by Louisa Lo
The surprising part was actually the emerald necklace. The forest green brought out the green hue in her blue eyes, and it actually didn’t look too horrible or too “old.” In fact, it matched her matte and natural make up, which allowed the emeralds to shine while adding a lushness to her complexion.
“You’re the picture of elegance. The perfect queen.” Benner pronounced. The beauticians murmured their agreements. Chelsea glanced at Day. He had been stoic through the entire process, and was now looking at her with a frown.
Chelsea’s heart lurched. She hated to admit it, but she had been looking forward to getting a wow reaction from Day. Seeing his troubled look was doing nothing for her nerves. And she couldn’t exactly ask him what was wrong outright. Not in front of everyone.
Maybe after the coronation she would be able to find a chance.
“You look so beautiful!” Emma gushed, clapping with unadulterated joy.
See, that was why she wanted the girl as her companion, if for no other reason than to be her cheerleader.
It was show time.
Chapter Fourteen
The Coronation
Did she mention her shoes were initially designed for weddings? It might have been a more apt description than she had initially thought, since the coronation was a wedding of sorts, after all.
It was her marriage to what was left of the world, a promise to be its people’s queen for however long they both shall live.
Or however long the Obsessed would allow them to live.
It was a sobering thought.
The solemn ceremony took place at the communication center at the base, which was as practical a setting as one could expect.
She arrived at the center with her retinue, which was comprised of Benner, Emma, Day, Nik and Sonny. Right before they left, Emma’s Mom sent over her daughter’s now-clean pink dress. Somehow she managed to wash, scrub, and dry the outfit so that not an inch of it was weighed down by grime, with the light ruffles making any tear appear deliberate.
Day, Nik, and Sonny were in their Army service uniforms. Just like almost everyone else on the base who wasn’t on the general’s staff, as her guards they were usually in their camo uniforms in desert pattern, with canvas web belts for side arms. For this occasion, though, they were in two-tone uniforms with long dark blue coats and trousers in a lighter blue, with a single yellow stripe down the side of each of their legs. The guys wore bow ties, while Nik wore a neck tab that somehow made her look uncharacteristically demur. Well, until one took a look at the leather “Sam Brown” style pistol belt she wore for her side arms.
Chelsea had to admit, they cleaned up very nicely.
At the communication center, they were joined by General Roland, Colonel Martin, and a couple of other high-ranking officers who would serve as witnesses to the ceremony. The general was once again in his blue mess uniform, which for once was actually fitting for the occasion. But Chelsea had seen him in formalwear so often, it was starting to lose its luster.
Together they entered what looked like a television studio—one with a million spotlights overhead and two news desks at the back of the “stage”. Chelsea remembered what General Roland had said about this being a secret military base designed for catastrophic events, so it would make sense to have a studio set up for emergency newscasts.
To the side of the studio, away from the spotlights, was a control room separated by a large glass wall. The room was crawling with communication technicians in uniforms. From what Benner had told her, they would try to send the broadcast out using every means necessary, to try to reach both everyday folk and military teams that had been cut off by the attacks. They had no idea what equipment the people on the receiving end might have available. They might have a hand crank radio, a dying cell phone with poor reception, or perhaps something a bit more sophisticated.
That also meant that they couldn’t afford to have many pauses in the broadcast, because any long walk into a room, or excessive bowing or signing documents or what-not would just translate into radio silence for people who only had audio access.
Someone had pushed the desks—which turned out to be on wheels—as far back as possible. That left the center of the studio relatively bare, with a simple black leather office chair serving as her “throne”.
In this no-frills version of a coronation, there would be no procession through the city, no choir, and no anointing oil. In fact, the lack of official royal garments, orb, crowns, and such meant that many steps of the ceremony would have to be skipped. Benner told her that they’d had to double-check the simplified ceremony with an army of lawyers just to make sure the coronation itself would be legal. The legitimacy of her reign was of the utmost importance.
She bet that was something the lawyers had never done before in their lives.
Upon entering the studio, Chelsea went to sit on her “throne,” with General Roland on her left.
A technician yelled, “We’re rolling!”
General Roland began by speaking directly to the main camera, “To the people of the British Empire and the Commonwealth States. Yesterday, starting at approximately 2100 Greenwich Mean Time, a widespread attack on our civilization and our way of life began. It’s now been verified that the monsters known as the Obsessed are responsible for these attacks. With a heavy heart, I must inform you that many of the brightest in our army, our government, and our monarchy have been murdered. I am General Charles Edmund Roland, currently the highest-ranking officer in the continents of North and South America. Since my people have been unable to establish contact with my European and Asian counterparts, I have assumed command of all branches of the military throughout the British Empire, and I’ll carry out my duty to fight for the survival of our civilization…”
Chelsea shivered. To fight for the survival of our civilization. It hadn’t seemed totally real until this moment, with the whole world listening to the general announcing the passing of their leaders and the ushering in of this new era of fight-or-die. The gravity of what she was about to do weighed heavily upon her, and the punishingly bright spotlights didn’t help with the sweat forming on her forehead. She prayed her foundation was waterproof. She could not afford to melt like a wax sculpture, now of all times.
General Roland continued to talk, “As I mentioned, our monarchy also suffered heavy casualties during the attack. Queen Elizabeth the Second is dead, and so is her entire immediate family and extended family as well. The next in line for the throne is…” He paused for dramatic effect. “Lady Chelsea Georgiana Spence.”
Chelsea could just imagine the large collective gasp that would be heard throughout the civilized world right now. Actually, the first reaction was probably, “Lady Chelsea who?” Then they would make the connection between that formal name and the one the tabloids used—Lady Spendalot.
That realization might just be the thing that convinced people they were truly going to hell in a handbasket.
Stop it, Chelsea scolded herself. She was not what they wanted for the job and the job wasn’t what she had ever wished for. But it was what it was. All she could do was make sure her foundation didn’t run and her speech didn’t suck. She had no idea what the next step was after the coronation, but she would get through the next thirty minutes and go from there.
“…I now present to you,” General Roland’s voice rumbled. “The heir to the British throne, the Head of the Commonwealth for the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand…”
The cameraman shifted his lens. While before, only General Roland was in the shot, Chelsea was now being shown for the very first time.
“…Lady Spence.”
That would be the very last time she would be addressed by that title, because she would be taking her oath momentarily.
In the absence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, a Navy chaplain had been called upon for the ceremony. He stood on the other side of the general.
The camera focused on the chaplain and Chelsea. At the chaplain’s promptin
g, she took the traditional oath, swearing: “…to govern faithfully with justice and mercy, to uphold the Gospel, and to maintain the doctrine and worship of the Church of England.”
It mattered not that she wasn’t a very religious person, nor had any ambition to govern. With the chaplain and General Roland calling out “God save the Queen!”, she became one.
God save her.
Chapter Fifteen
The Speech
What came next should’ve been the new queen receiving homage from her people, and indeed Benner had organized a small version of it, with Chelsea riding at the back of an army truck around the base, but for the sake of technical convenience—and yes, the army lawyers confirmed that the reversed order was all right—there was one more thing she had to do in the studio.
Her coronation speech.
She had managed to get it memorized. She found it helpful when she thought of it as nothing but poetry, like what she had to study back in her high school literature class, or like the quotations from her old history exams. But doing it under the scrutiny of live cameras proved to be quite a different matter, and she found herself quickly developing a stutter that rivaled that of King George VI before his speech therapy.
“By…by the sudden d-death of the esteemed Elizabeth the Second, and all those others who came b-b-before me in the line of succession, including my own dear…dear father, the Eleventh Earl Spence of Darham…”
God, her voice came out so hesitant and squeaky.
Chelsea forced herself to inhale deeply, to take the much-needed pause while every fear in her urged her to rush through. She couldn’t afford to screw up. At Emma’s encouraging nod, Chelsea adopted a slower pace and a deeper voice. Her voice became stronger and steadier. “I am called upon to assume the duties and responsibilities of sovereignty. I shall always work, as did the great monarchs in the past thousand years before me during their reigns, to advance the happiness and prosperity of my people, spread as they are all over the world.”
Ugh. That was almost a direct plagiarism to the speech that the then-Princess Elizabeth gave when she proclaimed herself queen on the day her father died. And happiness and prosperity? Seriously? It was more like the joy of getting to live another day and the bid to avoid all signs of prosperity lest it attract the monsters.
Well, not many people had to memorize the original speech in their nobility training classes, and perhaps in times of need hearing vaguely similar words might even be a source of comfort for many. Either way, more plagiarism was about to come out of Chelsea’s mouth, this time a rip-off from King George VI’s speech after Britain’s Declaration of War against Germany in 1939.
“In this grave hour, perhaps the most fateful in our history, I send to my people this message.
We are at war.
There’s no reasoning with our enemies, for they cannot be reasoned with. We have been forced into a conflict, for we are called to meet the challenge of monstrous beings which, if they were to prevail, would be fatal to any civilized order in the world.
I ask you, my people at home and across the seas, to stand calm and firm and united in this time of trial. The task will be hard. There may be dark days ahead, but together we will prevail. For our armed forces, this transmission is embedded with the encoded GPS coordinates and communication channels of our new command center. All military personnel should report to General Roland’s people for further instructions.”
That was it, the end of her speech. She’d made it through without stumbling much, and kept her eyes on the camera most of the time. All she had to do now was sign off with “May God bless and keep us all.”
She couldn’t help herself but stole a glance at Day. If she thought he was frowning before, now he was practically scowling like a prune. What the hell was wrong with him? She had done the very best she could.
Or had she?
There was an elephant in the room, and she hadn’t addressed it in her speech at all.
The elephant said, “Why should we trust her, this queen of spending? Why should we stay united, just because she asked us to? This rich bimbo has had it so easy all her life, and now she’s the queen of us all?”
If she was thinking it, then so was the rest of the world. No amount of arcane, plagiarized words was going to smooth this over and give people the hope and confidence they needed for the days ahead.
Benner was gesturing at her behind the camera now, and General Roland cleared his throat almost inaudibly. They were waiting for her to wrap things up and be done with it.
With a sudden inspiration, Chelsea turned to the camera again and stared straight at it, employing direct speech and using her own words for the first time, “Look, I’ve got a bad rep and I know it, okay? I’m fully aware that I’m not the queen you want, but as the line of succession would have it, I’m the one you’re stuck with. We all want to survive, so let’s stick together, okay?”
Benner put her hands over her mouth with a horrified squeal, General Roland looked angry, and the technicians in the control room were frantic as they yelled at each other and pressed on various buttons, probably hoping to halt the last bit of the unscripted broadcast from getting out.
But Emma was grinning ear to ear, and Day was, well, he was frowning less.
Yet, the best assurance came from within Chelsea. Those words felt right. She could feel it in her gut.
***
By the time Chelsea had climbed onto the tallest vehicle of the entire base, and the driver had started their slow tour around the compound, Benner was grudgingly admitting that the impromptu addition might’ve been a blessing in disguise, that perhaps the people would appreciate the more honest, straight-forward approach. Chelsea wasn’t sure Benner was saying that for her own sake, or Chelsea’s.
Chelsea found herself climbing into the cargo bed of a military truck for the second time in less than two days. The difference was that this cargo bed was decorated with flags and fresh flowers, with a red carpet on the floor to boot, and she was helped up there by General Roland himself, instead of Day.
It was from her elevated position on the cargo bed, however, that Chelsea got her first glimpse of what the public reaction to her speech, and to her person in general, might’ve been.
Hundreds of military personnel lined the main route she was traveling as she made her way around the base one time. Men and women in uniform, after watching the live broadcast, had come out to see her parade. Well, as much as it could be called a parade, with only two vehicles, herself and the general in one, and the rest of their retinue from the studio in the other.
As she traveled through, with the base’s speakers blasting first the British anthem and then the American, most of her audience observed the procession in silence, a fair bit of resignation on their faces, while quite a few regarded her with disdain and open hostility.
The question was, would there have been more or less disdain and hostility had she not done the impromptu part of her speech? She supposed she would never know.
The general might claim that the need to go into survival mode would silence the pro-independence voices, but she had her doubts. Maybe not today, but sooner or later those voices would want to be heard, especially since many might have perceived her ascension to be the very sign that the monarchy must go.
The route her vehicle was taking was mostly on even ground, except one area where the landscape naturally sloped up. It was there, at the highest vantage point, that she saw it.
A small group of civilians had lined up outside the gate of the base. They were dressed in rags, with children among them.
These people must have been new arrivals, since the civilians who traveled with her had already settled in. Somehow, even before any coordinates had been sent out through the broadcast, people had started finding their way here, secret base or not.
Chelsea hoped their processing time wouldn’t be too long.
As she looked back toward the vehicle behind her, there was something else Chelse
a saw.
Soldiers standing on the ground were nudging each other with their elbows when they saw Day, and exchanging knowing looks. Some even whispered to one another, discreetly or otherwise.
What was that all about?
“Your Majesty,” General Roland said when they reached a section of the base without as many bystanders, and they were out of the hearing range of anyone else.
“What is it?” Chelsea asked, although she had a very good idea.
“About that last part of your speech…” The general paused, allowing his doubtful tone to tell her exactly what he thought of it. “I regret to inform you that I do not share Ms. Benner’s opinion on it. It was most undignified. I would ask that you stick with the script, so to speak, from now on.”
“But—”
“Frankness and transparency are overrated. The honest truth is you have no experience in either governing or dealing with the military. Your best bet is to put on a good front for these royal engagements, and offer them a bit of the mystery and glamor of the past. Don’t tell them you’re not all it’s cracked up to be. Never that. Act like you deserve every bit of respect and honor that’s due to a person in your position, and I’ll handle the heavy lifting of ensuring our people’s actual survival.”
In other words, personally he didn’t think the real Chelsea deserved any respect or honor.
And deep down, she wondered if he was right.
Chapter Sixteen
The Commander-In-Chief
The next few days passed by so quickly that Chelsea didn’t have a chance to speak with Day alone, although technically he and his team were with her all the time. He maintained his distance and his silence, and she had no idea where that warm soldier who had stood by her side at the grocery store had gone.
