The Movement of Crowns

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  An untold number of Diachonian residents never settled on whether their notions that Princess Constance might wear a red gown to her wedding ceremony had been sufficiently grounded or not, but many of them heard later that after her face had been unveiled, it had taken the joint assistance of two bridesmaids to hold the length of the train of the princess’s brilliantly white gown while she and her militarily uniformed groom kneeled together at the steps of the altar in the brimming sanctuary of Topaz’s foremost cathedral. When the officiating bishop had finished his prayers and exhortations, the King of Diachona and Sovereign Regnant of Munda, Matthias, in his ceremonial robes and state crown, stepped forward as a pair of sanctuary servants approached the altar, carrying two cushions holding gleaming headdresses. Proclaiming the wedded man and woman’s proven capacity for mercy, compassion, wisdom, and valor on behalf of peoples domestic and abroad, King Matthias pronounced Commander Exemplar Alexander and His Majesty’s Junior, Princess Constance, the High Governors of Munda, placing one governor’s coronet on Alexander’s sable head, and one on Constance’s veiled one.

  The governors stood and were presented to their jubilantly erupting audience, and as Constance placed her hand in her husband’s gloved one to walk back down the aisle with him, she looked up to the sanctuary’s east balcony, waving a kiss up to her mother, who was seated there with her own state crown on her head. The queen stood, glowing, nodding, and sending a wave back to her daughter, and the bride and groom started on their exit out of the sanctuary, the resounding toll of the bells in the cathedral’s tower beginning to echo through the building. Alexander and Constance would be paraded through the crowds of cheering citizens in the garlanded, music-filled streets of Topaz before being driven to the palace for the wedding celebration, after which they would retire to the private wing of the palace that had been designated and arranged as their Diachonian residence.

  Early the next morning, after the sounds of bells, music, and cheering had faded away, Constance, dressed in a new traveling suit, stood outside on the palace’s south balcony, staring out at the capital city that had yet to wake up. She and Alexander would be getting an immediate start on their wedding tour, pausing for a few days in Nonpareil before they would head out of the country to honeymoon in more exotic climes. Constance’s eyes roved over the capital’s roofs and trees, wanting to be positive that this view was branded into her memory, as there was no telling yet precisely when she and Alexander would be returning here from their prepared residence in Munda, where they would be settling after the wedding tour. Constance knew that Topaz would not be her only home again until, hopefully a good many years hence, Matthias would pass on, a new governor or governors would be appointed over Munda, and Constance would be crowned the Queen of Diachona.

  She also knew that, from the night before and until some unknown day in the future, countless people here and abroad would be waiting for Governor Alexander and Princess Constance to bring forth one who would serve as their legacy and the future of kingdoms. Yet, Constance wasn’t anxious about that. If Providence could remove and set up kings, then He could equally see to it that what nations needed from her would ultimately come by way of her, however that way manifested. And she would do her uttermost so that, after it all, it might appropriately be said that in the era of her reign, she had done well by the souls entrusted to her charge.

  Without turning around then, Constance recognized whose footsteps were approaching behind her. She did not move before something green was held out in front of her, and she looked downward at the fresh sprig of laurel there between Alexander’s fingers. She released a girlish laugh, not asking when or where he had gone out to pick it for her, and Alexander reached up to slip the laurel into his wife’s hair above her ear, coming in to plant a corresponding, inviting kiss on her temple.

  “Shall we go, love?” he asked her.

  Constance, too moved to speak, nodded her answer, turning from her treasured view of the capital to appreciatively accept Alexander’s offered arm, and he led her off of the balcony, back into the palace.

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