Dead Queen Ingrid invites Cece and Hester to tea

Setting: Ingrid's heavenly parlour, sunlight flatteringly reflecting the all-white décor, in stark contrast to the leaden beige interior of her former home, Kancellihuset

Time: One week after grandson Nikolaos’s wedding in Greece

Scene: Dead Queen Ingrid pours tea.

Cece, Hester - one lump or two? We are very anglicised, you know. Daisy – I gave her the same nickname as my darling British mother - and Joachim speak perfect English with no Danish accent whatsoever. It did surprise me when your compatriot Mary adopted such a sing-song way with her own language. She seems to be a bit of a unique bard of her own persuasion, I must say. But do draw closer, my dears. We royals love a bit of gossip with our confidantes, provided the subject is not one of us.

Girls, you must have wondered why I have invited you here. I am about to deliver you a homily and near-rant, rather than indulge us in tea-time chit-chat, I am afraid. I must unburden, as I have had to steer my family away from a crisis and a threat to its very future. Believe me, observing my darling grandson’s Greek wedding - where the "real" royals jolly up the pretenders - redoubled my intention to relieve my royal family of its egregious interloper. And I'm sorry not to exchange witticisms and bon mots with you lately, my dears. But there is an important Matter of State at hand, and I am limited in my communication vehicles these days.

You two have at times been mouthpieces for my Daisy - something I have heartily approved. Now I will make royal use of you. You have both been virtual courtesans in my own Kur for some years, and your service has been both noticed and appreciated. I have been watching events unfold over the last ten years and resisted the urge to influence my descendents. It's not the done thing to interfere with matters once you've carked it, dears. One waits until one’s dead. That we all end up sitting in a large parlour in the sky is a myth. It's more like Sartre's "Huis Clos". I have some tedious companions ... it's all awfully egalitarian here. Of course, I wanted to pass time with the working class, they do have a certain nobility in their boring routine. But there's this hideous lower order I have become acquainted with - and I think it is the wellspring of that Mary. If I have a regret, girls, it is nothing of my own making - it's circumstantial.

My dying just as Mary was getting her claws into poor little Fred was inauspicious and of great inconvenience to my dynasty. You know I am all pragmatist - otherwise my darling Daisy would not be on the throne! But that Mary has me non-plussed. What an extraordinary mix of vulgarity and hauteur! Is that what "middle-class" is? My darling Anne-Marie has always been intrigued by such ordinary living, but I never worried too much about it. As my French son-in-law says, "le sang royal ne saurait pas mentir!" She may enjoy an incognito visit to the supermarket every now and again, but her eldest son married a monied and impeccably aspirant arriviste, and her daughter’s marriage has her living on a remote island with a husband who is marked by the exciting risk of involvement in light, local scandals. What could be more royal!

I would not have thought this to be the middle class. I know scientists and money counters and historians and mathematicians up here, and none of them have been anything like that strange girl from Taroona with her ridiculous mannerisms and Tourette's tics, and hairtossing and lip-pursing - alternated with cutesie-poo, shortie-pyjama, showgirl tricks. Mae West and Pamela Harriman have been invaluable consultants. When you two informed me that Mary’s milieu had been the red-light district of Sydney, it all became a little clearer. Too late, of course, for my Frederik's better judgment. Fred is a puzzle to me, now. He started with such strong beginnings: a Scottish nanny, lukewarm porridge breakfasts and a dashing, stern father - and his brother has turned out simply brilliant! He could easily be an administrator, potentially a field marshal if, God forbid, we should ever go to war. Joachim has a poet's soul, a philosopher's tongue, and the mien and carriage of a king. Fred has the comport of a dwarf who lives on starch, lard and aniseed liquor.

So, girls, I wanted to let you know I have been relying on your missives for light relief, as Crown Prince Frederik treads his path to ruin with that hussy! And light relief has been much needed. In the normal course of events, an unfortunate infiltration of bad blood from the likes of this Professor John Donaldson, are absorbed into the guts of the dynasty and chewed like tobacco and spit out as if by a rodeo cowboy, leaving behind a strange ooze on our path to dynastical glory and a nasty bout of indigestion. The inadequate member is put on the outer, and simply incubates a generation. I have been so pleased that Dr. Yehudi Geldstein's astonishing genetic advances have allowed us to divert our brood away from the malicious Donaldson genes. Sadly, I am observing that Frederik's "outlier" gene profile - as Yehudi describes it - simply does not stand up to the behavioural problems that Mary has brought with her. I do blame drugs rather than anything intrinsic - though, as I mentioned, Frederik's unfortunate stature was a surprise.

I have had this problem for some ten years, and even when you have no body to pickle in cortisol, I assure you that the stress symptoms are the same. To cut this long, sad tale short, I decided to become exercised in this little war of attrition, because it has been taking too long. Denmark is celebrating my centenary, and a decade since my death, in order to restore some pre-Mary common sense to Daisy's reign. The Danes' Mary love has been a massive episode of a form of ergot poisoning - like a Middle Ages peasantry developing a folie à milliards together on a dose of Toxic Donaldson. Well, Danes, christen yourselves Rip Van Winkle, or Sleeping Beauty - whatever your era of sleep, it simply must come to a close. Frederik came within a whisker of liberation from Mary, but being shrewd, she had arranged the "Paula Yates" drug and had her insurance policy in her pouch. Henrik was apoplectic at the news.

Cece, Hester, seeing my poor family on the steps at Gråsten in a state of gloom was a sorrowful moment for me. Mary ran from Fred's side and interpolated herself on the Joachim and Marie side of the steps, drunk on her perceived new power. We royals, though, bide our time. Polite in company, with honed blades down our trouser legs. What finished Mary for Frederik was when she had a bitchfight with Henrik on a balcony, in front of the nation that Henrik always feels on tenterhooks with. Embarrassing Henrik - you know from his recent "bullying" comments to Henrik’s biographer that Frederik will always side with his Papa - finished Mary in Henrik and Frederik's eyes. It took Mary's infamous lap-dance and tonsils inspection in front of Princess Maxima and the rest of the world - at a formal, royal gala event! - to finish Mary in Daisy's eyes. She is walking the plank as we speak.

As I said, blades down the trousers, cutlass at the ready - and scrupulously polite words at all times, with our hands, like Crown Prince Haakon's on Spetses, behind our backs. Mary is redolent of a doomed Morgana, an Anne Boleyn type. Fate moves in mysterious ways. Prince Christian is an odd bird, and who knows where his tendencies will take him. Observing him, I have the same reaction as I did with my darling husband’s brother Knud – and I knew then that the throne just had to be taken from him. For me, Ingrid, the choice is clear! I will leave my concerns with the youngest generation to another day (knowing the Schackenborg boys made a wonderful foil to Fred’s kids), and make it my business to ensure that, soon, Crown Prince Frederik - my beloved grandson, despite his shortcomings - resumes the warm influence of Katja Storkholm and makes her his Queen. But, Frederik knows, I am bred tough. If he remains under Mary's spell, I will turn my efforts to ensuring that Prince Joachim and Princess Marie prevail, with the support of my people.

Hester: Thank you so much for your time, Your Majesty. We will do our very best to help you however we can in your noble endeavors.

Cece: You have any more of those delicious cream cakes?

Dead Countess Ruth: get out of my way!

6 August 2010
Pink Flattery Wing, Kancellihuset

Dear Diary,

Take that, dead Countess Ruth! That's for not wanting me to join the Danish Royal Family. I'm getting back at you for dying on the day I was going to announce my latest, strategic pregnancy. I waited until the gorgeous, normal Norwegian royal family had arrived in MY (well, my husband’s) country to go to your lousy funeral and then – bing! – I got publicist Lene (with Max Markson and Nina Fudala's help) to announce the news to the entire press. Queen Margrethe mumbled some mention about bad timing for an announcement during family mourning, but who cares about some old wrinkly kicking it. How can the press possibly care about someone who looked like a prune!

Mind you, there has been a PR hiccup. I pay Max Markson and Nina to second-guess these things. Of course all the photos coming out of Ruth's funeral have everyone looking sad and wearing black instead of celebrating my assured presence in their family for a further 10+ years! I actually didn't think of that. Max Markson should have thought of it and warned me. He could have jazzed up the suits, got them to do what a modern funeral does - wear bright colours, and celebrate the dear departed with a few sherberts and some drunken passes, like my family did for our Granny. Mind you, there was some debate there, all those years ago. John Stuart Donaldson, my disloyal brother, actually cried. He'd better be celebrating my pregnancy when the WA press ask him, or else! Tell you what, he sure knows not to set foot on Danish soil. This is no democracy, Stuey. I have dungeons!

I’ve been following Royal Dish’s collective headache at my wonderful news. Ha! Can you believe those ridiculous slags never put two and two together? Hello! EVERY time I come back from the United States, I’m pregnant. EVERY time Fred gets too depressed to shave - I'm just back from the lab. Dr. Yehudi Geldstein owed me in a very big way after switching out the Boganson genes in Isabella for royal ones from Victoria and Lilibet. I mean, look at Isabella – she already resembles the Queen Mum at age 80! So I got him to give me a two-fer. I really need for these two bubs to be identical, but Yehudi couldn’t guarantee it. And they really should be boys, so that if, er, push comes to shove for my first-born in the glacial northern parts one day ... ...

I almost feel sorry for my little martian-gosling Frederik. He didn’t see this coming, although anyone could have if they’ve been following me. I took Amber’s advice for once and consulted with a magician at the circus I have to take the kids to. He taught me about sleight of hand tricks and the hand being quicker than the eye, yadda yadda. At Margrethe’s private birthday dinner, I had a tiny plastic cup handy when I went up to Fred to tongue him after his Mor-and-me-against-the-world speech to the old biddy.

Ha! That tongue-kiss at Queen Margrethe's gala fest was a triumph! There's my legacy in the annals of great romantic moments. Not too many icons get to record their passion for posterity in view of a phalanx of jealous cameramen!

Well, tongues in automatically mean zizis up for the old boy, and while everyone was concentrating on our moment of “genuine marital passion”, I had him unzipped and squeezed downstairs like a cow’s teat getting milked. I’ve been doing one-handed, one-eyed snake wrangling since junior high school, so I knew this would be a cinch. Fred comes quickly, luckily (the drugs and alcohol help with thatty), and - boom! – we were done. After releasing the vacuum lock on his lips, I quickly slipped the cup into the folds of my dress and I’m pretty sure no one saw. Princess Maxima may have had an inkling - but she was in such a state of shock I doubt whether her analytical skills were foremost for that moment.

So I retired early from the gala that evening (everyone thinks I'm delicate princess material) and went back to my pink-lit suite at Kancellihuset. I stood on my head while I made the nannies pour the golden baby syrup into my snatch. Gawd, they can be so difficult. So SLOW. What’s to protest? You see the hole, your pour into the hole. It’s conveniently at eye level for you. It's actually a privilege, geddit? At Versailles it was a privilege to hold the Sun King's chamber pot. Joizuz. Well, the nannies were shaking so much, they ended up getting most of the jiz to run down my torso instead of into my baby maker, so I had to call up Yehudi to meet me in New York just after my Jackie Kennedy moment in Washington, DC. Stupid Americans. No one seemed to care! Those pasty white, fat rednecks standing under the podium from me at Arlington didn't even turn around. They were actually pointing their cameras at the grave of a dead person, and not at a real princess! So now you understand why I really, really hate dead people. I couldn't get out of there fast enough. I sent Fred back to Copenhagen and flew up to New York to meet Amber Petty. She went along to my appointment with Yehudi to threaten him if he wasn't compliant with my double-revenge-baby plans.

With hindsight, though, I'm getting a sneaking suspicion that Queen Margrethe (I refuse to call her Daisy at the moment) had been in Yehudi's ear already, and Fred is getting hell because I don't trust what's growing inside me. Yehudi could have organised any sort of genetic cocktail, and none of me in it whatsoever. Yeah. I'm angry. And because these bubs could be genetically Marie, or Jokke, or Vickan, or even Caroline Heering for all I know. Come to think of it, what if they are Katja/Fred babies that Yehudi planted inside me? I bet they are!

That could scotch my plans to move the nursery rooms into his wing. I thought Katja would have had no choice but to move out. But if these twins are actually Fred and Katja's, and I'm just an incubator ... ... ...

OK. Revenge. I’ll need at least 6 more nannies. And Fred may need 4 more himself! I've already started calling the little foetuses Fizzle and Fuzzle.

Well, as Amber says, accentuate the spiritual. I’m loving how all of the attention once again is on ME. It's actually really really good for my soul. That's how it should be all along.

Double babies, double welfare. I am set for life. A smooth brow forever! That's spiritual wellbeing in MY church! There is no way that they will be making me hit the streets without my Louboutins and without a toothbrush - in other words, as empty handed and unPhotoshopped as I came in. Yeah, so, I didn't have a toothbrush. But they can't ruin the mother of four children! They'd be seen as ogres, cold, uncaring. See how I did that? Turned it all upside down so that I'm the one who looks warm and caring? You cannot mess with fiesty Scottish fisherman blood and not get fish guts all over you!

Those Schackenborg boys of Prince Joachim's can just start figuring out which trade school they're going to attend because there is NO WAY that they will be inheriting the throne now that there will be TWO understudies for Christian when he is, er, retired exceptionally early. Say, age 10. My kids may have potato heads, but they were born to Old Smokey's oldest son and that makes all the diff.

Four children. Just like Ma. Just like the Queen of England...

No one will be making fun of me at the upcoming Greek wedding about chest rubbing princes at the Slip Inn as long as I have double babies on the way! Mary, you've got it, babe. You are one righteous lady. Now, I just have to figure out how to handle the Greek sun with full kabuki makeup. Maybe I should call up ol' Ruth's embalmer for tips?

Anyway, of course, there's more than a little spiritual schadenfreude, that I'm rubbing ole Amber's face in it one more time. Mary: 4, Amber: nil. My spiritual take on life is that it is a preschool playground in Mt Druitt, doncha know. Bongs, booze and hard-hitting women. My sister-in-law Marie was lording it over me with her beautiful baby; sorry, Amber, you have to suffer my bitchslaps in turn. Get used to it.