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.
