Monday 27 March 2023

A fairytale that has nothing to do with Scotland. Part 5

Part 4

Once upon a time the day of the gender reveal party finally arrived. Would Prince Hārūn ibn ʿImrān reach the promised land despite some evidence of his worshiping golden calves especially if they led up to golden thighs. Alternatively, would Princess Regan or Princess Cordelia be the choice of the Kingdom. Pink said that the successor to Queen Nancy would be a Queen, Blue said that it would be a King.

But immediately there was a dispute about the colours. Surely yellow was the colour of the kingdom even if it suggested how both Queen Nancy and King Paul had spent money even if they had shouted garde l’eau before chucking it out of the window onto the heads of their subjects. More importantly said Prince Hārūn there was really no such thing as a King, or a Queen and Kings could be revealed by pink balloons just as much as Queens

.

O sister, I’ll not reach my hand,

               Binnorie, O Binnorie;

And I’ll be heir of all your land


Some wondered in the kingdom whether Hārūn (aka. Goneril, short for Gonorrhoea) had received his nickname through clapping, eyeliner, gender fluidity, golden thighs or somewhere a little higher.

Outgoing King Paul agreed he was a non-binary husband who was just as much a wife to Queen Nancy as she was a King to him. Queen Nancy reflected on all of the super unleaded interim interdicts that she had used to try to keep from the Kingdom that Paul was a less than active husband, which had meant that he tended to play the role of Joseph to her Mary. Nancy’s revelations therefore had the same degree of miraculousness that originally had led Joseph to want to send Mary away, but unlike Joseph Paul had not received an explanation from a visiting angel. Nor had anyone else in the kingdom.

Nancy blamed Paul for the whole fall of the house of Piscium and she longed to ride off into the sunset to meet her Gaulish ambassador Saphotrix. But unfortunately, Nancy had proclaimed that mice could identify as horses and horses could identify as mice and so it came to pass that the horse that she chose to ride to Saphotrix was rather small and anyway she was just learning to drive it.

But how to get rid of Paul/Paula. He had been useful when it had become necessary to cease turning a Nelson’s eye and gather witnesses against Bad King Alan, but he had fatally missed rather than hit. The Padrino as Alan was affectionately known by those he forced to be devoted had survived and everyone had had to go to the mattresses, which had been rather awkward whether Paul had wanted to be Paula or not as she felt rather closer to his/her pene pasta whether he was she or not and whether the mattresses were hard or soft.

Now there was the question of some ducats that had been given to Nancy by some fools who thought she was really interested in splitting the kingdom rather than receiving the ducats, but these ducats had been spent on redecorating the palace and it was a very nice tasteful shade of pale pink and pale blue, which would suit whichever gender was revealed even if the new King pretended to like pink as much as blue, just as Crassus rather crassly liked both snails and oysters, but didn’t like Spartacus.

It was necessary that where the hit on Alan had miscarried it should now succeed on Paul who was the man who knew too much. The palace was filled with explosives, but to make absolutely sure Prince Hārūn was encouraged to help Nancy in treating Paul as if he were really King Duncan. “Is this a string I see before me, it’s loop before my hand” recited Hārūn hoping that his service to Lady MacPiscis would gain him a kingdom. But the whole thing was really overkill as the explosives alone sent King Paul/Queen Paula into the seventh heaven, where he received rather more than a thorn in his flesh as he landed some distance from the Palace in an orchard. Then again perhaps it was a poisoned apple that did for him. Turing and turing in the widening Corryvreckan of a kingdom.   

Queen Nancy left office with more secrets than anyone since another Queen who was named after the wife of Joseph and who eventually had her head chopped off not because anyone could prove she blew up her husband, but rather because she conspired with people Princess Cordelia rather disapproved of because they were not reformed and worshiped at the shrine of Romulus and Remus.

Whether ex Queen Nancy arrived at the same fate at the hands of perfidious Sasainn history as yet has not recorded. Nor has it told us why she turned on King Alan. Was she King Alan’s spurned lover. Did she know about King Alan’s harem where the methods of becoming friends (mating) were quite unlike Mary’s as they required no divine intervention? What made Nancy gather up all those who had been mates with Alan so many years later and how was it that quite so many former mates against him were not enough for the hit to succeed?

But Alan survived and was now pushing forward Princess Regan. Could she spring a surprise at the King or Queen reveal party? Even if she couldn’t, would Alan make a comeback? After all he was still 12 years younger than Joseph who sometimes didn’t know which way, he had to go to get off the stage and always forgot how it was he had gained a son outside the usual methods and indeed whether he had a son at all.

Cordelia thought Mary had something to do with Romulus and Remus and didn’t quite approve even if she loved her son. It was the Mass bit of the 25th that troubled her, but at least she was clear about who was a King and who was a Queen and that Nancys could not marry Nancys as it was bound to be barren.

And so, we waited. Would it be a balloon with pink dust that suggested that Cordelia or Regan had reached a runoff, or would the balloon have blue dust telling us that the King would be Hārūn?

As they waited Cordelia dreamed of the promised land, where everyone would chant psalms without musical accompaniment and no one would be trans, or gay or have sex when they were unmarried. She had a vision of John’s knocks at the door and how it opened on a land where Mary was a sinner for having an illegitimate child before she was married, and Queen Mary was a harlot not least because she worshipped at the shrine of the whore of Babylon, which suckled at a she wolf in a most disgusting and Romulusish way.

Hārūn dreamed of a land free from Sasainn which would allow him to establish the “House of Peace”, would turn Grotty Ferry into Andalucía and would reverse the temporary setbacks at Tours 732 and Wien 1683.

Regan dreamed of King Alan and how unjustly he had been accused when really, he was the undisputed hero of the kingdom and indeed, she would consider it a privilege to be part of his harem, not that there ever had been a harem, just mates mating, friends friending and cuddles cuddling as everyone slept sleepily.

So, the day had arrived. The subjects waited the result.

It turned out to be the best of times and the worst of times. Happy countries are all the same. Unhappy countries are ruled by King Hārūn.

The Secession Normally Possible Movement is less likely to succeed. But the kingdom will continue to be sucked down into the whirlpool. On the one hand half the subjects may rejoice at a useless king who will achieve nothing, but on the other we will suffer the damage of that uselessness.

A simple unlearned teller of tales has tried to tell you all I know. But I don’t know. I wasn’t there. I rely on rumour, on riddles and where possible reason.

Only three people have ever really understood the Piscis dynasty business – the Padrone, who is stricken – a former Breatannach ambassador, who has gone mad – and a defrocked reverend, who has forgotten how to tell us.

Someone needs to plod through it all or else 

we will all live unhappily ever after.


Part 6