In defense of chaos as we are, the news that Lady Lisa DeBartolo, cousin of Prince Jed of York and daughter of the abdicated King Edward, decided to retweet and endorse a column by Lowell Cohn of the Santa Rosa Press Democrat urging (well, stamping his feet and demanding, really) that Prince Jed renounce the throne of Ninervania for having driven it into its current Ottoman Empire-level status.
Under normal circumstances, such an odd demand would fall on deaf ears, as not even the dimmest of dairy farmers would willingly walk on a multi-million-dollar cash cow. In fact, the idea would be derided as ridiculous.
But in this case, Cohn’s piece smoked out Princess Lisa’s dissatisfaction with the prince and even the line of succession, thus revealing a long-rumored rift in the House Of DeBartolo (which is Italian for DeBartolo). Evidently Prince Jed has been a bit imperious with the outer edges of the palace court, and as this is a totally modern-day royal house, conscientious objectors start a revolution with Twitter.
In other words, it’s cheap Shakespeare without a rooting interest, or fun-filled blood splash. And all it really does is tell us that the family is no longer capable of keeping its business from leaking into the street.
None of which puts Prince Jed’s crown, or the head beneath it, in jeopardy, as he won the crown from his father King John, who had won it from Queen Denise, who had won it from King Edward after he lost the famous War Of Louisiana despite an alliance with the former Duke Edward of Edwards.
But it does mean that we now can see that the royal house is showing its tatters, and the queen’s discomfort is as profound as that of Helen Mirren’s in the underrated movie “The Queen.”
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And who doesn’t love a bit of messy and even degrading palace intrigue?
See? The beauty of chaos.
The problem, of course, is that the rivals to the throne really aren’t rivals at all. Queen Denise ousted King Edward in a bloodless yet delightfully vindictive coup more than 20 years ago, and maintains a stranglehold on Ninervania and the shiny new palace that is its nerve center. Neither Princess Lisa nor King Edward has the army to muster to take the palace, and in all likelihood has only seen to it that their likenesses will be removed from the great hall and family photos will be dramatically redone by Michael Zagaris, the Hans Holbein The Younger of the Yorks.
But the nation shall not have new leaders (nor is there any guarantee that Princess Lisa is any better positioned to fix the problems than Prince Jed), as old King Edward is still mostly a very interested outsider at best. Queen Denise, whose pathological need for privacy has been blown to Smithereens (one of the smaller duchies of Ninervania), will defend her son’s lands and properties with an increased fierceness, and she is considered a most implacable enemy.
In other words, you throw shade on the boy, and she’ll show you your spleen on Christmas morning and sleep the sleep of the joyful that very night.
But it is fun to speculate on how dirty this fight could get in the interim. The National Football League is an alliance of royal houses, and though there has been no evidence of treaties through marriage, there is a growing trend toward direct inheritance as the way to power.
The last really good in-house coup before Ninervania was in Ramistan, when Prince Steve Rosenbloom lost a power struggle to Queen Georgia of Frontiere, who had risen to the throne by surviving King Carroll of Rosenbloom, her husband in a morganatic marriage. A similar scenario has played in New Orleans, the place where King Edward lost his power base, where King Thomas of Benson undermined his children and left the kingdom in the hands of his third royal consort, Queen Gayle.
In short, Princess Lisa shot her Internetic yap off to no useful end, but Christmas will now include a battery of royal food testers, because you never know when a malicious gnocchi will turn up on someone’s plate.
And we have embellished that last vision for purposes of plot development.
But there is this much good news: Colin Kaepernick is no longer the biggest spike in Prince Jed’s leathern hide. In other words, “Party Down, Yorks. It’s On Now.”
And no cheerier words for a fan of chaos can be uttered.
