matching ballet fiats before

the limo honks downstairs and Lars, my bodyguard, arrives to escort me to my second Thanksgiving dinner.

7:30 p.m.

Arrive at the Plaza Hotel. I am greeted by the concierge, who announces I me to the masses assembled in the Palm Court:

'Presenting Her Royal Highness Princess Amelia Mignonette Grimaldi Thermopolis Renaldo.'

God forbid he should just say Mia.

My father, the Prince of Genovia, and his mother, the Dowager Princess, have rented the Palm Court for the evening in order to throw a Thanksgiving banquet for all of their friends. Despite my strenuous objections, Dad and Grandmere refuse to leave New York City until I have learned everything there is to know about being a princess . . . or until my formal introduction to the Genovian people the day before Christmas, whichever comes first. I have assured them that it isn't as if I am going to show up at the castle and start hurling olives at the ladies-in-waiting and scratching myself under the arms. I mean, I am fourteen years old-I do have some idea how to act, for crying out loud.

But Grandmere, at least, does not seem to believe this and so she is still subjecting me to daily princess lessons. Lilly recently contacted the United Nations to see whether these lessons constitute a human rights violation. She believes it is unlawful to force a minor to sit for hours practising tipping her soup bowl away from her - 'Always, always, away from you, Amelia!' - in order to scrape up a few drops of lobster bisque.

The UN has so far been unsympathetic to my plight, but that, I believe, is only because they have never actually met Grandmere. Were they to witness for themselves the frightful visage ~ made all the scarier by the fact that years ago Grandmere had her eyeliner permanently tattooed on to her lids, not to mention the fact that she shaves off her eyebrows every day and then draws on new ones in black pencil — hovering over me during these torture sessions, they'd send over a hostage negotiator before you could say Kofi Annan.

It was Grandmere's idea to have what she calls an 'old-fashioned' Thanksgiving dinner featuring mussels in a white wine sauce, squab stuffed withfoisgras, lobster tails, and Iranian caviar, which you could never get before because of the embargo. She has invited two hundred of her closest friends, plus the Emperor of Japan and his wife, since they were in town anyway for a world trade summit.

That's why I had to wear ballet flats. Grandmere says it's rude to be taller than an emperor.

8:00 p.m. - 11:00 p.m.

I make polite conversation with the empress while we eat. Like me, she was just a normal person until one day she married the emperor and became royal. I, of course, was born royal. I just didn't know it until last October when my dad found out he couldn't have any more kids, due to his chemotherapy for testicular cancer having rendered him sterile. Then he had to admit he was actually a prince and all, and that though I am illegitimate, since my dad and

my mom were never married, I am still the sole heir to the Genovian throne.

And even though Genovia is a very small country (population 50,000) crammed into a hillside along the Mediterranean Sea between Italy and France, it is still this very big deal to be princess of it.

Not a big enough deal for anyone to raise my allowance higher than ten dollars a week, apparently. But a big enough deal that I have to have a bodyguard follow me around everywhere I go just in case some Euro-trash terrorist with a pony tail and black leather trousers takes it into his head to kidnap me.

The empress knows all about this - what a bummer it is, I mean, being just a normal person one day and then having your face on the cover of People magazine the next. She even gave me some advice: she told me I should always make sure my kimono is securely fastened before I raise my arm to wave to the populace.

I thanked her, even though I don't actually own a kimono.

11:30 p.m.