Princess Izzy and the E Street Shuffle Read Online Free Page B

monarchies are a good way to run a country. I don’t. And it’s not that the wealth of the ruling
     classes doesn’t appall me. It does.
    But my belief in princesses relates to my belief in good stories. It seems, for whatever reason, that every time you create
     a princess, you create a start to a good story. I guess it’s because, not to put too fine a point on it, women’s lives are
     more interesting than men’s. Oh sure, if you review historic events, you’ll find that men have, more often than not, played
     key roles. But day in and day out, women have been where it’s happening. They’ve been giving birth and nursing the dying and
     debating the symbolism of name changes at weddings. Men, meanwhile, have been collecting paychecks and dabbling in office
     politics. Ho. Hum.
    That is a gross stereotype, but I’m sure you see my point.
    When a prince marries a less noble woman, which princes often do, the prince is always baffled that the crowds love the princess
     more, line up to see her, give her flowers, gush, and carry on. Meanwhile, the prince himself—the heir to the throne, no less!—is
     almost ignored. But it only makes sense. People look at the young princess and wonder, “How will she do? Will she bring out
     the good in her husband? Will she bear an heir and raise that child to be good and kind? Will she keep our fashion industry
     humming and give us a bit of spring on gray winter days? Will she inspire us?”
    For the prince, they say, “Stick with dark suits, stay out of trouble till your dad dies, and please, try not to cheat on
     the pretty young thing.”
    I’m not saying it’s right. But that’s the way it is.
    You may wonder, as you continue through this story, who I am. You may ask how I know the things I know: the secrets of the
     castle. You may question my motives for revealing all that I am about to reveal. But I think when the story is done, you will
     understand. You will see that everything I have documented here, I know either firsthand or from long, detailed, soul-searching
     conversations with others who know it firsthand. But more important, when this story is done, you will understand what exactly
     it is that I owe Isabella and what she owes me. You will see why I must write this story while I’m still alive to write it.
    For in the end, the story is not completely Isabella’s. Cruel as it is, princesses do belong, a little, to all of us. As a
     child, I was raised on fairy tales. Although, even as old as I am, I was raised on the less troubling modern versions, not
     the ones in which women are forever getting their feet lopped off and practically killing one another for a shot at the prince.
     Despite a fair diet of glass slippers and ornate coaches and magic spells, I didn’t realize how much I loved princesses until
     adulthood, when my women friends and I, young and consumed by our careers, would gather for weekends at fancy hotels. We would
     splurge on expensive wine and sit in hot tubs and agonize about our futures and our pasts. We were surprised at how often
     the conversation would turn to the royal family.
    Back then we talked mostly about Queen Regina, whom we had started following in her days as Princess Reggie. Our male friends
     assumed that we liked her clothes and her style, and she
was
rather something, and her clothes
did
interest us. Remember when she made red polka dots all the rage? My, my, I had this one dress that . . . Well, I’m getting
     off track again. Suffice it to say that the highest compliment a smart suit could draw was the simple “very Reggie.”
    But mostly, we were interested in her story. We wondered if she really loved the king. And did it break her heart when Rafie
     was a child and would dream of being an astronaut or a firefighter or a software designer or some other decent profession
     and she had to murmur softly, “Silly boy, you’ll be king, of course.” Did she mind terribly that even her father’s funeral
     was