A Fairy Tale, Told By A Prince
Pierre Grimaldi, Prince of Monaco
Pierre pours three fingers of liquor into two highball glasses placed on the coffee table between you and him. He pushes one toward you, an offering, and lifts the other tumbler to his full lips and sips.
He looks over the glass at the window, rolling the rim of the glass against his lower lip.
“The handsomeprince is supposed to be the hero in the story, not the villain,” he says, his dark eyes squinted a little, a pensive look as the window light reflects in them. “The handsome prince is the pinnacle of order in society. He’s the reward for the good girl. He’s written as thedeus ex machinawho kisses the good princess awake from her witchcraft-induced, persistent vegetative state or applies somesort of suction Heimlich maneuver for a poison apple chunk. His kiss is a panacea for every illness. He’s rich as hell, so the good girl won’t ever have to do housework again, and she’ll get to dress up to attend all the royal balls for the rest of her life.
“But why is the handsome prince the good guy?
“He’s the good guy because he’s the responsible one. He’s the one taking over the familyfarm. He stays behind and does the work. The other heirs all swan off to chase their destinies as priests or rock stars, but someone has to stay on the damn farm to milk the cows and tend the crops.
“Or else everyone starves to death because there is no food.
“And that’s what it is like being the prince, a lot of the time. Milking the cows. Fertilizing the crops. There’s a lot of bullshit involved.Being the prince isn’t all royal balls and marrying princesses. It’s attending the ribbon cuttings and retirements. It’s smashing a perfectly good magnum of champagne against a ship to christen it and visiting the sick and wounded in hospital, every day. It’s looking serious and interested in whatever is on the damn schedule when you’d rather be at home reading a book or in a casino drinkingwith friends until you’re wasted. It’s somberly toasting trade delegations that may bring their shows and exhibitions and money to Monaco. It’s three to nine engagements a day, every day, including evenings and late nights and weekends and so-called holidays. Yes, a servant brings me tea in bed on a silver tray, but it’s at five o’clock every morning. They bring me a biscuit or two to tide me overuntil a scheduled breakfast meeting with some official delegation that is in Monaco on business, but I mustn’t eat too much because my abs are one of Monaco’s best publicity assets.”
He pats his flat stomach, and his dark blue tie flips over his fingers. “I’m not only the farmer, I’m also the prize-winning bull, trotted out for the fair.”
He shrugs one shoulder. His arms and torso do look muscledunder his suit. “And if you wonder why I know so much about farms when there is no farmland in Monaco, it’s because I am traipsed out to every fair and exhibition to award the ribbons and inspect the livestock. And I listen. That’s really my job: to listen, nod, and not be too stupid when I reply. There’s little chance of that, however. I am given scripts to which I must stick, lest I set offan international incident with a wayward remark.”
He places his whiskey on the coffee table, setting it back from the edge. You suspect that he has done this so it will not spill on his suit. There is no time in his schedule to change his clothes if they are wet and smell like liquor.
His next glance at you is sharp, his dark eyes staring at you from the corners. “No one ever asked if I wantedto be the prince. I was the first heir in line, and who wouldn’t want a life of extravagant luxury handed to them? I won’t lie, though. I did want the job. I’ve always wanted the job, from the time I was old enough to grasp that I had the chance to be the prince like my uncle was. I wanted to carry on the noble traditions of my house.” He gestures, waving at the ceiling and, you presume, some grandfuture. “I wanted to be the one to steer Monaco, promote our interests, and lead our people through this world and into a bright and shining tomorrow.”
His hand falls to his thigh and rests on the fine fabric of his suit, an expensive, well-cut suit like he wears every day of his life.
His grandiose plans seem to turn to anger as his handsome face hardens. “I wanted to be the Prince of Monaco,but no one else wanted it. They all see it as a burden, to hold the throne and do the duties. They’ve all run off with wealth such that their great-grandchildren will be disgustingly, idly rich. They have enough to drink or snort or jab themselves to death if they choose, or to jet around the world on their planes to have lunch in Paris, dinner in London, and midnight drinks in New York with beautiful,young gold-diggers hanging on them. But I’m holding the fort, quite literally, because I’m going to be the sovereign prince.”
He lifts his cut-crystal highball glass to drink again, and he’s almost melancholy now. “The handsome princes in fairy tales are supposed to be the good guys,” Pierre muses, “but they’re not, when you think about it. The handsome princes in the fairy tales are all rapingbastards. They go around kissing unconscious women. A woman can’t give consent if she’s unconscious, but that doesn’t stop the handsome prince. He kisses her anyway, and God knows what else. Who would stop him, after all, if he climbed right inside the glass sarcophagus, tossed up her skirt, and got it on right there in full view? No one, that’s who. No one at all would interfere. They would assumethat he had the right to do so because he is the prince. Divine right of kings, I suppose, or that ancient tradition, thedroit du seigneurorjus primae noctis,depending on how far back you want to go. Theright of the first night,where the king or prince or local, weak-chinned nobleman beds the bride on her wedding night before her husband does. That’s the nice way of saying it,beds the bride.We all knew what happened after he locked the door. They could probably hear her screaming for help. King Gilgamesh of Uruk insisted on his first night right in the poemGilgamesh,sleeping with any virgin woman or man he chose.
“It’s in there.
“Look it up.
“And then, of course, there’s the story of how my family obtained the throne of our little sliver of land. It wasn’t through brave andnoble conquest or being bestowed by a pope for godliness. No, we won it by treachery. In 1297, my ancestor François Grimaldi disguised himself as a monk and appealed for shelter at the fortress that guarded the harbor. He deceived a gate guard, convincing the man that he was only a pitiable monk and an innocent man of God. Once inside, he murdered the gullible guard, and he and his men captured thecastle, killing everyone inside.
“In the palace, there’s a statue of him, dressed in monk’s robes and holding a knife, that serves as a reminder of how we won it. We’ve held the headland over the harbor and the castle ever since. And that’s why we’re sovereign princes, because we will treacherously murder anyone who tries to take it away from us.”
He frowns at the glass of whiskey in his hand.“No wonder I’m such an asshole.”
