Josephine snorted with laughter, then tried tocover it with a cough.
Emilia sat quietly, while trying to give her parents her patentedplease don’t embarrass meglare. They, of course, studiously chose to ignore it.
“However,” Richard continued, his tone softening as he glanced at his daughter, “some institutions adapt because they contain something worth preserving. The question is whether this institution can accommodate genuine human emotion or whether it simply absorbs and neutralizes it into protocol.”
The Queen blinked. “I… see.”
“Do you?” Josephine interjected sweetly, setting down her pen. “Because from where I sit, this looks like a very expensive theatrical production with a rather uninspiring set design.”
“Maman, really?” Emilia asked in a low voice.
“What? Darling, I have been polite for twenty minutes. That is a personal record.” Josephine gestured elegantly at the colour swatches. “This space, Your Majesty, it has all the warmth of a corporate boardroom. We are planning a celebration of love, non? Not a hostile takeover.”
Eleanor rose from her chair, clearly struggling to maintain control. “This is the formal drawing room—”
“Precisely the problem!” Josephine’s accent grew more pronounced as she turned back to face the group. “You have reduced something beautiful to bureaucracy. Where is the joy? The passion? The… how do you say… the life?”
“We are not planning a Bohemian artist’s wedding,” the Queen said crisply, clearly rattled.
“Perhaps not,” Josephine replied with a sharp smile, moving closer to the Queen, “but neither are we arranging a merger between two particularly well-bred corporations.”
Richard nodded approvingly from across the room. “Josephine raises an excellent point about the phenomenology of celebration versus the mere execution of ceremony—”
“Oh no,” Alexander whispered to Emilia. “Now they’re tag-teaming.”
“I think,” Eleanor said with forced calm, “we should focus on practical matters.”
“How wonderfully evasive,” Josephine murmured. “But very well. Let us discuss the aesthetics, then. These colours…” She gestured at Eleanor’s mood board. “They are very… safe.”
“They are traditional.”
“They are boring.” Josephine’s smile never wavered. “Traditional does not mean lifeless, Your Majesty. Take for instance, Versailles.”
Eleanor’s composure cracked slightly. “I hope that you are not comparing the royal family unfavorably to the French monarchy? Because we all know how that ended.”
“Oh, I would never be so indelicate,” Josephine said innocently. “I am simply suggesting that even institutions dedicated to continuity can afford to… how do you say… live a little?”
Richard chuckled. “What my wife is diplomatically not saying is that you’ve managed to make a royal wedding sound about as romantic as a tax audit.”
“Papa!” Emilia protested, though she was fighting laughter.
“It’s an observation, not a judgment,” Richard said mildly. “Though I do wonder: if the ceremony is entirely predetermined, what exactly are Alexander and Emilia contributing besides their physical presence?”
Alexander cleared his throat. “Well, this is going better than I expected.”
Emilia squeezed his hand under the table. “Your definition of ‘better’ needs work.”
The Queen set down her pen and studied Richard and Josephine with the expression of someone reassessing a strategic situation. “You both seem to have strong opinions about royal protocol.”
“We have strong opinions about our daughter’s happiness,” Richard said simply, his voice losing its philosophical edge and taking on something quieter and more dangerous. “Everything else is negotiable.”
Josephine nodded. “What he said. But with better aesthetic sensibilities.”
For a moment, the room was silent except for the ticking of an antique clock.
Then, to everyone’s surprise, Queen Eleanorsmiled. Barely. But it was there.
“Well,” she said. “Some compromises may be possible.”