But the person who could make the least sense of the twins' baffling behavior was their mother, Queen Catarina. If what Francisca had done was bad enough, what Alexandra and Anastasia had done was at least ten times worse, if not more. It was as if they'd played a game of one-upmanship with the ghost of their sister and won. They had broken, perhaps forever, the centuries-old veil of secrecy that protected the royal family from the vagaries of mass media. They couldn't go back to the old way, no matter how much Queen Catarina wanted to. They'd committed the cardinal royal sin. What on earth had gotten into them? What had possessed them to commit such an act?
More than once, the thought had occurred to Queen Catarina to disown her daughters for this act of stunning defiance. But, she thought of something better.
With the plan she'd concocted, Queen Catarina would do two things. First, get rid of the television cameras that were parked outside the castle ever since her twin daughters had signed on to do their now mega-hit reality TV show.
Second, she would marry her wayward girls off.
She'd done this before: it was how she allowed her son, Crown Prince Sebastian, the next king, to pick his queen, who turned out to be Ella Carlisle.
Now that the girls' father was gone, they needed to be married and settled into comfortable aristocratic lives.
Unfortunately for Queen Catarina, neither of them showed any remote interest in the pursuit of marriage or even dating. The world her girls had created had no room for anyone else in it but, apparently, their handlers. And, she was told, they even kept them at bay for the most part.
They'd even excluded her from their father's funeral preparations. That one really stung.
The celebration of his life was all theirs. Their personal tribute to him. Their last gift to him.
She remembered one incident when they were little.
Anastasia had accidentally fallen into their backyard swimming pool. Alexandra came into the castle running, dripping wet.
Later, Prince Renauld had gone outside and found Anastasia lying beside the pool, immediately calling the paramedics.
Had Alexandra pulled her out? She wouldn't tell. Had Anastasia managed to swim to safety? She wouldn't tell, either.
It was a secret between the two of them. They'd kept those kinds of secrets.
Queen Catarina decided to give a royal ball. And invite all the eligible bachelors of the kingdom, and allow her daughters to choose among them.
She'd tried this before, with Francisca. The night before the ball, Francisca disappeared, never to set foot in the castle again until Prince Renauld's funeral, many many years later.
She had no idea what would happen this time. But at least it was worth a shot.
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