Royally Screwed - Lynn Van Dorn

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Angelo Does Not Adore Yuri

Even at age thirteen, Euripides Frederick Stefan Mirea looked exactly like what he was: a prince. He had light brown hair that shone with golden highlights in the sun, sparkling eyes as blue as the sky in high Tanzhirian summer, and skin as fair as the milk from prized Mirean Braunvieh dairy cattle. Not that Angelo cared. He didn’t like golden highlights or blue eyes and he especially didn’t care for dairy products, as he was lactose intolerant. Still, Angelo’s dislike made no difference. Prince Yuri, as everyone delighted in calling the little twerp, was Angelo’s past, present, and inevitable future. They were betrothed and had been their entire lives. No one had asked Angelo about his opinion on the matter.

This was a common theme in Angelo’s life.

Angelo was also a prince, and also had a stupid and unwieldy name, although at least his parents hadn’t had the cruelty to name him Euripides. Instead, he was saddled with Angelo Devdan Nicolau Laurent Tanzhir, which was bad enough, thank you so very much, but at least it wasn’t Euripides.

Angelo and Yuri’s mothers, Gabriella and Eleanor, had known each other at boarding school. Both were girls with the bluest of blue bloodlines, had married crown princes of small but flourishing neighboring kingdoms, and managed to get pregnant at exactly the same time, although it had been Eleanor’s third pregnancy and Gabriella’s second. Relations between the two countries, separated only by the forbidding Felsen mountain range, were chilly at best, and when the pregnancies occurred nearly simultaneously, and the ultrasounds determined that Gabriella was having a boy while Eleanor was having a girl, a plan was hatched to betroth the children to each other and finally forge an alliance between the two nations. It would make Mirea and Tanzhir ultimately stronger and the proposed marriage would keep both parties honest and respectful of the trade agreement. Or so was the thought. A nice, tidy royal marriage and shared grandchildren would be the ideal way forward to promote a sense of common purpose and destiny between the two countries.

When he’d asked about it, Angelo had been told by his parents that it was a mutually beneficial arrangement.

“It’s not mutually beneficial for me,” he’d pointed out.

“You’re only eleven years old and too young to understand politics,” his father had said.

“You’ve got many years to see the positives of this union,” his mother said.

“But Yuri’s not a girl!” This was, to Angelo’s mind, the winning argument, but it didn’t get him anywhere. His mother looked sad, and his father angry, but they wouldn’t budge.

Duty, they’d informed him, was duty, no matter how unwelcome or distasteful.

It had been, Angelo learned, quite the shock to find out Euridice was actually a Euripides. Apparently, this sometimes happened with ultrasounds. It wasn’t unheard of, at any rate, but it put everyone into a sticky situation. There had been a lot of fuss made about a match with two princes, rather than a prince and princess.

Mirea took things more in stride than Tanzhir. Yuri was the third son born. Having an heir and a spare, they could afford to throw their third prince onto the sacrificial altar of diplomacy. They informed Tanzhir that they would be held to the original spousal contract. Gender, the Mirean emissary and legal team had declared, wasn’t germane to the issue. Same sex marriage was legal in Mirea and the betrothal would be honored or Tanzhir would have to pay a large lump sum to dissolve the contract. A large lump sum that Tanzhir would have a hard time getting their hands on. They weren’t a poor country by any means, but they were a small nation and they only had so much liquidity.

Making matters more complicated, Angelo had been a long, difficult birth for his mother and afterward the doctors said the queen was unlikely to bear any more children. There was no reason to expect another prince would be born to take Angelo's place as heir to the throne. In the end, after much acrimonious debate in parliament, it had been decided that Angelo’s older sister, Nadia, would inherit the throne of Tanzhir and Angelo would be, like Yuri, sacrificed upon the altar of diplomacy. He and Euripides, before their thirtieth birthdays, would wed, and that was the end of the matter as far as both sets of royal parents were concerned.

It was all very royal, really. Angelo would hardly be the first prince in history forced to marry for political