Chapter 5

And so the world gathers to pay their respects and say goodbye to Prince August, taken suddenly and far too soon at the age of 23. Charismatic. Compassionate. August was Britain's beloved son, and he, like all the Royals loved the people with all his heart.

Graham stands staring out a window of the palace watching the crowd of people who have gathered to pay their respects to his older brother.

"God, how I loathe those people." He hears his uncle say as he comes up to stand next to him. "Draped in their football jerseys and false sentiments, I can practically smell them from here."

James is his father's twin brother. He was born moments after his father which made him second in line for the throne. James loathed being the spare and he made sure everyone knew it. Graham and Emma were not of their uncle or the offspring he produced.

Graham steps away from the window not wanting to listen to his uncle drone on and on. Emma steps up to the window and replaces him. She stares outside and watches the people who have gathered to pay their respects to August.

"I would have thought youwould be happy, dear Uncle. I mean, after all, you're one step closer to the throne. All you have to do is wait for your brother to die and then kill Liam… Oh, and kill me too, of course." She tells him with a smirk.

He turns to face her with a smile, "The drugs will do that and if not, the syphilis will drive you mad and they'll declare you unfit to rule. Either way, win, win." He retorts to his niece.

"Speaking of syphilis you probably should've had that whore of an ex-wife of yours checked before those two were born." She replies gesturing towards her cousins and his daughters.

Drisella and Anastasia walk into the room in awful looking hat wearing too much jewelry and makeup then is appropriate when mourning. James looks at his daughters with disgust.

"What's that smell? Is that your feet?" Emma and James overhear Drisella ask her sister across the room.

"I thought it was your fanny." Anastasia responds.

"It well could be in this boiler." Drisella replies.

Emma rolls her eyes at her ever charming cousins and returns to staring outside the window.

\*****/

Ruby walks into one of the sitting rooms in the palace where all the palace staff, royals, and dignitaries are gathered for day's events surrounding Prince August's funeral. Ruby spots Graham not far from her on her left and begins to walk quickly across the room to avoid him. He needs time to mourn and she would just bring unnecessary drama into his life.

"Hey." Graham call out to her causing her to stop and turn to face him. "Are you trying to get away from me?"

"I'm sorry, I didn't… I was trying to be respectful." She tells him.

He looks down for a moment before looking up into her eyes. "They wrote a speech for me. To give to the press. 'We lost more than a man or a Prince. We lost a beacon. The kind on which a nation relies to confer legitimacy and create unity.'" He tells her sardonically. "My brother dies and they script my feelings."

"Well, no matter what, I know he'll be proud of you today." She tells him before turning to walk away from him.

"Hey." He says stopping her in her tracks. She turns back to face him again. "Let's have dinner sometime." He tells her.

"Are you asking me out before your brother's funeral?" She asks him.

"It's my first non-scripted moment of the day." He responds while looking down at his shoes.

She smiles and laughs quietly at his response. "I like it. You should go off script more often. Good luck."

"Thank you." He tells her before she walks away down one of the palace hallways.

\*****/

Graham watches as Ruby turns and walks away from his down a palace hallway. Asking her out at his brother's funeral, what was he thinking? Things felt so different with her, he did not know what to say or how to act. He sees his mother walking towards him out of the corner of his eye. This could not be good.

"Really? Poor Elsa." His mother says chastising him for his taste in women.

"Poor Elsa broke up with me, Mom." He reminds her.

"Well, can you blame her? Might I remind you the entire world will be watching you today? You'll give your quote to the reporters, you'll acknowledge the crowd, and you'll escort me to the car. And try not to sleep with anyone along the way." She whispers the last sentence into his ear.

Graham watches his mother walk away and looks around at the people in the room with him. This is going to be a long day, he thinks with a sigh.

\*****/

After an hour of everyone making small talk in one of the sitting rooms of the palace, Tamara and Albert begin to notify everyone that the procession out of the palace to August's funeral will begin shortly. Everyone grabs their coats and hats and prepares of the procession. His mother and father will lead the procession out of the palace, followed by him and his sister, then his uncle and cousins, and lastly the security detail and Ruby will exit the palace.

Graham follows behind his parents and stands next to his sister on the steps of the palace. He stares out at the crowd of somber faces staring back at him. He steps away from his sister and towards Ruby on the steps. He looks up at her and she turns to look at him. He takes a deep breath and walks down the steps to the reporter to his waiting for his statement.

"Prince Graham, with heavy hearts we offer our condolences to you as a grieving nation." The reporter tells him before moving the microphone towards him.

Graham takes a deep breath to settle himself before speaking. "One of the great things about my brother was he wasn't afraid to be his own man. I'll miss him." He tells the reporter going off the script the palace had provided him for today.

He walks back to the stairs to escort his mother to the car. The rest of the family and staff move to continue the procession as planned. Graham sits down next to his sister in the back of the car who is already drinking a glass of scotch.

"My God, You wretched brats." She says as she lifts the veil of her hat off of her face. "Your brother, my first born son, and you can't find the decorum, the civility, to honor his memory. What is wrong with you?"

"Was that scripted to?" Emma asks his mother.

"We script you because we can't trust either of you to come up with a reasonably coherent thought." She responds to her daughter.

"You know, God forbid, we appear incoherent when our brother dies. Or sad. You might try it, Queen." Emma bites back.

This conversation is all background noise as Graham watches his father outside of the car window shake hands with the people who gathered outside of the palace to grieve.

"You are a little bitch." She tells her daughter. "I'm in inconsolable." She grabs a mirror from her purse and starts to fix her lipstick.

"Really?" Graham asks their mother raising his voice. "Because our dad is out there genuinely grieving the death of his son, while you're in here worrying about the family's image and topping off on the Botox."

Mary Margaret leans forward and slaps her son across the face. "At least I'm not slumming with the help." She says to him.

Emma moves to look at her brother's face. He moves and gestures for her to stop. He turns his head and continues to stare out the car window.

"And she's so plain. I think Richard the third had it right. Lock the kids in the Tower and be done with them." She continues to say as she fixes her lipstick.

"Maybe Henry the Eighth had it right. He just killed his wives. One of them because she looked fat." He turns his head as he speaks so he can direct the last comment at his mother.

Mary Margaret sighs. "They always take the good ones." She replies shaking her head at him.

"How did August die?" He asks her. "All they'll tell us was that it was a military accident."

"That's all you need to know." She tells her son.

"Whatever it was good for him. If you ask me, August was the lucky one." Emma whispers while staring out the window of the car.

Graham watches as his father continues to shakes the hands of the people, his people. He watches as a father holding a young boy lifts his son over the fence and the boy runs towards the King. The King bend down on one knee to be eye level with the boy as the boy hands him a plush of a British royal guardsman. The boy steps forward and the King moves to take him into his arms and lifts him up as he stands. He turns around as he rubs the boys back up and down.

He steps back towards the father and hands him his son back. The King walks towards the cars and gets inside. The King sits down next to his wife as the car begins to pull away from the palace. Graham stares out the window of the car not wanting to look his father or his mother in the eyes.

\*****/

Later that night, the entire family gathered in the large dining hall of the palace for dinner. David, James, Mary Margaret, Emma, Graham, Drisella, and Anastasia all sat down for a meal together for the first time in a long time and Emma is dreading it. She could tolerate her family in small amounts of time but all of them together at dinner was not her idea of a good time.

Everyone is quiet around the table and the only noise is Drisella and Anastasia typing away on their cellphones. Emma could not believe how thick they were sometimes. Graham clears his throats and break the silence.

"I was thinking about taking some time off from school. Check up on August's charities." Graham says directing his comment at his father.

"I would have thought your studies would be a welcome distraction." Their mother chimes in before sipping her wine.

"Speaking of welcome distractions…" Emma says as she notices Ruby step into the dining hall.

Her mother is going to love this and she cannot wait to see her reaction.

"I asked a guest to join us." Graham announces with a smile on his face.

Ruby hesitantly walks towards Graham as he stands up and gestures for her to sit in the empty seat next to him.

"Sit here." He says to her.

Under the table, Anastasia passes Emma some ecstasy which she hides in her hand waiting for the opportune moment to take it.

"Mom, Dad, this is Ruby." Graham tells them.

"Ruby Gold, artist in residence." David comments with a smile.

"For his majesty's silver jubilee, I presented him with a very serious work of art." Ruby tells them.

Emma uses this moment of distraction to place the pill in her mouth and chases it with a sip of her wine.

"I can recall, you were working in the paste and yarn medium at the time." David replies with a smile.

Ruby laughs, "I retired shortly thereafter."

"What's your focus now?" He asks her.

"Art history at Churchill." She responds.

"Ruby's doing a join honors degree. Art history and dance." Graham tells them.

"Which is grand news, indeed, as the Prime Minister himself recently expressed a concern about the shortage of frolicking art historians." Mary Margaret retorts taking another sip of her wine. "I'm sure you'll be twerking your way to a great future."

"Well, she is dining with the future King of England, so she's got that going for her." Emma chimes in not letting her mother walk over this poor Ruby girl. She knows how her mother can be and she does not want to see a good girl like Ruby get turned away because her mother is a bitch. And she definitely does not want to see another Elsa come into Graham's life.

"It's good that you're here, Ruby. You can give us the common point of view. How is the public faring in the wake of August's death?" James asks her.

Between her mother and her uncle, Emma is sure she will never see Ruby again.

"I think we'll go." Graham replies. Graham moves to get up but stopes when Ruby opens her mouth to speak.

"Robert carried himself with a nobility and grace that was easy to admire. He was inspiring and he was ours. But I can only speak from this commoner's perspective." Ruby responds.

"You say he was yours, but you're American." James says pointing out the obvious.

"My mom was American but I was born here and raised in the States because it was…" Ruby says.

"Because it was safer." David says interrupting Ruby. "Please stay."

Graham and Ruby lean back into their chairs.

"I appreciate your kind words about August, Ruby. I do. August joined the military because I did. Like my father before me and his father before him and so on. Robert was killed by tradition." David states.

"He died a hero's death." James adds. "A noble death."

"Which merely means he's dead. Why?" David asks his brother.

"I seemed to have lost my appetite." Mary Margret announces as she places her napkin on the table.

"I think you'll want to stay to hear this next part, my love." David tells her. "I think you all will. So put away your phones and your drugs and your lust for the server's sponge and pay attention. I am considering asking Parliament for a referendum. To abolish the monarchy."

Everyone at the table is quiet for a few moments while they contemplate what abolishing the monarchy would mean for them and of course one of her thick cousin's has to open their mouth and ask a stupid question.

"Erm… What does that mean exactly?" Drisella asks breaking the silence.

"Umm…er… that means you'll have to get a job." Emma replies mimicking her cousins nasally voice.

"A vote, idiot of my loins, to eradicate us. To erase us." James tells his daughters.

"Yeah, but who votes?" Anastasia asks.

"The people." James replies with an eye roll.

"Yeah, but they can't do that. I mean they're the people. And we are like, us." Anastasia states.

Emma rolls her eyes and the stupidity of her cousin. She still cannot fathom that is somehow related to that.

"They can and they have. Ever heard of America?" James asks them.

Both Drisella and Anastasia look like they are going to be sick at the mention of America.

"But I do not want to be American." Drisella states. "I do not want to walk around like Justin Bieber with no shirt on and my trouser hanging off."

"He's Canadian." Emma tells them with another roll of her eyes.

"Even worse." Anastasia states. "They can't make us Canadian can they, Daddy? Canadian and poor just like Justin Bieber."

The British monarchy always has been and always will be." James reassures them.

"'Always will be' killed August." David says raising his voice at his brother.

"The people need the monarchy." James replies.

"The people need bread and jobs and a decent wage. They don't need us." David tells his brother.

"With all due respect, my King…. How would you know?" James asks him.

That comments from her uncle silences her father and makes the rest of family dinner very awkward for the rest of the family and Ruby.

A/N. Really happy this is the longest chapter to date! Please let me know what you think!

Please remember this is AU and all character choices are made to move plot forward in the story.