Princess Mia

“Well,” I said. “Actually, a lot is going to change—”

“No,” Dad interrupted briskly. “No, Mia, actually, it’s not. I appreciate your bringing this document to my attention, but it doesn’t mean what you seem to think it means. It doesn’t have any validity.”

That’s when my jaw dropped. “WHAT? Of course it does! Amelie completely followed all the rules laid out in the Genovian royal charter—used the seal and got the signature of two unrelated witnesses and everything! If I’ve learned anything since my princess lessons started, I’ve learned that. It’s valid.”

“But she didn’t have parliamentary approval,” Dad began.

“BECAUSE EVERYONE IN PARLIAMENT WAS DEAD!” I couldn’t believe this. “Or at home, nursing their dying relatives. And, Dad, you know as well as I do that in a national crisis—like, for instance, a PLAGUE, a ruler’s impending death, and her knowledge that her throne is going to a known despot—a crowned Genovian prince or princess can sign into law anything he or she wants to, by order of divine right.”

Seriously. Does he really think I’ve learned NOTHING but how to use a fish fork in three years of princess lessons?

“Right,” Dad said. “But this particular national crisis was four hundred years ago, Mia.”

“That doesn’t make this bill any less valid,” I insisted.

“No,” Dad admitted. “But it does mean there’s no reason we have to share it with parliament at this time. Or any time, really.”

“WHAT?”

I felt like Princess Leia Organa when she finally revealed the hidden location of the rebel base (even though she was lying) to Grand Moff Tarkin in Star Wars: A New Hope, and he went ahead and ordered the destruction of her home planet of Alderaan anyway.

“Of course we have to share it,” I yelled. “Dad, Genovia has been living a lie for almost four hundred years!”

“This conversation is over,” Dad said, taking Amelie’s Bill of Rights and getting ready to slide it into his briefcase. “I appreciate the attempt, Mia—it was very clever of you to figure this all out. But this is hardly a legitimate legal document that we need to bring to the attention of the Genovian people—or parliament. It’s merely an attempt by a scared teenage girl to protect the interests of a people who are long since dead, and nothing we need to worry about—”

“That’s just it,” I said. I hurried over and took the parchment before he could seal it away forever in the darkness of his Gucci bag. I was starting to cry. I couldn’t help it. It was all just so unfair. “Isn’t it? That it’s written by a girl. Worse, that it’s written by a TEENAGE girl. So therefore, it has no legitimacy, and can just be ignored—”

Dad gave me a sour look. “Mia, you know that’s not what I mean.”

“Yes, it is! If this had been written by one of our MALE ancestors—Prince Francesco himself—you’d totally have presented it to parliament when they meet in session next month. TOTALLY. But because it was written by a teenage girl, who was only princess for twelve days before she died horribly and all alone, you plan on completely disregarding it. Does the freedom of your own people really mean so little to you?”

“Mia,” Dad said, sounding weary. “Genovia is consistently rated among the best places to live on the planet, and the Genovian population the most content. The median temperature is seventy-two degrees, it’s sunny almost three hundred days out of the year, and no one there pays any taxes, remember? Genovians have certainly never expressed the slightest reservations about their freedom, or lack of it, since I’ve been on the throne.”

“How can they miss what they’ve never had, Dad?” I asked him. “And that’s not even the point. The point is that one of your ancestors left behind a legacy—something she intended to be used to protect the people she cared about. Her uncle threw it away, the same way he tried to throw her away. If we don’t honor her last request, we’re every bit as bad as he was.”

Dad rolled his eyes. “Mia. It’s late. I’m going back to my suite. We’ll talk about this some more tomorrow. If,” I distinctly heard him mutter, “you haven’t gotten over it by then.”

Which really gets to the heart of the matter, doesn’t it? He thinks I’m just suffering from some adolescent female histrionics…the same kind that prompted him to put me into therapy, and Princess Amelie into signing that bill in the first place.

The bill he is ignoring because—basically—a girl wrote it.

Nice. Really nice.

And Grandmère was no help whatsoever. I mean, you would think a fellow woman would have some sympathy for my—and Amelie’s—plight.

But Grandmère is just like all those other women who go around wanting the same rights as men, but don’t want to call themselves feminists. Because that isn’t “feminine.”

After Dad left, she just looked at me and was like, “Well, Amelia, I’m still not sure what all that was about, but I told you not to bother with that dusty old diary. Now, are you ready for your speech tomorrow? Your suit has been delivered here, so I suppose the best thing would be for you to come straight over after school and change here.”

“I can’t come straight over after school,” I said to her. “I have therapy tomorrow.”