And it would put less pressure on the Royal Navy, Peter thought. It’s something else I’ll have to discuss with Kat.
He took a long breath as the speaker rose, again.
“Honorable Members,” he said. “We have one final issue to discuss. The Royal Wedding Bill.”
Peter sighed, inwardly, as the MPs started a mixture of cheers and boos. The Royal Wedding was a touchy subject, particularly when the kingdom was expected to help pay for it. A number of MPs and talking heads had asked, not too politely, why the king couldn’t pay for it himself, as he was probably the richest landowner in the system. The Royal Corporation wouldn’t begrudge him a few million crowns to throw the wedding of the century.
Except there’s precedent for the kingdom to fund the ceremony, Peter thought. And that gets awkward when half the kingdom dislikes the bride.
He listened, carefully, as the prime minister stood and extolled the virtues of the match. Princess Drusilla—she wasn’t really a princess, but the title had stuck—was not, in some ways, a bad choice. She had no ties to the local aristocracy, so the wedding wouldn’t give any one family an unexpected prominence; she was a war hero, someone who’d risked her life to warn the Commonwealth of the oncoming storm . . . Yes, she did have her advantages. But she was also a foreign national, the child of someone who’d waged war on the Commonwealth and, perhaps, not to be trusted. The people who feared the effects of creating and widening the Commonwealth had no reason to like Drusilla. They would sooner the king married a talented commoner from Tyre.
And he chose his bride-to-be himself, Peter remembered. That didn’t go down well with the people who expected to help him choose.
He couldn’t help feeling a moment of genuine respect for the king. Peter’s marriage to Alison had been arranged by both sets of parents, although he’d known his future bride for years before the match was arranged. It had been a fairly typical contract, with provisions for children, temporary and permanent separations, and a strict division of property. He didn’t dislike his wife, but . . . he didn’t really love her either. The only good thing about the arrangement, apart from their children, was that Alison understood the rules as well as he did. As long as she did nothing to embarrass him in public, or vice versa, he would turn a blind eye to her private affairs. Everyone had expected the king would have a similar arrangement with his future bride.
But, instead, he’d chosen a foreign-born woman.
The prime minister sat down. Israel Harrison stood.
“Mr. Speaker, Members of the House, I will be blunt,” he said. “I acknowledge that Princess Drusilla did us a considerable service, five years ago. I also acknowledge that His Majesty has the right to choose his own bride. But I am not blind to either the political implications of the match, or the financial implications. We are suffering from financial embarrassment”—there were a handful of chuckles—“and we will have to make quite considerable cutbacks in the next few months. Or does anyone believe we can keep printing money without setting off a massive rise in inflation?”
He paused, dramatically. “This is not the time for displays of wealth and consumption,” he added. “You may be thinking . . . hey, a few million crowns here, a few million crowns there . . . pretty soon, we’ll be talking about real money. But, right across the kingdom, people are having to tighten their belts. They are scared, scared that they will be among the first to lose their jobs as the corporations rush to restructure themselves to save what they can. And you wish to taunt them with a Royal Wedding?
“I say no. I say that the public purse should not fund the wedding. And I say that the wedding should be as simple as possible.”
He sat down. A number of MPs buzzed for attention. The speaker pointed to one at random.
“My honorable friend said he would be blunt,” the MP said. Peter recognized him as Kevin Hastings, a close friend of the prime minister. “I will be equally so.
“This is not about money. This is not about public perception of His Majesty and his growing family. This is about xenophobia, plain and simple. The Opposition has opposed the Commonwealth for so long because it is driven by xenophobia!”
Another mixture of cheers and boos filled the air. The speaker gaveled for silence as Hastings went on.
“The Opposition has spearheaded the removal of colonial-born officers and crew from Royal Navy ships. The Opposition has demanded strict limits to the number of work permits issued for foreign-born workers on Tyre. The Opposition has reduced or canceled programs to improve the lives of people on stage-one and stage-two colony worlds; the Opposition has even stated its—hah—opposition to helping refugees find new homes. And now, for all their fine words about financial prudence, their opposition to the Royal Wedding is really about their refusal to accept a foreign-born woman as queen.
“We cannot demand service from the colonials, then refuse to treat them as equals; we cannot open up our world, then decline to share. We built the Commonwealth on the principle of founding a new interstellar order, not exploiting people who were helpless to defend themselves. The Royal Wedding would signify, once and for all, that there is a place in our world for people who were not lucky enough to be born on Tyre. And the Opposition wishes to deny it because it does not believe that such a place exists!”
Peter frowned as the shouting grew louder, despite the speaker’s best efforts. There was a nasty grain of truth in Hastings’s words, although the Opposition would deny them. Tyre had never been keen on accepting immigrants, particularly vast numbers of immigrants who refused to assimilate into society. There was no shortage of
