by King Henry, recently risen and heavily over-caffeinated, advises William, Kate, Harry and Fergie on how a royal family may survive without a block and an axe
Welcome, Loyal and Slightly Disloyal Subjects
Good evening! Good evening to thee all! I am Henry, eighth of that name, and I see thou hast come to hear a king speak. How refreshing. For centuries, the public came to see a king to be taxed. Now they come to see one for forty minutes with a break for the bar. I call this progress. My manager Trevor calleth it a residency.
Tonight I would speak of mine own trade, which is monarchy, for I have read the chronicle called The London Prat and I find that my descendants, by a long and weary line, have become the subject of ridicule. Gladly, I say! In my day we had the ridicule done in secret and then the ridiculer was executed. Now it is done in public and the ridiculer is given a podcast.
The Prince and the Princess at IKEA
Behold the first wonder. William and Kate, heirs to my throne, have taken jobs at IKEA in Belfast. Belfast! At IKEA! In my day the heir was sent to study the sword. Now he is sent to study the Swedish meatball. And what hath become of the heir? The chronicle saith that Prince William worked for fifteen minutes, and the Palace celebrated a historic encounter with the working class.
Fifteen minutes! I have known men who took longer to choose a codpiece. The Palace did declare it historic, and I do not doubt it, for it is the first time in nine hundred years that a Prince of Wales hath met a person who gets paid on a Friday. Meanwhile the Princess Kate, so the tale goeth, discovered that money may enter a cash register without first passing through the Treasury. Aye! A wonder! In my day, the money passed through the Treasury, then through my doublet, then through my wives, and what remained went to the navy.
On Assembling Flat-Pack Furniture
Mark ye the horror, good people. A man cannot be a king unless he can build a wardrobe from a bag of screws and a drawing of a smiling man. I did try once. I went through three wives faster than I went through the instructions. Wife the first would not stay, wife the second lost her head, and the wardrobe was still missing a panel. Verily, it was the wardrobe that broke me, not Rome.
The Fergusons Hold Forth
And now to the matter of Sarah Ferguson, a woman who, so the chronicle reports, did lecture her six-year-old daughter Eugenie about making terrible life choices, apparently forgetting that she married Prince Andrew. Forgetting! What a gift it is, to forget. If I could forget that I married Anne of Cleves for her portrait, I would sleep like a baby on the Mary Rose.
The child had complained her shoes were uncomfortable. A just complaint! I wore pointed shoes myself in the winter of 1520 and they cost me two toes and a treaty. But the mother, ah, the mother, did lecture the child upon the vanity of life choices. And the chronicle noteth the splendid contradiction: a family with centuries of terrible decisions believeth itself qualified to offer advice.
Henry’s Rules for Royal Parenting
Rule the first: never tell a child her choices are terrible unless thou art prepared for the child to read thy own. Rule the second: if thy son-in-law is Andrew, keep thy counsel. Rule the third: there is no third rule. I had three children and each of them was crowned, and not one of them thanked me. Rule the fourth: when in doubt, delegate to a nanny.
The Brotherly Reunion, or the End of the Grudge Industry
Last, I come to Harry and William, two brothers, one of whom taketh tea in California and the other in Windsor, and both of whom, so I am told, are considering the reckless possibility of behaving like brothers again. Behaving like brothers! In my family, the brother behaved like a brother and then was found in a ditch. My own brother Arthur died young, a fine solution for a younger sibling, I will say, though I never did thank him.
And what is the response of the press? Fleet Street trembleth. The editors have demanded the government rescue the Royal Grudge Industry. A rescue! A bail-out! For a business built on anonymous sources, suspicious body language and a photograph of a man looking away from another man. If the brothers make peace, a thousand journalists will be left to write about the weather. I say let them. The weather hath never sued.
The Moral of the Tale
So there it is. The heir is in a warehouse in Belfast, the duchess is lecturing from a glass house, and the brothers are one handshake from ruining the newspaper trade. I have seen empires fall for less. Take heed, my subjects, and remember: a royal family is merely a business with a very old logo and no exit strategy. Goodnight! Tip thy servers! And if thou dost see a man with a flat-pack wardrobe, be kind. He may be of the blood.
Further tidings from the palace may be found in The London Prat guide to royal humour at Sandringham.
SOURCE: bohiney.com
