Page 126 of Good Losers (Lochkelvin Academy)

“No,” Luke says, glancing away with an expression of guilt. “I should do. I know I should. But Mother would put her foot down in an instant. She would say no. She would carefully guide us out of this, tell us to weather all storms, promise the best for us when she gets full control. But…”

He sighs, touching the short layer of fuzz across his scalp, as though expecting a more ample mane to toy with.

“She’ll never get full control again. You’re right, Jessa. This isn’t going to change. Five, ten, fifteen years down the line, this will continue to engulf us. This fight will still rage on. No. There’s no going back to the pre-leak days. There is no route out of this unscathed, unless I, as the future head of the Royal family, abdicate. And then the line dies.”

“And Becca?”

Luke’s full mouth twists. “Will follow her brother, if she knows what’s good for her.” He glances down at the modest slip of paper between his fingers. “I wish she were here with me,” he murmurs, and for the first time all day he sounds somewhat emotional instead of formal, strained. “I wish I could keep her safe from this horrid, angry world… Such a sweet girl. Spirited. Creative. No head for politics. She’d have been eaten alive.”

A smile flickers at the corner of his lips. “She always said to me she wanted to live in an artists’ commune. Can you imagine? The people’s princess, in her paint-covered overalls, painting murals in a shabby little homestead? Becca was always allowed more freedom than me to experiment. To be herself. The privilege of being born an hour later. That’s the difference between servitude to the crown and the ability to be yourself: sixty-four minutes. My birth shielded her from being the country’s slave and political pawn. My birth gave her her own identity.” He pauses, rotating the paper restlessly in his hands. “No. If Becca has any sense, if she’s still the girl I know her to be, then she’ll abdicate as soon as I do. She’ll just be incredibly annoyed that I forced her hand.”

I nod, though it still seems, somewhat, like a risk. That abdicating without consulting his family could be potentially dangerous.

Luke catches my eye and appears to understand what I’m thinking.

“I’ve never had a say in what I want,” he says quietly. “Never. And this… It’s not what I want, not at all. But it’s what I need to do. It’s my duty, to keep my family safe, to keep my younger sister safe. It sends a message to them just as much as to Antiro.”

He glances toward Danny and the camera. “Is it ready?”

Danny nods. With a heavy sigh, Luke sits behind the pulled-out desk, the scrap of paper in front of him. He gazes down at it like it’s habit, like his brain isn’t already brimming with the natural italic slope of his florid, handwritten words, as Danny settles the camera on a stack of thick, heavy books.

Looking uncertain, Danny ushers me over for a second opinion.

It’s strange, seeing Luke like this. Sitting behind a wooden desk gives him a sense of smallness, of being cramped. With his towering height, Luke was not made to sit politely behind desks and deliver monotonous speeches. He was designed to sprawl on an ornate gilt throne when he imagined no one was looking. To cross his long legs over its carved arms, to look handsome with a crown dangling on the hook of his finger. To tilt his throat toward an expansive painted ceiling. To proclaim boredom at his advisers in a deep, resonant voice when matters of officialdom extinguished his spirit.

The small camera screen captures Luke, the wooden desk, and the cream-colored wall behind him. Nothing else. It could be filmed anywhere, in any part of the country, in any part of the world.

Luke nods at Danny, and Danny presses the record button.

It takes multiple shots. For such a rehearsed speech from such a renowned speaker, Luke stumbles every time on the most important sentence:I, your prince, hereby announce my abdication.

In the last take, Luke buries his head in his hands and emits a loud, aggrieved groan.

“What if we remove the ‘your prince’ part?” Danny suggests kindly after the fifth take. “It’s quite — I don’t want to say presumptuous, but —presumptuous, given the current climate.”

Luke glares at him, and then glances off to the side with an irritated mutter, “I’m not saying it for my detractors. I’m saying it for my supporters.”

“It’s asking a lot from the viewers to make that distinction, though. You don’t want to appear arrogant. I mean, you do realize this will be beamed around the world?” The moment I point this out, it seems as though Danny, who’d been cheerfully testing out the many different camera filters, turns faintly green.

“Yes,” Luke hisses, touchy, “Idorealize.” When he catches my eye, he seems automatically remorseful. He scrubs a hand down his face again, as though wishing he could replace himself, start afresh, like a page of a document ruined by words he hadn’t meant to write.

He smooths out the small slip of paper, gazing down at it as though seeking its inherent wisdom from when he’d written it with a clear head.

“What if,” I begin in a hesitant voice, “you throw that away?” I nod down at the paper. “Toss it aside. Do a speech from the heart instead.”

“Antiro doesn’t deserve my heart,” Luke mutters darkly.

“Your supporters do. Your past self does for all the work he put in for the throne.”

Luke considers this. He sits on his chair at an angle, rereading the dry, official sentences that had comprised his rehearsed speech. For such a bombshell of a statement, it had been as bland as the wall behind him.

“Okay,” he says, screwing his eyes shut and crumpling the paper. “Let’s try it.” He glances sharply up at Danny. “And if I mess it up, it gets deleted pronto. Got it?”

“Prontissimo,” Danny confirms, and he hits the record button.

Unlike with his rehearsed speech, Luke doesn’t launch into this one. There’s a moment of taut silence as he gathers his thoughts.

“In my life,” Luke says slowly, “there is only one role I have ever known: future king. I did not anticipate that this role would ever become unavailable to me, an avenue inaccessible despite my lifetime of training. What has been required of me is a change of identity: to become a boy again instead of a prince. To be ordinary instead of chosen.

“I will not lie to you, to the supporters who have followed my journey and still stand by me today. A change of identity is a difficult demand. I had long ago considered my position immutable; it has now been made clear that it is untenable.

The tiniest pause. An intake of breath. “I wish I’d had more time to experience all that Britain has to offer, to meet the people who make her so iconic and dynamic a country. I wish I could have devoted more to my charitable enterprises, to those whom I patron, each a reminder of the suffering and hardship that continues to blight our most vulnerable, and which successive governments have failed to improve upon.

“Unfortunately, it has been made clear to me that I am no longer able to maintain my position in any respect. Due to circumstances entirely outside my control, I am henceforth, with rage, announcing my abdication. I do this, not of my own free will, but out of duty for the country that I love, and the desire to see it restored to greatness instead of being abused in my name.” There is a small beat, and with a soft sort of sadness, Luke concludes by saying, “Thank you.”

His eyes, shining slightly in the bright light, flick up to me and Danny. “How was it?” he asks, sounding drained, sounding as though his entire heart had been pumped unwillingly into his words.

“Good,” Danny answers quietly, sounding somewhat choked. “The bit about the government, though…?”

Luke gives an elegant shrug, entirely nonchalant. “What can they do? If royalty is no longer mine, then I am no longer beholden to its rules. Political neutrality, my arse,” he adds in a scathing tone. “I want Oscar Munro to burn.”

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