Royal Wedding - Meg Cabot Page 0,21

we do it to ourselves. It is always sexist and wrong. Popularity rankings are not much better, though, because they’re basically about how well a celebrity—in this case, a person born into a royal family—is marketing themselves, which is an exhausting job in and of itself.

I wish I could take Marie Rose with me everywhere I go. But of course it’s rude to poach other people’s staff.

I’m sure my current unpopularity has nothing whatsoever to do with yesterday’s events (sarcasm).

According to Brian Fitzpatrick (founder and developer of Rate the Royals), the lowest-ranked royals in the world right now (besides me) are:

1. His Highness General Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Faisal, crown prince and deputy supreme commander of Qalif, who only last night imposed martial law after his own wife was found trying to flee across the border into Saudi Arabia.

2. My father, the Crown Prince Regent of Genovia, Artur Christoff Phillipe Gérard Grimaldi Renaldo (no surprise).

3. My grandmother, the Dowager Princess Clarisse Renaldo (who, I’m sure, would take great pride in her unpopularity, if she knew about it. Grandmère loves being number one, even if it’s Number One Most Despised Royal).

This is no doubt due to a paparazzo managing to snap a photo of her taking a long drag from her electronic cigarette outside the Manhattan House of Detention when she went to post bail for Dad.

She probably would have gotten away with this and even had her Royal Rating boosted up a few points (in a isn’t-it-funny-when-you-see-old-ladies-smoking kind of way) if Grandmère hadn’t noticed the photog and then smacked him in the head as hard as she could with her $20,000 Birkin bag.

Not that I blame her. I feel like smacking paparazzos in the head all the time, though I, of course, would never do so with a $20,000 bag, because I

a) would never buy a $20,000 bag, and

b) restrain myself.

But of course the photog got a picture of my grandmother hitting him, which he’s using in a suit against the principality of Genovia for $200 million in damages, something else the protesters brought up, like it’s coming out of their personal pockets (no).

• Note to self: Would a paparazzo ever earn that much snapping photos of unsuspecting celebrities in his/her lifetime? Probably not unless he/she wins the lottery, and that tiny scratch is hardly going to prevent this guy from buying Powerball tickets.

Anyway, I still feel a bit guilty, because it wouldn’t have happened if I’d gone down to White Street to post Dad’s bail. He did ask me first, but I was so angry that he could have done something so stupid, I said, “Dad, when someone gets arrested, they’re supposed to call their lawyer or their parents for help, not their children.”

Then I hung up on him.

Ugh, that sounds awful.

But honestly, he’s supposed to be setting a good example, not getting arrested in foreign countries for speeding race cars down public streets, especially right before an election. It’s one thing to be going through a midlife crisis because your cousin is beating you in the election for prime minister and the woman you’ve allegedly been in love with for some time is now finally available but doesn’t seem to know—or care—that you are alive.

It’s quite another to try to get that woman’s attention by driving your newly acquired vintage Formula One race car at a hundred and eighty miles per hour down one of the most highly trafficked highways in the world. He could have been killed . . . or worse, killed someone else.

I hope I impressed upon him the gravity of the situation.

And really, what worse punishment is there than to have to face the Dowager Princess of Genovia after having spent the night in a jail nicknamed “The Tombs”? I can’t think of any.

Frankly, Dad’s lucky that paparazzo came along when he did, otherwise he’s the one who would have been hit by that Birkin.

Still, a part of me can’t help feeling like this is all my own fault (not what happened to Dad, of course, or what Grandmère did. They’re responsible for their own actions, but how rotten I feel right now). Why did I click on Rate the Royals????

Dominique is always saying to me in her thick French accent: “Your ’ighness, why do you do this to yourself? Stop going online! Nothing good evair comes from going online. You will only see something terrible that will make you feel bad, like that princesses can’t be feminist role models, or another comment from