Chapter 11 Chapter eleven
AANYA
Saturday morning, I woke to find my mother sitting in my private sitting room.
Not waiting in the corridor. Not having her secretary call to arrange a meeting. Actually sitting in my personal space, tea growing cold on the side table, still wearing yesterday's clothes.
She'd been there all night.
"Mama?" I sat up, pulling my dressing gown tighter. "What's wrong? Is Papa all right? Is it Charlotte?"
"Everyone's fine." Her voice was flat, exhausted. "Physically, anyway."
I got out of bed, sat in the chair across from her. Morning light filtered through the curtains, casting her face in shadows. She looked older suddenly. Tired in a way I'd never seen before.
"I read what you've been writing," she said.
My stomach dropped. "What?"
"Your laptop. You left it open in your office last night. James saw it when he came to drop off this morning's briefing documents." She met my eyes. "He called me immediately."
The document I'd started Thursday night. My own words, not palace talking points. The truth I was planning to tell on Tuesday.
"You had no right to read my private files."
"You have no private files, Aanya. Not when you're a working royal representing the Crown. Everything you do, everything you say, everything you write reflects on this family, this institution." She stood, walked to the window. "Did you really think we'd let you walk into that forum and say those things? Publicly validate every accusation against Crown Estate? Admit institutional wrongdoing on camera?"
"The accusations are true, Mama. I've seen the evidence. Dev Marchetti's research is solid. Crown Estate developments have displaced families, concentrated pollution in poor neighborhoods, covered up safety violations that killed people. Including his father. These are facts."
"Facts that can be presented in context, through proper channels, with appropriate legal review. Not in some public forum designed to embarrass the monarchy."
"It's not designed to embarrass anyone. It's designed to hold Crown Estate accountable for harm they've done."
"And you've decided it's your role to be their prosecutor?" My mother turned back to face me. "You're fourth in line to the throne, Aanya. Your job is to represent the institution, not tear it down from the inside."
"What if the institution deserves to be torn down?"
The slap was sharp, unexpected. Not hard enough to really hurt, but shocking in its suddenness. In twenty-seven years, my mother had never struck me.
She stepped back immediately, hand over her mouth, eyes wide with horror.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I didn't mean... I've never..."
I touched my cheek. More surprised than hurt.
We stood there in silence, the enormity of what she'd done settling between us.
"You sound just like him," she said finally. "Your uncle. Before everything fell apart. Before the divorce, the scandals, the tabloid nightmares. He thought the institution needed to be dismantled too. That honesty mattered more than stability. That truth was more important than duty."
"Maybe he was right."
"He destroyed his life, Aanya. Destroyed his children's lives. Lost everything. And for what? The monarchy survived. The institution adapted. Nothing fundamental changed except that he was cast out and forgotten."
"Or maybe nothing changed because people like you and Papa keep prioritizing the institution over people's lives."
My mother sat down heavily, suddenly looking every one of her fifty-five years. "Do you know what happens if you go through with this? If you stand up on Tuesday and validate Dr. Marchetti's allegations against Crown Estate?"
"I tell the truth."
"You create a constitutional crisis. Parliament will demand investigations. The press will call for Crown Estate reform. Opposition MPs will use it to attack the monarchy's financial arrangements. And your father, who has spent his entire life preparing to be king, who has worked tirelessly to modernize the institution while maintaining stability, will watch everything he's built collapse because his daughter decided her conscience mattered more than her duty."
"Papa's conscience should matter more than duty too."
"He's going to be king, Aanya. He doesn't have the luxury of conscience over duty. Neither do you."
"Then maybe I don't want to be a working royal."
The words hung in the air between us. I hadn't meant to say them. Hadn't even fully thought them until they came out. But hearing them aloud, I realized they were true.
My mother's face went very still. "You don't mean that."
"I don't know what I mean anymore. All I know is I can't stand in that forum on Tuesday and lie. I can't look at families who've been displaced and tell them to use 'established grievance procedures.' I can't sit across from a man whose father died because of Crown Estate negligence and pretend it was just an unfortunate accident."
"So you'll sacrifice everything? Your title, your position, your family, your entire future? For what? To make a dramatic gesture that won't actually change anything?"
"It might change something."
"It will change that you'll be cast out. Stripped of your HRH title, removed from the succession, cut off from royal support. You'll have nothing, Aanya. No money, no position, no purpose. And Dr. Marchetti will still be a working-class PhD student, and Crown Estate will still operate exactly as it always has, and you'll have accomplished nothing except destroying yourself."
I thought about that. Really thought about it. Losing the title I'd been born into. The position I'd never chosen. The life I'd been trained for since childhood.
Becoming nobody. Just Aanya Windsor. Former princess. Unemployed, homeless except for friends' charity.
"Maybe," I said slowly. "But at least I'll be able to live with myself."
My mother stood. Walked to the door. Paused with her hand on the handle.
"Tuesday morning," she said without turning around. "Your father wants to see you. Nine AM, his study. Don't be late."
She left.
I sat alone in my sitting room as morning light grew stronger, touching my cheek where she'd slapped me, thinking about everything I was about to lose.
And everything I might gain.
\---
I spent Saturday researching. Not palace-approved summaries. Not sanitized briefing documents. The actual evidence Dev Marchetti had compiled.
I'd found his full dissertation draft posted on an academic repository. Three hundred pages of meticulously documented research. Environmental data, displacement statistics, safety reports, financial analysis, testimony from affected families.
It was devastating.
Crown Estate had acquired properties in working-class neighborhoods systematically. Not randomly. Not accidentally. Systematically. Areas with weak tenant protections, high percentages of immigrant families, low political organization. Communities least able to resist.
Then they'd developed luxury housing while industrial sites remained nearby. The new residents complained about pollution. So Crown Estate used their complaints to pressure local councils to relocate the industrial sites. But the relocated sites went to other working-class neighborhoods. The pollution wasn't eliminated. Just moved to people with less power to fight back.
And the original residents, the ones who'd lived there for generations? Priced out by rising rents. Displaced. Scattered.
Dev had mapped it all. Twenty years of development patterns. The same strategy, repeated across London. Profit through systematic exploitation of the powerless.
And my family had benefited from every pound.
I pulled up the Crown Estate financial reports. Cross-referenced with Dev's research. The overlap was undeniable.
Last year alone, Crown Estate property development had generated £89 million in profit. A significant portion of that went to the monarchy. Funded our lives. Our palaces. Our staff. Our perfectly choreographed charity work where we pretended to care about the communities we were destroying.
I felt sick.
My phone buzzed. Priya: Lunch? I'm worried about you. You've gone silent.
I typed back: Can you come to KP? Don't want to deal with security detail for public lunch.
Her response: Be there in 30. Bringing Thai food and wine.