Over the years, I’ve acquired a lot of research about the series of events that led up to the crowns becoming Crowns (Thank goodness for capital letters!). But one of the mysteries that has intrigued me the most is the problem revolving around the ‘Missing Crown’. The thing is, it is insufficient to say that maybe Hunn only had twenty-nine children but the myths twisted it into thirty. This can’t be true because the offspring of a female hag are born in twos, twins. Hunn was a twin, as will have been all her children. One of them dying is also not a possibility because otherwise Hunn would not have been in public. Mother hags mourn for ten years, you see, and that would mess everything up in my timeline. Oh yes, I have a timeline!
Therefore, one of the Crowns must not have been enchanted. I’ve read many diaries, accounts, memoirs, etc. and the following has been concocted by me, as a combination of all the research I found. It is what I regard as the most likely reason for the Missing Crown:
The ball was in full swing. The palace had been decorated lavishly with tapestries and flags, ornamental trees and entertainers. There were long tables in the great hall adorned with all sorts of food representing each kingdom and furnished with great ice sculptures of famous kings and queens of old. The tables fringed the left and right walls of the hall, leaving a large space for socialisation and dancing.
There was a large sweeping staircase, where the parents chatted away to each other, working up deals and rapports whilst their offspring did the same through games and fun, finding the friends they made last year. Princess Lola took a sip of her champagne whilst observing the frivolity of the party from behind an arras. She’d been approached by five male contemporaries already and she’d managed to blow them off, and she’d evaded and dodged many others. She just wasn’t interested in them. She had found it fun when she was younger and they would run about, creating chaos together. But now, they were only after one thing - a Queen. It wasn’t even the thing that men were usually after. Secretly, Lola wished for a guy who didn’t want a Queen but what a guy after that one thing intimated in the well-known phrase.
Suddenly, her cover was blown as a young man slipped behind the curtain. “Oh crap!” the young man swore as he noticed that this particular arras was already taken. “Sorry, I didn’t…”
“Don’t worry about it,” Lola replied.
The man swore again. (Let me just say that the young man probably did not say ‘crap’. That particular expletive was not part of the language at this point. Instead, a much stronger swearword was likely to have been used, but I shall corrupt my pen with it.)
“What’s your name then?” Lola asked.
His name was Drew, as it turned out, and Lola introduced herself to him.
“So, why are you hiding?”
“I’d rather not go there.”
“Oh! I see, a scandal. We love scandals round here.”
“Look, it was generations ago. I can hardly be blamed. I’m just a tragic product of a royal affair,” Drew muttered, ashamed.
“Right. So you’re one of King Faithful’s illegitimate lot?”
“Yes.”
“Awesome.”
“Hardly.”
“I like your crown.”
“Mum had them forged specially.”
“Nice.”
“I wish we hadn’t come at all. But Mum feels that we, her children, have a right to be here and have a right to a throne. Whatever. Everyone is ignoring us out there! I hid here to escape the ensuing humiliation. How come you’re hiding here?”
“To escape that irresistible chat-up line ‘You’re a pretty damn fine filly, aren’t you?’. Apparently, it’s romantic and a compliment.”
“The guys here are such twits.” (Again, ‘twits’ is a stand-in word for a similarly spelt swear word.)
“You’re not.”
“Yeah, but I don’t belong here. We really shouldn’t have come. I shouldn’t have come.”
“That’s what she said,” Lola teased. Drew couldn’t help smiling. “Seriously, if you hadn’t come, then I would never have met you and wouldn’t be ridiculously attracted to you.”
Drew had a double take. “What?”
Lola rose her eyebrows suggestively. “This is a big castle. Lots of bedrooms.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah.”
“Does this usually happen at these parties?”
“I’ve had to put up with a stable boy or kitchen lad the last four years. The princes that come here are stuck somewhere between their own arses and those of their parents. It’s mega-cringe.”
“Right. Well, er, lead the way.”
Looking through Queen Lola’s diary from the time, it is revealed that she was somewhat promiscuous at this time of her life. From what I could learn from Drew’s teenage years, they were spent in moderation of alcohol and debauchery. Though these crimes were far and few from those of some of his other siblings. Thirty children surely has an influence on effective parenting.
Anyway, back to the Missing Crown. It is highly likely that Drew did not accompany his family in their expulsion from the palace. Indeed, I believe he knew nothing of the expulsion until later that night, possibly the next morning, when he emerged from a bedroom with Princess Lola. Also interestingly, he does not search for his family or pursue them. Therefore, his crown remained ordinary and non-magical.
It took me a great while to find out what had happened to Drew and Lola, and it turns out that their life is the basis of a separate fairy story, which I might as well tell. In the story, the prince is Drew and the princess is Lola. Just thought I’d clarify that, you know. Here it is:
The princess and the prince had been travelling for many days now, visiting the local towns of the kingdom prior to the great marriage that was to come. And the people loved the princess and they adored her choice of husband.
However, there was one man who did not approve. He was a baron and had very much wished that he would marry the princess and become the king of the land. This prince had ruined his every chance of that future.
But the baron was a clever man. And clever men know how to achieve their means. One night, when the princess and the prince were eating their royal meal at the inn the baron poured a potion into the prince’s soup. As the prince ate the soup, the potion worked its magic and hid the prince’s voice from him. The prince could no longer talk.
The princess was in despair because for a prince to become a king, he must recite the Sacred Oath. How can a mute man do this? Aggrieved, she left the prince behind and returned to her palace where she cried and cried and cried.
The baron, wily and sneaky, also travelled to the palace and consoled the princess in an attempt to win her over so that he may become king.
One day, he made this proposal to the princess. She refused, saying that he was too old for her. Furious, for he was but three years her senior, the baron kidnapped the princess and her two sisters and locked them in a tower in the middle of the desert, claiming that they would not be released until the princess agreed to marry him.
In the tower in the desert, the three princesses sang together to keep each other’s hopes alive.
Many years later, their singing was heard by three princes who rode upon their noble steeds to the tower. There they did battle with the baron, who had accumulated many dark powers that he used against them. But the princes overthrew the baron and rescued the three princesses. The princess was delighted to discover that one of the princes was her prince that the baron had poisoned, and now he had his voice back. The couple married, as did the other two princes and princesses, and they all lived happily ever after.
That is where the fairy tale ends. It fails to mention that the second eldest princess acquired syphilis from her husband, who was not even a prince but a sailor from a distant land. And that the prince the youngest princess married turned out to be a princess as well. Still, this did not stop them from living a long and love-filled life together as the monarchs of the transvestite’s homeland.
The baron, the villain in the piece, I have identified as Duke Oxrane V. I imagine he is known as the baron, as the title has a certain evil ring to it. ‘Duke’ is much more docile. Duke Oxrane V was renowned for his work into that of potions and remedies, and was infamous for testing them on unsuspecting parties. For example, the syphilitic sailor was indeed blinded by one of Oxrane’s potions, whilst the third prince lost his hearing. Together with Drew, the three managed to find a cure to each other’s ailments and heal them, though this story is much less documented. I, however, must laugh at the relevance of “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” to this story!
The tower is more than just a tower. It is a fortress, abandoned decades before Lola and Drew’s time. Lola’s diary suggests that she and her sisters lived a very comfortable life at the fortress under Oxrane’s fist. Indeed, he seems to have been a very hospitable captor.
Queen Lola and King Drew ruled over the kingdom of Binon for a period of twenty-seven years, ending when Queen Lola died in childbirth, bringing her eleventh child into this world. King Drew lived for another twenty-two years, before succumbing to pneumonia one tough winter.
With regards to Drew’s crown, it is highly unlikely that it remains in existence. Drew was not proud of his roots, and the crown will have been a cruel reminder and symbol of his past. Also, Drew travelled a long way and it seems unlikely that he would have carried such a crown such a distance. I reckon that he either threw it away or that he sold it. To me, this is the most plausible explanation for the Missing Crown.
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