Once upon a time there was a secret. Queen Nancy
otherwise known as Nathan knew what it was. King Paul otherwise known as Paula
knew what it was too. But no one except perhaps ex-King Alan knew just what the
secret was.
Queen Nancy had been forced to abdicate rather
hurriedly because of the secret. King Paul’s task was to arrange the succession
so that the secret would be kept. But the task was proving harder than either
had foreseen.
 |
Either their mantles of green or else their maidenhead |
Prince Hārūn ibn ʿImrān had been useless at every job
he had ever tried. When he had tried to drive a camel, it had been discovered that
he neither had a licence for camel driving nor was his camel insured. When he
had married his first princess it had turned out that she was a bad princess
because Hārūn’s eye had wandered and found that he desired another princess.
Worse it was not merely his eyes that had wandered, but his hands and other
parts of the body too. But still Hārūn blamed his princess rather than himself.
When Hārūn decided to make private conversations hate
crimes, he forgot about all the hateful things he had said to his new princess
about the House of David and all those who dwelt beneath its star. But this
wasn’t the secret that Queen Nancy was worried about.
Hārūn could be trusted to keep the secret even though
he wasn’t actually sure what it really was. There were a number of alternatives.
1 King Alan had groomed Queen Nancy when she was rather too young and certainly much younger than him. Their love child had become either Prince Hārūn (aka Goneril short for Gonorrhea), Princess Regan or Princess Cordelia.
2 When Queen Nancy was still princess Nancy, she had
witnessed King Alan creating a harem in the Butter Palace, and this harem was supplied
with copious amounts of butter so as to make every entrance and exit as slippery
as possible. The Last Tango in the Butter Palace involved so much slipping and
sliding that Alan on occasion put his hand where it ought not to have slid and
entered and exited without due care and attention. But Nancy kept all of this
secret because she hoped that King Alan would lead the Kingdom to be a true
kingdom that fought and died for its wee bit curds and whey.
3 When Princess Nancy succeeded King Alan, she worried
that King Alan was plotting to overthrow her. So, Queen Nancy gathered all the
witnesses from the Butter Palace and while pretending to know nothing about the
investigation tried to have former King Alan sent to the dungeon where he would
be stretched on the rack until he begged to be allowed an ending like his heroes
Wallace and Gromit. But oddly Nancy failed to get Alan sent to the dungeon and
its delicious tortures. For the first time she was found fallible. The judges
like Robert Mitchum in Out of the Past could see the frame and Alan was out of
the picture free to go to Albania.
4 Queen Nancy and King Paul had been very careful that
no one knew what went on inside the Treasury of the Kingdom. No one knew how
many people lived in the kingdom, how many had died, how many had left. No one
knew about the taxes paid by whoever lived in the kingdom. So, no one knew if a
little bit might have gone to a different purpose than the one for which it was
originally intended. But there was a rather a nasty word that some judges might
associate with money going missing and it just might possibly lead former King
Alan to take revenge with one of his love children.
But there was nothing to worry about surely. Hārūn was
supported by every important person in the kingdom. Princess Cordelia had
self-destructed from the beginning by telling the truth about what she thought about
Nancy becoming Nathan and Nancy forming a close attachment with the Kingdom of
Lesbos, while Paul or Paula forming a close attachment with Gaia sometimes
spelled Gaya.
But the people trusted Cordelia and thought her honest
and sincere with a deep faith, while they began to see Hārūn as fair and false
and unable to be honest even about himself.
Princess Regan openly questioned the honestly of the
succession process. Princess Cordelia joined in. Prince Hārūn agreed that it
was necessary to know how many voters there were, but even in this he was insincere
because he already knew the number because he had been told it by Nancy and
Paul.
By now everyone in the Kingdom knew that Queen Nancy
and King Paul had created a Kingdom that was at least as corrupt as the slippery
sliding ways of King Alan. The Secession Normally Possible ideal that had
driven both Queen Nancy and King Paul began to be associated with corruption
and secrets that were hidden and the kingdom gradually became dissatisfied with
the House of Piscium whether of the Acipenseridae variety or of the Actinopterygii
kind.
If Nancy and Paul could not be trusted to fairly
create King Hārūn then they obviously could not be trusted with anything.
Princess Regan and Princess Cordelia while being from differing
Wings of the Secession Normally Possible Movement found common cause in
defeating Prince Hārūn not least because both wished the secret at the heart of
Secession Normally Possible to be revealed. What was the nature of Queen Nancy’s
relationship with King Alan? What did Nancy cover up and why? How did Nathan
and Paula decide each day whether they would be King or Queen and how was this
connected with the secrets of the population of the kingdom and how much these
plebians had donated to their betters and for what purpose.
All or nothing will be revealed as an expectant nation
awaits its new monarch. Depending on the result we will all live happily or unhappily
ever after.
 |
Regan, Gonorrhea and Cordelia |
