Queen of Deception

By Trine Villemann

Queen of Deception is the first novel by Danish royal author Trine Villemann. It’s a scandalous tale which focuses on the death bed regrets of the Queen of a small anonymous northern European kingdom, as well as the self destructive escapades of the country’s Crown Prince Franz.
Queen of Deception offers an unedifying glimpse of life behind the Palace walls, where the cancer stricken monarch, a victim of the most horrifying cruelty, has sacrificed her own happiness in order to fulfill her royal duty. Prince Franz is determined not to follow in his mother’s footsteps.
Sensitive and weak Franz is a reluctant heir to the throne. After a miserable childhood, living in fear of his strict and violent father, Duke Alfonso, and ignored by his cold mother, Franz fights tooth and nail to avoid his royal responsibilities. He seeks solace in alcohol, drugs and casual sex, and alarms his minders by surrounding himself with a sometimes criminal entourage. Franz falls in love with a nurse, but his desire to marry her is thwarted by the Palace and he ends up succcumbing to a highly ambitious foreign commoner called Vicki.
In her final days, the Queen realises that the web of deception she has spun is about to undermine the very institution that she has sacrificed everything to protect.
Trine Villemann has earned a reputation as a controversial critic of Denmark’s Royal Family. Her first book, 1015 Copenhagen K, which exposed Crown Princess Mary’s in-laws as being a family of dysfunctional freeloaders, was a best seller in Denmark. Her second book, the King and Queen of Greenland, argued that Crown Prince Frederik and his Australian wife should go on an apprenticeship to Greenland so that they could prepare for the day when they would inherit the throne from Denmark’s Queen Margrethe.
When Queen of Deception was first published in Danish in February 2012, it was critically well received, as “a rivetting and entertaining read.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trine Villemann
• Release date: Oct 16, 2013
• ISBN: 9781370050529

Trine Villemann

I am a journalist and a royal author. For many years I was a royal reporter, mainly following Denmark's Crown Prince Frederik around. During those years I learned that His Royal Highness is a nice chap burdened with a destiny he is finding difficult to shoulder. I have written 3 books: My first one, "1015 Copenhagen K - Mary's Dysfundtional In-Laws" is the bestselling unauthorized biography of Crown Princess Mary and her Danish in-laws. When the book was first published Her Royal Highness spoke out in support of those book stores that refused to sell it. "1015 Copenhagen K - Mary's Dysfunctional In-Laws" is available in English on Kindle. My second book "The King and Queen of Greeland" is a debate book about the Danish monarchy. It was only published in Danish and is out of print. My third book is my royal novel QUEEN OF DECEPTION. It was published in Denmark in 2012 to much critical acclaim. It has just been translated into English and is available here on Smashwords.

Book preview

Trine Villemann

Queen of Deception

For Lukas Bent Villemann Brabant. You rock!

And Malcolm Brabant. My rock.

Copyright.

Queen of Deception


Copyright: © Trine Villemann


Published: 24th October 2013,




The right of Trine Villemann to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. 
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the publisher. You must not circulate this book in any format.

Cover design by Marlene Diemar

Edited by Pippa Gwilliam

Formatted by Jo Harrison

DISCLAIMER

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 1

Once upon a time, there was a Queen. She ruled in a little country far away. The Queen sat at her desk, incapable of transmitting her thoughts to the writing pad in front of her. She put down the heavy Mont Blanc fountain pen, engraved with a golden monogram, and reached for a crystal glass of sparkling mineral water. Her water had to be served at cellar temperature, not straight out of a fridge. She did not care for that. Members of the royal staff who worked in the antechamber next to the Queen’s office were instructed never to proffer ice cold drinks to Her Majesty.

She caught a glimpse of her nails. The red polish had already started to chip away even though she had applied a fresh layer the previous night. She contemplated calling for a pot of varnish but decided that a little repair here and there would not suffice. She’d have to remove the whole lot before she could paint a new coat.

Maybe it would be easier after all if I let Mr Martin do it, she thought.

For more than three decades, her hairdresser had politely and gently exerted pressure to take responsibility for her nails. Mr Martin was faultless at grand hairstyles and confections beneath tiaras, and would probably do a more than satisfactory job. But for some reason she had erected a fence around her nails. No one - not even the loyal and discreet coiffeur - touched them. The Queen could easily see the irony. She was guarding her nails like a final redoubt, but had, long ago, lost the colour card for the rest of her existence. This morning the thought entered a cul-de-sac, and she was too tired to guide it out again.

Come, she said in a commanding tone as Miss Kruuse, her oldest lady-in-waiting, poked her head through the double doors.

She knew why Miss Kruuse was there. It was time for her morning medication. One tranquillizer and one painkiller. She could no longer recall the names. Her chambermaid, Mrs Mohr, was in charge of dispensing the tablets and had drawn up a schedule that had been given to the four ladies-in-waiting, so that they always knew when it was time for the Queen’s palliative. She seemed to remember receiving a schedule herself, but could not recall where it had been left.

It had been decided that only Mrs Mohr and the ladies-in-waiting would administer the medication in the hope that no one would find out that the Queen was unwell. She was not yet ready to let her people know that her life was fading away, as one would euphemistically describe it.

It will be announced when the time is right, she had decreed on the evening she and Professor Duus discussed the results of the lung biopsy, scans and numerous blood tests.

Reaching the final verdict had been hard work, involving cloak-and-dagger visits in the middle of the night to the capital’s University Hospital. The sessions in the narrow scanner had caused stomach aches and claustrophobia. The Queen absolutely detested the sensation of being small and insignificant as she slid into the machine and reluctantly let go of Miss Kruuse’s hand. The professor’s words had been brutal and distressing. Nevertheless she felt a degree of relief at having finally arrived at a diagnosis.

Your Majesty’s lung cancer is at an advanced stage, but if we immediately start intensive treatment, the hope is that we can stop its progress, announced the professor.

Since she was a young teenager, probably no more than 15 or 16 years old, she had smoked 60 Gauloises a day. Her parents had smoked and neither the old King nor his wife had worried about their daughter taking up the habit. On the contrary, her father offered her the very first cigarette she ever lit up. But when he died from lung cancer, his widow instantly abandoned cigarettes.

She was not sitting here wishing she had done the same thing. There was no need for regret. Nicotine had always been her companion. The cigarettes were a prop to occupy her restless fingers and even when coughing, weight loss and fatigue became every day fixtures, she did not stop. Why feel regret? It was too late anyway, so what was the point in stopping smoking? She had cut down from 60 to 20 but that was as far as she was prepared to go.

Impatiently she had listened to the professor and his recommendations about various potential interventions. She remembered the phrase ‘life-prolonging’. It surfaced again and again, but she did not waver. It was her fate that the pleasure - and yes, smoking was a pleasure not a vice – that had helped her most in her life would also end up taking it. She had never turned her back on her destiny and she did not intend to start now. Maybe she had imagined it, but she sensed that the professor was relieved when she insisted that only her pain and symptoms be treated. She was old and not afraid to die.

And that’s how it had been. As Head of State in a constitutional monarchy, she no longer yielded any power. Ten years ago, parliament had decided that new laws no longer required her signature. But at least she was still able to exert some control over the manner of her death. She was very well aware that at some point the cancer would undermine her determination and that all sorts of machinery would be installed at the palace. But as long as she could get by without the oxygen tanks, intravenous drips, a morphine catheter, nebulizer and all the other hardware prescribed by the professor, then at least she was still reigning over the remaining days of her life.

Would Your Majesty like a small glass of rosé with the tablets?

The lady-in-waiting’s voice crushed a thought just as it was about to form. She nodded and saw the bottle of rosé with two highly polished glasses standing to attention on the silver tray that now, several times a day, brought her a breeze of tranquillity. Normally, she only had wine at meal times. But nothing was normal any longer and the wine helped her forget all the things she suddenly felt an urge to remember before she disappeared.

The Lord Chamberlain has asked if you could spare half an hour after lunch to discuss a few matters. And the private secretary would like to go through some correspondence, said Miss Kruuse.

The wine was served together with a small silver cup containing two tablets, one round and one oblong. The lady-in-waiting mentioned more people seeking an audience, but the Queen was no longer paying any attention. What was that word she had had in her head? Something that described her life. The lady-in-waiting remained standing, waiting. Had she asked a question? Was she awaiting a reply?

Thank you, said the Queen. That will be all.

Miss Kruuse placed the tray on a mahogany table by the wall and left. She pulled the door behind her without fully closing it. The sound of her heels drowned in the thick carpet that had recently been laid in the antechamber to diminish the noise. Through the door, the Queen could hear low voices. She thought they sounded worried.

She stared at the paper in front of her. One sentence was all she had managed. Perhaps it was a bad idea to write everything down. But she had been so fired up by the idea the previous night and had gone to her study straight after breakfast, which consisted only of a soft-boiled egg and a glass of juice, since she had not been able to stomach coffee. The Queen had the day to herself. She had no appointments and ignored the brandy-coloured leather folder containing personal letters that Miss Kruuse had placed on her desk. She wanted to write. Not the usual stories and fairytales she had knitted together over the years, mostly for her own enjoyment. Her books had sold well, probably because the Queen was the author, but this was different. She wanted to bring her life to paper, spread it out page by page until all her memories were nailed in ink for posterity.

Perhaps she should get a computer, one of those dreadful gizmos of which people seemed so fond. She had never tried one, but they did accelerate everything, that much was clear to her. All her books had been written by hand, which, in her opinion, gave her time to imprint her soul on every letter. She would not know the first thing about how to work a computer and since she had a private secretary and an assistant to write it out properly for her, she saw no need to reinvent the wheel.

The Queen also refused to use a mobile phone. Why did people feel they had to be permanently connected to the trivialities of everyday life? Several times she had occasion to admonish the Crown Prince who was always buried in his mobile, even when performing official duties. What was so urgent that it could not wait or be dealt with by an aide-de-camp? She refused to allow those portable noise pollutants within her walls. Everyone, including family members, left their mobiles in the antechamber before they saw the Queen. She was perfectly aware that her son considered her stance anachronistic and dotty. But she refused to have her conversations interrupted by burlesque music, screeching car tyres or whinnying horses. She had never shared the Crown Princess’ delight in all things equestrian. To programme one’s mobile to sound like a mare in heat was verging on the deranged. She was convinced that ringtones revealed as much about individuals’ personalities as their handwriting.

The tablets seemed to be doing their job. She could breathe slightly more easily now. It was an immense relief to be able to inhale oxygen and let it settle in her lungs without collapsing in a coughing fit.

How did authors write about themselves? She had never understood those who exposed their innermost feelings and most intimate secrets. It was completely beyond her. She could not rationalize her own sudden desire to explain herself. Her legacy was secured. In due course, history books would describe her as a Queen who put her duty above all else. She was confident of that. But what about the rest? Did it really matter? Did anyone need to know the pain and defeats that had shaped her existence? Confessionals, or kissing and telling, to use modern parlance, were not for monarchs. Over the years she had given an abundance of interviews because she considered she had an obligation to provide sufficient material for writers of future chronicles. But every interview had been a performance. She had talked at great length to one deferential journalist after another. She always referred to ‘one’, never ‘I’ and felt herself floating in the room just below the ceiling while looking down at this woman talking incessantly, without recognizing herself. None of her interviewers had ever had the wit to realize that she had woven a fairy tale to hide the emptiness after each question. She had fabricated a truth to hide the truth.

Suddenly a scorching spear pierced her thorax beneath the left shoulder blade. She bent forwards, but then remembered the doctor’s advice to stretch when the pain struck. She leaned back in the chair again and grabbed the edge of the desk while she waited for the wave of discomfort to subside. With her right hand she poured a glass of wine and gulped it down. Warmth travelled throughout her body. Solitariness. Loneliness. Now she grasped the thought she lost when Miss Kruuse interrupted. A monarch was always surrounded by people. If she cried out now, someone would appear within a few seconds and tend to her needs. Yet all these servants were nothing but set decoration in the empty production known as a Queen’s life. She had no confidantes.

It’s the Queen, she always said, even addressing her oldest and most trusted friends when she picked up the phone after the lady-in-waiting had punched in the number and established a connection.

She never used her Christian name. She would never countenance such informality. Not even her husband had ever discovered the secrets of the overgrown herb garden that was her soul. They had shared their lives for more than forty years. But soul mates they most certainly had never become. Publicly, he had been a dutiful consort. His effusive Latin temperament had occasionally lifted the gloom that was a part of the mental topography of her little kingdom. It had not taken her long to discover that she was not part of his life’s plan. But she had made her peace with that fact many, many years ago. However, she found it impossible to lose the bitterness and anger caused by the numerous agonizing distractions for which he was responsible. Although everyone preached that time was the great healer, forgiveness was a station she had never reached. He, of course, would have felt that it was she who had let him down.

Oh well, it was all hypothetical anyway. Alfonso had been dead for nearly two years now. What good would it do to reproach him for his behaviour now? She should have addressed that issue decades ago, when the facts and all of their dire nuances became clear to her. But now it was far too late to sit here like a fishwife and screech. Much of the pain had also been self-inflicted, had it not?

Naturally, a divorce had never been on the cards. Above all, she had her pride.

The children had arrived in relatively quick succession in spite of their parents’ bizarre and turbulent co-existence. It had been her duty to keep the glossy royal postcard free from blemishes. Alfonso had not only betrayed her, but he had threatened to undermine her subjects’ illusion about the happy young couple with their adorable children at the palace. One could not bear to imagine how the people would have reacted, had the spell had been broken. She had to stop bleating and looking backwards. The wine and tablets were forcing to the surface memories that she did not have the strength to confront.

She suddenly recalled Franz as a small boy, crying and burning up with fever. How old had he been? Four or five? She had bumped into Miss Christiansen carrying the boy in her arms heading upstairs to put him to bed, and, she assumed, to call the doctor. So far, the day had already offered up a brutal encounter with Alfonso and a terribly long and boring inauguration of a new bridge. She longed for her study, her newspapers and her books. She knew there was a pile of royal decrees waiting for her signature and a meeting with the dressmaker, who was remodelling some gowns ahead of a state visit to Portugal. She and Alfonso were due at the theatre that night. She was gasping for a cup of tea, but Franz wanted his mother.

Mummy! he wailed and stretched his thin arms out towards her.

She felt pins and needles in her throat as she breathed, but the pain could not scare the memory away.

I will try to stop by later, she had replied irritably and turned her back on her sick child.

She could hear Franz’s sobbing fade away upstairs accompanied by Miss Christiansen’s soothing voice that also reeked of reproach.

She poured more wine and drank it. The Queen contemplated summoning a servant and reached for the silver bell, but changed her mind. The wine had conquered the pain. She had never been good with children, not least her own. The maternal feeling had simply not materialized. She could not change that. It was pure biology. A few days later, she had spotted Franz and Miss Christiansen playing in the sandpit below in the palace garden. A servant had opened a window and she made a real effort.

Is everything alright? she shouted as she leaned out.

Miss Christiansen’s accusatory eyes contained daggers, but Franz had joyfully waved his arms. She had learned to stay clear of Miss Christiansen. She could not cope with the incessant rebukes. Not that the nanny ever dared to openly censure the Queen, but everything she said sounded like a criticism of her motherly abilities. There had to be a limit to what she, the Head of State, had to endure in terms of unspoken snide remarks from an officious spinster.

Of course she loved Franz, but love could not be weighed and measured. At least not her love. She was very well aware that some of the maids quietly gossiped about what they perceived to be her aloofness and lack of attention. She had breast fed both her children. But she did not see the need to burp them or change their nappies. It did not mean that she did not love them. She had always felt the young girls’ censorious glances, especially at Christmas, when the staff was assembled in the Great Hall and she handed out presents, usually three tea towels to each servant. But what gave the maids the right to judge her, their Queen?

Franz had been a sensitive boy, always angry, frightened or upset, never happy or harmonious. His state of mind resembled a listing ship, forever lopsided. Blond with almost white hair and huge grey-blue eyes in a small face, never rounded by baby fat but skinny and chiselled from birth, he had grown into a handsome, almost felinely beautiful creature. Franz was an unhappy little elf who was scared of the dark and could not fall asleep unless the light was on in the hallway outside his bedroom.

Franz’ world collapsed when it dawned on him that one day he would be King. Naturally, he had not had the faintest idea of what a king was, but one of the other children in his reception class had made it sound like something Franz definitely did not want to be when he grew up. Miss Christiansen had once again assumed her battle-axe attitude and addressed the issue like a revolutionary storming a barricade. It had been a brief, unpleasant conversation.

I entirely understand that Your Majesty is very busy indeed. It must all still be so very new for the Queen, but we will probably have to face the fact that the Crown Prince needs more help than we are capable of giving him.

She could still recall how she had sat there fuming over the nanny’s badly disguised hint that she was not up to her biological calling. True, it was only a little more than a year ago that she had been crowned following the death of her father, but she had spent her entire life preparing for the throne, so why did she now feel that she had to justify herself.

What do you suggest, Miss Christiansen?

Perhaps it would be useful if the Queen could attempt to explain to Franz that being a king is not such a bad thing. Maybe even let him spend some time with you so he sees for himself that it is not something you die from.

The eternal refrain. She had listened to it some many times in numerous different versions. It was as if the nanny had decided never to allow for the fact that a Queen’s day was stuffed to the gills with important duties. If Miss Christiansen could provide her a day containing forty-eight hours, she could easily spend some more time with Franz.

As I am sure you are aware, my duty is very time consuming. Do you have any other suggestions?

She had noticed the nanny’s hesitation, but then Miss Christiansen seemed to throw all caution to the wind because the words came hosing towards her like machine gun fire.

I have taken the liberty of discussing this with Miss Bøg. The Queen probably remembers that she is Franz’s teacher.

She had been engulfed by a desire to throw herself across the desk and strangle Miss Christiansen with her bare hands, but she had exerted self-control and sat there calmly while she listened to the nanny’s insults.

And Miss Bøg agrees that Franz needs psychological help.

On what do you base that assumption, Miss Christiansen?

"The boy is obviously miserable. Inconsolable. I find him crying all over the palace. He sobs in his sleep. And he wets the bed. The other staff -

Oh, so you have shared your observations with the rest of the servants?

Yes, well, no, of course not, but surely the Queen understands that this is serious.

I appreciate your obvious concern for my son, Miss Christiansen. I shall discuss the matter with my husband. Will that be all?

Alfonso had been utterly opposed to the suggestion that Franz required any kind of support, and back then she hardly ever crossed her husband. She simply did not have the time and strength for the exhausting confrontations that inevitably followed whenever things did not go his way. Burned indelibly on her memory was the time when a newly appointed NATO Secretary General and his wife came to lunch. She and Alfonso had argued that same morning and his mood was explosive because for once she had stood up to him and refused to grant his wish that his family name be added to the children’s names. She had tried to explain that royals do not have surnames. But he wouldn’t listen and had eventually stormed out of her study and banged the door so violently that a precious Chinese vase was knocked off a table. Its shattered pieces joined the remains of Alfonso’s cup of coffee, which was already on the floor.

Conscious that Alfonso’s temper was boiling beneath the surface, she remained resolutely subdued throughout the meal and let him charm their guests. Finally, when the cheese was served, everything exploded. A servant brought a wine Alfonso had not ordered. Furious, he grabbed his silver cutlery and threw it at the Queen, and unleashed a stream of obscenities about how she was not only a lousy head of state but also completely incapable of running a household. The knife hit her upper lip, which split. She could still recall the humiliation burning in her cheeks, as with all the dignity she could muster she excused herself and ran out of the dining room.

Louise had been far more robust. She arrived two years after Franz and soon became her unbalanced older brother’s guiding star and protector. In spite of her dark looks, Louise was the golden child and far better suited to royal life than Franz. She never moaned when she spotted a photographer but always gave a big smile, often followed by a cheeky remark that would be charming but also utterly insulting. Louise had inherited Alfonso’s talent for offending people without them ever noticing it.

When she was only three, Louise was allowed to accompany them on official duties because of her ability to sit still for hours on end. She never complained when people walked up to her and patted her cheeks or ruffled her hair. At the age of sixteen she went on her first solo official trip abroad. The visit to Hong Kong was a triumph and in stark contrast to her older brother’s first overseas trip a few months earlier. That adventure ended in uproar when both the ambassador and the press fired off complaints to the palace because an uncooperative and sulking Franz had partied far too much to show any enthusiasm for the duties he was there to perform. The Queen had to admit that on the surface Louise was and remains the perfect princess; one of those royals upon whom dynasties are built. It was such a dreadful shame that her daughter’s apparently pure royal genes had a hidden flaw. What a waste of good DNA, especially nowadays when marketing assistants and advertising executives became crown princesses in the world’s few remaining monarchies. Not everything modern was progress, but she was very aware that not many people shared her view on that matter.

Another knock on the door. Why could they not leave her alone? She did not have any duties to perform today, so could she not be allowed to sit in tranquillity and gather a few thoughts on a piece of paper? What could be so important that an exhausted Queen could not have a couple of hours to herself? It was Frandsen, one of the most senior servants in the antechamber. He had been with them for nearly a lifetime now. She had inherited him from her parents and he should know better than to barge in like this.

Your Majesty, I do apologize, but Thorbjørn Jensen is here and is asking to speak to the Queen. He says it’s important. He called ahead and I thought that -

Thank you, Frandsen. Please let Mr Jensen in.

She was astonished by her own tone of voice. She was really cross about being disturbed, but oddly she sounded so friendly. It had to be the wine. She cast a glance at the bottle on her desk. Oh, it was empty. Should she ask for another or wait till lunch? She had not yet made up her mind, when Officer Jensen stood in front of her. Tall, with thinning hair and deep brown eyes that were looking at her with, was it compassion? No, it looked more like worry. She did not care much for other people, but Thorbjørn Jensen was one of the few for whom she did have time. For many more years than she could remember, the police protection officer had been part of the unit that was responsible for the royal family’s safety. He was discreet, that went without saying, but also strangely soothing to be around. The Queen never interfered in police matters but when it had become apparent that the Crown Prince required protection above and beyond the ordinary, she had personally requested that Mr Jensen be transferred to Franz’s group of guards.

During Franz’s teenage years Thorbjørn Jensen had become something of a father figure to the Crown Prince and he was also the Queen’s eyes and ears. Very little escaped his radar because of his talent for identifying potential trouble before it became a problem for the royal family. He was way above the retiring age of an active royal bodyguard, but the Lord Chamberlain had convinced the Police Commissioner that it