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“Well, it’s true. I mean she was on posters and the like.”
“Yes. After she left my father. She was somewhat famous beforehand, but of course becoming a princess raised her cachet. She gave birth to me, and she decided that sitting around in Olympus was not what brought her joy. So she decided to return to Hollywood. And my father said she could not be the Queen and an actress.”
“Like you don’t want me to be a princess and a pilot.”
“No,” he said. “I can’t say I especially do.”
“But your mother wasn’t happy. Losing her identity, I mean.”
“Her identity?”
“She was an actress. And perhaps she thought she could give it up, but maybe she couldn’t.”
“You are giving an awful lot of credit to a woman who typically plays the part of villain in my backstory,” he said.
“I mean I can understand why. A mother who leaves her child is difficult for anyone to root for. But… I know what it’s like to love something. A job. To have it be part of you.” She looked at him. “You don’t know what that’s like, do you?”
He frowned. “I perhaps know what that’s like more than anyone. I am going to be king of Olympus one day. My job is born into my blood. There is no argument to be made or had about it. It simply is. I simply am.”
“Well, don’t you suppose that can be true for an actress, or a pilot?”
“Perhaps. But then, she made a choice. You made a choice to become my wife.”
“True.”
“You would never abandon our children.”
“Of course not,” she said. Then she looked down. “Though I hope that if I am extraordinarily miserable with the work that I’m doing here you will help me figure out a way to be less miserable rather than being rigid.”
“It just wasn’t befitting of a queen that she continue working in Hollywood.”
“Who decides those things? It seems to me that we often make our own snares.”
She was familiar with that. She had, after all, stepped into this one willingly.
But if his father wanted his mother quite so badly, then why hadn’t he been able to find a compromise?
Of course, if she had wanted to marry the King, and have his child, why hadn’t she figured out some compromise work-around?
It seemed to her like they had both willingly taken the most damaging option and gone at it.
She wasn’t an expert in that kind of thing, but she had a mother who hadn’t chosen to leave, and a father who would’ve done anything to keep her with him.
“My father would have given my mother the moon if it would’ve kept her with him,” she said, not entirely meaning to say it out loud.
“But my father is not just a man. He is a king.”
“What does he think about you? And the way that you live.”
“He despises it. But it is not so simple for him to remove me from my position. There is no spare.”
“So he can make compromises.”
“I quite like your honesty, Stevie,” he said. “Your forthrightness was one of the things I enjoyed about you when we were stuck in the mountains. But if you say things like that when you meet my father, you may find yourself at odds.”
“And will he tell you that you can’t marry me?”
“I cannot be told.”