Chapter One 1 January 2023 #3
The England we know was shaped by Barbara’s small, pale hands.
A Scottish rebellion against her rule was brutally put down, and she retired the title of Prince of Wales forever, instead making her son, and all future male heirs, the Prince of Scotland.
Charles’s House of Stuart never technically ended, but we Villiers crept inside it like ivy, twisting around support beams and window frames until we flourished over the roof.
It is her name we keep as our own. And all of it was possible because of her twins—the girl who died, and the boy who didn’t.
Three centuries later, Louis and I were both expected to survive the perils of birth, and we promised to take the monarchy into interesting new territory.
The question of which twin would rule had already been settled: the first child delivered was the heir.
Unless she was a girl followed by a living boy, in which case she slid down the line of succession at the first sighting of his tiny regal penis.
The TV anchors of 1993 breakfast television giddily speculated about the constitutional implications of my mother’s pregnancy.
What if Princess Isla required a caesarean, and an obstetrician found two boys in her belly?
He alone held the fate of the British monarchy in his hands.
From the gaping wound that contained two babies curled together like fish, he would reach inside and pluck out a future king.
There were also those who argued that the last twin out was the first implanted, and therefore the kingdom’s rightful monarch.
The palace sensed a looming constitutional crisis.
And so, when my mother’s labour entered its twentieth hour and the doctor said it was time to consider a caesarean, the Queen was consulted over the phone.
She made her ruling. Isla would have to work these babies out of herself naturally.
Intervention would only take place if our lives were under threat.
The life of Isla, then twenty years old and one of the most famous women in the world, was never discussed.
At the time, she was still desperate to do everything perfectly, and thirty-seven minutes after her mother-in-law refused to end her misery, Isla gave birth to a healthy baby boy. I followed two minutes later—pallid, silent and female.
As Papa clutched his heir, I was whisked to another room where I was surrounded by a dozen doctors and nurses wielding nasal cannulas and nitric oxide.
My mother moaned in pain and fear until finally, either an eternity or sixty seconds later, I unleashed an almighty wail.
She had done it. She had birthed an heir and a spare in one afternoon.
I imagine every royal woman experiences that moment of deliverance the same way, whether it is 1664 or 1993.
That intake of breath as the doctor or the midwife peers over the child.
Will the baby thrive? Is it a boy? Am I finally, finally safe?
By the nineties, princesses had earned a certain cultural cachet. The tabloids wanted designer gowns, shiny hair and bad boyfriends. Then they wanted an Abbey wedding to a nice man who was the harbinger of ruddy-faced babies and postpartum weight-loss stories.
Louis was the future of the family; I was a decorative accent.
Six hours after she delivered us, Mum was helped out of bed, her black curls brushed until they shone.
A blousy seafoam maternity dress was pulled over her head—this was years before she started to rebel with the men’s blazers, Calvin Klein minimalism and oversized sweatshirts that haunt trend cycles to this day.
She’s the reason every woman in the world wears sneakers with dresses.
Sometimes I’ll be walking through town and a girl will pass me in old Levi’s, a man’s shirt and a baseball cap pulled over her hair.
The post-divorce Isla aesthetic, they called it.
But on this day in 1993, she stood on the steps of the hospital in what was effectively a big green tent, the fabric so thin and pale she must have been terrified that one sneeze would destroy this antiseptic vision of postpartum perfection.
Papa was beside her in his ubiquitous Savile Row, thirty-three years old, but looking far more nervous than his young wife.
The palace aides had choreographed the photo op perfectly.
Isla would emerge with both of us in her arms, the teen bride transformed into a regal mother.
After a moment, Papa would take the boy from her, and they would pose with one baby each.
But in the glare of the camera flashes, he forgot his cue and did nothing but stand there.
Mum, wobbly and in pain, gritted her teeth and held on to five kilos of sleeping babies while the world watched.
Eventually, an aide opened the door to the hospital and ushered them back inside, taking the babies from her pale, spindly arms before she sank back into the wheelchair awaiting her.
They say four thousand people flocked to the palace to wait for the announcement of our names. An easel was placed at the gates:
Prince Louis Arthur Albert Lawrence, born 28 December 1993 at 2:02 p.m.
Princess Alexandrina Anne Barbara Mary born 28 December 1993 at 2:04 p.m.
Twenty-nine years later, another easel was placed outside the gates:
Prince Louis died peacefully at Visp Medical Centre this afternoon. His wife, Amira, Duchess of Somerset, was by his side. She will return to London tonight, where she will stay with the Queen. Princess Alexandrina is expected to arrive in London tomorrow.
Amira, after receiving permission from Granny, had agreed to turn off Louis’s life support while I was somewhere over the Timor Sea. She had done the same for her brother, Kris, ten minutes earlier.
Later, the Daily Post reported that a Swiss doctor had phoned me on the plane to run through their clinical evaluation of Louis’s chances of recovery.
We’d conversed in French, apparently, and I’d tearfully agreed that it was time to remove life support.
It was my idea that his organs should be harvested first. I couldn’t work out who had leaked this falsehood to the Post—probably Granny’s people, to cast her in a warmer light.
Or perhaps it was Stewart, trying to help me save face.
Because in reality, they didn’t radio the pilot as they’d promised, but waited to tell me when we landed for a fuel stop in Singapore.
“Oh,” I said to Stewart when he broke the news. I was so unsteady that the young female aide who’d cleaned my nails was now gripping my arm for fear I might collapse onto the tarmac. “Can I speak to Louis now?”
Stewart and the girl exchanged a look.
“No, ma’am,” Stewart said slowly. “As I just told you, Prince Louis died two hours ago.”
I shook my head. When we were babies, Louis and I could only sleep if we were swaddled together in the same cot.
As toddlers, we chattered in the secret language we’d invented.
He brought me a glow-worm in a jar; he gave me a piggyback when I cut my foot on an oyster shell.
Louis and I were two little stars drawn on the glass, and I couldn’t believe he was disappearing into the fog without me.
“No,” I said again. “I’m sure there’s been a mistake. If you could just let me talk to him—”
Suddenly my knees buckled, and the girl holding me up almost toppled over as she tried to catch me.
Orphaned and alone, there was nothing to do but allow Stewart to help me back onto the plane that would return me to my family.
But even as I flew closer to London, advancing further up the line of succession, I was still a pariah in the House of Villiers.