13.2. Sure, it is dressed up as something patriotic, noble, for country and ‘crown’ –
13.2.1. whatever that is.
13.3. A naked attempt to try and preserve something nebulous.
13.4. The moment you cannot guarantee status, for you and all your people, you are done.
13.4.1. You.
13.4.2. Are.
13.4.3. Done.
13.5. And you have made sure you cannot.
13.6. Because you cannot take a decision without pissing someone off.
14. A grudge, always against you.
14.1. A grudge, with easy access to a caché of weapons.
14.1.1. Better than yours.
14.2. The claque you were relying on for your guns and bodies are those now in front of you.
14.2.1. Surrounding you.
15. You are a king. Until someone points a gun at you.
15.1. Majesty disappears like dew in the morning when confronted with an AK-47.
16. It is not that you set out to become one. This.
16.1. Become this.
16.2. It just happened.
16.3. And you are most comfortable being it. Wearing these clothes.
16.4. Who hasn’t put on a toy crown, and wished it real?
17. You tried being different types of leader.
17.1. A director. Then a managing one.
17.2. You got the corporate vogue.
17.3. Chief Executive Officer.
17.4. Thrusting. Heft. Modern.
17.4.1. Big.
17.4.2. Big initials.
17.4.2.1. Big balls.
18. But you tired of fronting a corporation. You grandeur more than that.
18.1. So a First Minister. Then a Prime Minister.
18.1.1. Primus inter pares.
18.2. Even a President, for a bit – why not?
18.3. You weren’t wedded to any idea of how you should rule.
18.3.1. Just that you should.
19. It could have been through other means. Other people.
19.1. As long as you were the other person who mattered more, mattered most.
19.2. Who lied to themselves better than anyone else.
20. You should have gone for a cult of personality.
20.1. Some extreme narcissism to go with your incipient megalomania.
20.2. But you don’t look good in bronze or stone.
20.2.1. No profile for statuary.
20.2.1.1. Do not have the cheekbones.
21. It was never actually about the spoils.
21.1. How can it be, when you start your own country from scratch?
21.1.1. Your own imagined country.
21.2. No ill-gotten loot that needed laundering.
21.3. Or independent means that needed frittering.
21.3.1. No pissing off mummy and the trustees.
22. There is not much money in this business, not outside the key markets.
22.1. The ones with lots of loyal subjects, who look at you with adoring eyes whenever you pass them in the street, all stretched out in your national champion limo –
22.1.1. You could never commit such a faux pas as to be driven around in your real ride, because it comes from Wolfsburg or Turin or Mumbai.
22.1.2. Not where you are.
22.1.2.1. Where these goofs live, the credulous live.
22.1.3. These places where they are happy to be ‘subjects’.
22.1.3.1. And they don’t have the wit to realise that it means to be ‘subjugated’ too.
23. You do not get into the kingship racket to make a fast buck.
23.1. There are better ways to make some money –
23.1.1. or a living
23.1.1.1. or to stay alive.
24. This one gave you a lot of freedom –
24.1. at the expense of other people
24.1.1. sorry, subjects
24.1.2. maybe.
24.2. It was well past time you took a bit of freedom
24.2.1. for you.
24.3. Because if you didn’t
24.3.1. no one else would do it for you.
He takes his crown off his head.
He worries it around with his fingers.
25. How much was this crown?
25.1. This proof and reproof of your status?
25.2. It is not a question you thought you might ask, when you were at school.
25.3. What happens when you need to buy a crown?
25.3.1 And you do not mean a tiara.
25.3.1.1. (You’re not on your hen night.
25.3.1.2. Much as you might wish you were…)
25.4. You mean a proper, fuck off I’m a king crown.
25.4.1. (John Lewis don’t stock them.
25.4.1.1. Not even Peter Jones.
25.4.1.2. The last piece of evidence the shops were founded by a Marxist.
25.4.1.3. ‘My apologies, sir, we’ve never had a royal headwear department.’)
26. Why go where every other monarch has gone before you?
27. Elizabeth Duke.
27.1. As your royal jewellers by warrant.
27.1.1. It wasn’t your first choice.
28. A crown helicoptered in specially.
28.1. Now the only thing you’ll be able to take with you.
28.2. The last relic of your reign.
28.3. The only relic of your reign.
28.4. Not many monarchies will leave a lighter footprint than yours.
29. You would love to stuff your pockets with jewels and dubloons, wine and old masters and furs and silks; whatever you are meant to do – to claim as yours – when the curtain is coming down. A hogshead or two. But no.
30. All you have left is a cheap shit, £9.99 crown from Argos.
30.1. And a little blue pen.
30.1.1. ‘Order No. SJ33, please come to the collection point.’
And a hedera falls off the page.
31. You consider whether the audience might be forgiven for being confused.
31.1. ‘He’s brown. Brown people can’t be king.’
31.1.2. ‘Can they?’
31.2. ‘Maybe where they come from,