A/N: This story is a sequel of sorts to the first-season episode "King for a Day/Instant Family" (primarily the first story arc), which first aired May 6, 1978. I had an idea from Mishee about posting transcribed episodes adapted slightly to accommodate Leslie's presence, and I'm probably going to do that under my other account on this site. PDXWiz had a related idea about writing sequels to select episodes, which is nothing new for me—see "Smoke Screen", "Roarke's Family" and "My Friend the Mermaid"! There are other characters I'd like to explore in more depth, from episodes I especially enjoyed, and I expect to be doing that in the future as well. Thanks to both of you for the inspiration. Christian's discoveries in this story will tie in with a storyline in my current FictionPress tale For Love of a Princess. Thanks, too, as ever, to Harry2, jtbwriter and Bishop T. (Kyryn, are you still out there??)
§ § § -- October 2, 2005
Leslie was very excited about meeting the ten-o'clock charter, because Christian was on it. He'd e-mailed her the previous Thursday about leaving on the last day of September; but between the lengths of the various flights and the fact that he would be crossing the International Date Line, he wasn't due in till now. She was glad there weren't many other guests on this flight's manifest; she just wanted to grab her husband and bring him straight to the main house, for the triplets were there and of course, she herself was working.
As was Christian's habit, he let the other passengers deplane ahead of him before making his own way off. He lit up at sight of her and half jogged down the landing ramp from the hatch, putting his laptop case on the ground beside him to hug her hard. "How're you feeling?" she asked, breathing him in as she always did.
"Tired, but I'm excited," said Christian. He drew back and grinned at her. "You know Anna-Laura's been working on the research she needs to do so she can write Mother's biography. Well, she couldn't resist reading the diaries before she starts the real work, and I had to get my own hands on them. I have two of them with me, and as she completes her own reading she'll ship them here for me to go through."
"That sounds really interesting," said Leslie, caught up in his enthusiasm. "Maybe you wouldn't mind reading them aloud to me?"
He squeezed her. "Yes, I think I will—Anna-Laura suggested it, and I thought it sounded like a wise idea. Incidentally, we never did find the other ones." Christian had stayed another three weeks in Lilla Jordsö after Leslie's return to Fantasy Island, wanting to help his sister with the work that needed to be done prior to starting her manuscript for the late Queen Susanna's life story. After some fruitless searching in the castle archives (which, as Christian had told Leslie in one e-mail message, "truly were in just as horrible shape as I'd feared"), he and Anna-Laura had done some hunting around and unearthed a box of Susanna's diaries in a hidden storage compartment in the closet of the castle's royal suite. However, when Christian had gone through them, he'd discovered that they began with the eleventh year Susanna had kept a diary. The first ten years were absent, and the last Leslie had heard, they were still missing.
"Oh wow," she said sympathetically. "And imagine trying to look through that enormous place for ten little books."
"Exactly so," Christian agreed, sighing. "The others are going to continue looking, but I didn't think it was right for me to remain any longer and leave you juggling your work schedule and three overactive toddlers."
Leslie smiled as he picked up his laptop case. "Well, I'm definitely glad you're home. Hey, listen, speaking of queens…next weekend we have fellow royalty visiting. I imagine your father might have been at least politically friendly with the king and queen of Carpathia, if not personal bosom buddies."
"We rarely saw the Carpathian royals, but yes, our countries are allies. Small-country brotherhood, you know." Christian grinned again in a self-deprecating manner. "Prince Miroslav is their only child—Roald's age, I think."
"You'll have a chance to get acquainted with him, or reacquainted, as the case might be. He's our biggest guest next weekend, and we're hosting his wedding."
"That'll certainly keep you busy. I expect Julie is hosting the wedding, as she does so many others." Christian put his laptop case in one of the triplets' car seats and actually strapped it in to keep it in place, then affected an overly haughty look when he caught Leslie laughing. "That's fragile, you know. Anyway…"
"Yeah, well…" Leslie settled into the driver's seat and Christian swung himself into the passenger side next to her. "Yes, Julie's involved all right, but only with the catering. The wedding itself will be on the same green where we had our wedding reception."
Christian rolled his eyes teasingly. "I can only hope Mariki has no part in this one. On the other hand, Miroslav is liable to welcome the sort of circus that surrounds most royal weddings. And of course, the press will be here as well, won't they?"
"Afraid so, my love, sorry." She saw his disgruntled look and added, "Hey, it'll make Father and Fantasy Island look good…" Christian burst out laughing in spite of himself. "We don't have to grant interviews or anything, we're just wedding guests."
"For after all, it just wouldn't look right for two of the most visible people on the island not to be there," he injected good-naturedly, "particularly when one of them is the host's assistant."
"You got it, my love," Leslie said and grinned, patting his arm. "You're finally getting a real feel for how things work around here."
"I know, I know." Christian relented and curled a hand around her knee as she pulled out onto the Ring Road going toward the main house. "To be honest, I do think it will be a great assist for the business. I wonder how Mr. Roarke got the request."
Leslie chuckled with remembrance. "It came the day after I got home from Lilla Jordsö—cream-colored stationery with the Carpathian flag and the royal family's crest at the top of the sheet and on the back of the envelope, and the entire text of the letter in handwritten calligraphy. It had the signatures of both Queen Aurora and Prince Miroslav."
"Hm, that's a keeper, then," Christian chuckled. "It should be a very interesting fantasy, and I look forward to meeting that young man. But at the moment I'm interested in just two things—seeing the children, and then getting some sleep."
"Don't tell me you didn't sleep on the flights," said Leslie.
"That's the problem—I slept too much on the flights. I was awake from Sundborg to London, but then I slept from London to New York, again from New York to Los Angeles, and yet again half the way from Los Angeles to Honolulu. Then I was wide awake the rest of that flight…and all night last night."
Leslie winced with sympathy. "Did you sleep on the charter?"
"No, I knew I wouldn't, so I bought a magazine at the airport. I think it's beginning to catch up to me, though." Christian yawned while she pulled into the Main House Lane and around to the fountain. "Don't worry, though, my darling, I won't neglect you. It's only that I know you're working, so I'll keep myself occupied with the triplets and try to nap when they do. At least that way I'll have enough energy to say hello to you the way I truly want to." He smiled a particular smile at her, and she felt a ribbon of excitement curl through her, knowing exactly what it meant.
§ § § -- October 8, 2005
"There he is," said Roarke, "the son and only child of King Albert and Queen Aurora: Crown Prince Miroslav of Carpathia, twenty-five years old last month and just about to become a married man." He chuckled softly. "I wonder if the young man is aware of the weekend his parents spent here, many years ago."
"King Albert and Queen Aurora were here?" Leslie asked in surprise.
"Indeed they were—in the spring of 1978, a few months before you were orphaned." He grinned at her. "It's quite a story, one I think both you and Christian would enjoy hearing, if Christian isn't already aware of it."
"I look forward to that, then," Leslie said. "So who's the lucky queen-to-be?"
"As a matter of fact, Prince Miroslav took a cue from Christian, and has been keeping her identity under wraps until the day of the wedding—which is tomorrow. He tells me she is a Carpathian national, but that's all the information he gave. She will arrive on the evening's last charter, to help retain her cover."
Christian was waiting in Roarke's study when he and Leslie returned from the plane dock within the half hour. "So Prince Miroslav has arrived, then?" he asked, looking up from a playful tug-of-war with Tobias over a talking plastic steering wheel. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the contraption's endless babble of phrases such as "Vroom! Vroom!" and "It's time to go to the store" and "Uh-oh, slow down, there's a police car behind you!" Christian and Leslie had found that Camille was to blame for it; it had been one of Tobias' numerous birthday gifts back in June.
"Good grief, who brought that silly thing?" Leslie groaned, rolling her eyes.
"I don't know," Christian grunted.
Roarke laughed. "It sounds to me as if the voice is dying; perhaps the battery is getting low, and you two can have some peace. To answer your question, Christian, yes, the prince is here. He needs to be married before his coronation ceremony, which will take place in less than two weeks in Carpathia's capital city."
"Why the rush?" Christian asked. "Does Carpathia have a law that states a monarch must be married before he's crowned?"
"No, but there's the question of providing an heir to the throne," Roarke said. "Since King Albert's death eight years ago, Queen Aurora has ruled the country; but when Miroslav reached his majority the year after his father's passing, he did not yet feel ready to assume his duties as the monarch and asked his mother to continue her reign. In the interim, he completed his studies and received a degree, and now he feels prepared to take over from his mother. And I have it directly from Queen Aurora that she is more than ready to retire."
Christian and Leslie both laughed, just as Tobias finally let go of the toy. "Well, then," said the prince, "I hope everything goes off as planned. Tobias, son of mine, I know perfectly well what you see in this thing, but I'm afraid you'd better show a little respect for your grandfather's work and give it a rest."
"Mine," Tobias announced, eyeing his father with a stubborn scowl on his small face. The triplets, now fifteen months old, had filled out enough that they were showing their resemblance to one parent or the other. In fact all three of them favored Christian more than Leslie, but Tobias had kept her blue eyes where his sisters had their father's hazel ones, and their faces had developed hints of the shape of Leslie's. Right now, though, Tobias was proving that he'd inherited his father's stubborn streak, to Christian's consternation.
Leslie intervened. "I know it's yours," she said, catching her son's attention, "but right now you need to leave it alone." She took the toy from Christian, who looked more than glad to hand it over to her. "I'll take it upstairs. Where are the girls?"
"I believe Ingrid has them," said Roarke. "You might bring them down if you like. I understand Miroslav is interested in meeting the children; he knew I would be introducing him to you."
"He'll be sorry," said Leslie wryly, earning laughs from her husband and father before chuckling and trotting upstairs with Tobias' toy. Christian hefted Tobias onto his lap and began to tickle the little boy, successfully distracting him. It was just then that the door opened and a young man entered, pausing in the inner foyer to watch Christian and Tobias playing together.
Roarke saw him first. "Your Highness, please, come in! Is there anything we can get for you? My daughter will be back in another moment."
"Thank you, Mr. Roarke, but no," said Prince Miroslav, stepping down into the study and approaching a chair, still watching Christian and Tobias. "I'll wait till later for any refreshment." He cast Roarke a quick smile, but his attention was on the princes.
Leslie came down then, a step at a time, holding Karina's and Susanna's hands as they took each step with a strangely uncertain eagerness. "There you go, good girls," she praised them. "We're almost there…good for you, you did it!"
"I'm surprised they didn't insist on crawling down backwards," Miroslav commented with a grin. Leslie looked up in surprise, and Roarke laughed.
"Too often that's precisely what they do," he said, amused. "Your Highness, my daughter Leslie, my granddaughters Susanna and Karina, my grandson Tobias, and my son-in-law, Prince Christian of Lilla Jordsö."
Christian put Tobias back on the floor and arose, shaking hands with Miroslav. "So we meet at last," he said with a smile. "I understand you're here for more than a mere getaway from the stresses of preparing to take a crown."
"Yes, I am," said Miroslav, nodding. "To tell you the truth, Prince Christian, I'm more worried about pulling off this wedding than I am about being crowned. But I'm assured by my mother that if anyone can do it in the short time I have, it's Mr. Roarke."
"Yes, I heard your parents were here before," Leslie put in, taking Karina and Susanna over to the tea table. "I can't wait to hear the story. Come on, girls, climb up here, okay? You can do it…that's it."
Miroslav chuckled, watching the little girls struggle onto the loveseat. "My mother hasn't said much about it, so I'm curious myself. Your children seem to be very good at climbing."
"When they want something, they find a way to get it," said Christian. "It can be very wearying dealing with them, but they're ours, and we love them."
"I'm hoping for that experience myself one day," Miroslav said. "Fortunately it need not be a boy to inherit the throne. My father saw to it that Carpathia's male-only succession law was changed before I was born." He looked at Roarke. "If you don't mind, Mr. Roarke, I too would like to hear about what happened when my parents were here."
"Very well," Roarke agreed, joining the others at the table. They settled down, with Leslie sitting between the girls, Christian with Tobias back on his lap, and Roarke and Miroslav in the other two chairs. "Now, in the late spring of 1978, I had a guest with a fairly common fantasy. He was a plumber named Ernie Miller, who hailed from the American state of Kansas. He'd grown understandably tired of the drudgery of the workingman's life he lived, and decided he wanted to be royalty—just for a weekend. So I set him up as the king of a small country, and he found himself immediately being deferred to, paid great respect, treated as born royalty. He was enjoying it greatly—and then he met his queen.
"Her arrival was very well timed, actually, for he had just met a diplomat from a neighboring country who clearly had several issues on his mind. She rescued him quite nicely from what could have been a very embarrassing situation, and once they had a chance to speak out of the presence of other ears, they began to get along quite well together.
"That evening they attended a small formal party together, attended by diplomats from assorted other countries who were here that weekend as well. There was dinner and dancing—the usual sorts of things you find so deadly dull, Christian." Roarke grinned at his son-in-law, who chuckled good-naturedly at the gentle jibe. "But something about the way the diplomat from the neighboring country acted tipped off Mr. Miller, and he confronted the queen and me and insisted on knowing exactly what was going on. At that point we had no choice, Queen Aurora and I. We brought him back here to the main house and handed him a history book about the country of Carpathia, containing portraits of the current ruling king and queen. Mr. Miller was quite shocked to see that he was an exact lookalike to King Albert, and wanted to know what the story was."
Miroslav was sitting upright, his eyes enormous. "He didn't realize that he was standing in the place of an actual living king?"
"No—as with most people outside Europe, he had never heard of Carpathia. But, however actual the king may have been, he was no longer living. He had recently been killed in a boating accident that Queen Aurora strongly suspected was not an accident at all. She was trying to keep the king's death a secret, for if word got out, the larger country with which it shares a substantial border would then have the right to annex Carpathia, in the way that France can annex Monaco if ever the latter principality has no heir to the throne."
"So this Ernie Miller was…a stand-in," Miroslav said slowly.
"Yes," Roarke said, nodding. "Queen Aurora was desperate to keep the three million subjects out from under the rule of the tyranny that presided over the larger country, which as I am sure you've all guessed by now was a satellite of the former Soviet Union. She felt that the tyrant in question had sent the diplomat with whom Mr. Miller was constantly dealing to kill the real King Albert—to set up the boat accident in order to do away with him. They had had no children, so should it be found that King Albert was in fact deceased, Carpathia would merely become a province of the Soviet satellite country."
Miroslav nodded grimly. "I recall learning in school that a takeover was narrowly avoided a few years before I was born. So they proved that the king was alive, then?"
"No, in fact, King Albert truly had perished in that accident," Roarke said. "If Mr. Miller were willing, he could step into the king's shoes long enough to fool the world into believing that Albert had survived the accident, long enough to hope that this tyrant would be replaced in the satellite nation's upcoming elections and different, friendlier, policies to go into place.
"Unfortunately, Mr. Miller was very angry. He felt that he was being used because of his fantasy, and at first refused to carry on with the charade. But later he changed his mind and played the role of King Albert so well—with the help of Queen Aurora's expert advice, of course—that the tyrant's diplomat was fooled into believing that the accident, which he had in fact arranged himself, had failed to kill the king, and was forced to retreat and to inform his government that Albert still lived."
Christian looked amazed. "That's interesting. Most of us went on an official state visit to Carpathia in June 1978, led on by my parents and accompanied by everyone except my sister Anna-Laura and her husband, as they were dealing with my infant niece Cecilia and didn't want to travel with her yet." He looked wistfully at Leslie. "I'd been married to Johanna for almost a year at the time of our visit, and I can still remember how eager she was to go with us and pass herself off as a princess. I wouldn't have gone, but Father refused to entertain my balking—what he called my 'infantile temper tantrums'—and announced that I was going, like it or not." Leslie grinned, and he rolled his eyes playfully and addressed the room at large again. "In any case, you were right, my Rose, my father was well acquainted with the Carpathian royal family. Albert was a partier and loved to have a good time, to the point of selfishness and the neglect of his country's well-being. He used to show up every year at our royal Christmas balls.
"Anyhow, Father said after we'd been there a full day that Albert must have grown up since the last time he'd seen him, which I presume was at the previous year's Christmas ball. He was very impressed by Albert's new down-to-earth manner and maturity, and by his generous hospitality. But it never occurred to any of us that it was because it wasn't even the same man. Mr. Roarke, wherever you found this Ernie Miller, I have to commend you. You did Carpathia a tremendous favor, and no one's ever really known about it, except for you and Queen Aurora."
Roarke smiled and caught Miroslav's stunned stare. "So my father, King Albert, was really no king at all."
"On the contrary, Miroslav, your father was a very competent and benevolent king. Your mother continued the charade throughout your father's reign because it was necessary; otherwise there would have been a great scandal, and the repercussions would have been felt for decades afterward. King Albert, the so-called 'real' king, was decidedly unfit for the role, and the marriage between him and your mother was loveless, as I understood it. When your father became King Albert, Carpathian fortunes changed very much for the better, and so did your mother's lot in life. She and your father fell in love, and you were born of that love. I believe you have much to be grateful for, when you think of the alternative."
"But my mother lied to me," Miroslav persisted.
"How?" Roarke asked. "By failing to tell you of all these events? She and your father were married in a very quiet, private ceremony in the Carpathian capital, and equally in private, he was formally invested as the king of Carpathia by a bare handful of people whom Queen Aurora trusted implicitly. It was necessary, so that if anyone—particularly the tyrant of your next-door neighbor, or his puppet diplomat—should question the legitimacy of the king's right to rule, his veracity could be conclusively proven. Fortunately it wasn't necessary; as Queen Aurora had hoped, elections that summer put the tyrant out of office and instated a man who had a much more generous attitude towards his people and Carpathia."
Miroslav was still scowling, and Leslie said gently, "She did what she had to do, Miroslav. Otherwise Carpathia as you know it wouldn't exist, she'd be in exile somewhere, and you might very well have never been born."
"Yet my blood isn't fully royal," Miroslav muttered, sounding betrayed.
Christian laughed aloud, startling him. "Because you were the offspring of a queen and a man who was really a commoner? I thought it was public knowledge that my own mother was born a commoner. She became a princess upon marrying my father, and later when he inherited Lilla Jordsö's throne, she was his queen. I am their child. Does being born of one royal parent and one commoner parent make me any less royal?"
"It happens a lot," said Leslie. "I was born a commoner, but my husband is a prince, and all three of my children are royalty. Just because I wasn't born to some king somewhere, does that reduce my children's right to call themselves princesses and a prince?"
"It's better this way," said Christian, grinning. "Mr. Roarke, you'd have quite the laugh if you knew what they teach our family in Royal Comportment classes about the vital importance of marrying outside the family. To this day I can still remember the stories about all the horrific deformities suffered by the offspring of first cousins who married each other and whose respective parents were often fairly closely related, because it was such a big thing to marry 'within the bloodline' in centuries past. There's still quite a bit of royalty out there, ruling or not, but not enough to prevent the eventual appearance of science-fiction-style diseases and caricaturish physical deformities if royals married only other royals. At least partly thanks to Queen Victoria, most of them are somewhat distantly related anyway." He smiled at Miroslav, but Leslie could see that his friendly demeanor had cooled a bit; he refused to suffer bigots. "And don't forget, no one likes a snob."
Miroslav was staring open-mouthed at Christian; when silence fell in the room, he blinked and looked away. "Perhaps," he mumbled, then cleared his throat. "But you must give me time to think all this over. I never knew…" He focused on Roarke. "When is my mother scheduled to arrive?"
"This afternoon," Roarke replied.
"When she does get here, send her directly to me. I want to talk to her," Miroslav said brusquely and stood up. "Please excuse me." He strode out without looking back.
"Well," said Leslie after a few stunned seconds had elapsed.
Christian shook his head. "Don't feel too sorry for him. He's had the facts laid out before him, and he'll just have to face them."
Roarke smiled then, in that mysterious, knowing way of his, catching their attention. "But don't be quite so quick to judge either, my dear Christian, for the young man has a surprise of his own up his sleeve." His smile broadened. "A very big one…if unwitting. Not only that, but something tells me it will be the first of many surprises you'll receive."