When I wrote To Play the King in 1990 as a sequel to House of Cards, it was partly because I believed that the Royal yacht was heading for turbulent waters. And so it proved to be. I wrote about fractured marriages, financial scandal, political controversy and public humiliations, and for the next few years the Royal Family seemed to follow the script with breathless tenacity. At times it seemed as though various individuals were openly auditioning for parts in the story. If my book was intended to be by way of a warning, as I suppose it was, it failed completely. The House of Windsor was to endure some of its worst moments. The yacht nearly sank and some members of the crew were thrown overboard.
My fictional king isn’t simply a version of Prince Charles – there have been many heirs to the throne who have got themselves into difficulties and I took a little inspiration from more than one – but it was inevitable that some comparisons would be made. At the time I began writing, it was clear that his marriage was falling apart, despite all the official denials, so I decided that my kingly character would have no wife. I hope none of what I wrote amounted to disrespect because that is not what I intended.
In any event, despite those dire years, both he and the institution have displayed their tenacity and powers of recovery, and today they stand higher in public esteem than they have for decades. The Royal yacht sails on.
And so does FU. Nearly thirty years after I created him, he has developed a life of his own, in books, on global television, as a character who has been quoted both in Parliament and the press. Do you suspect he might even have been muttered about in the corners of various palaces? Well, you might say that but I am not going to comment…
M.D. 2013
Away with Kings. They take up too much room.
It was the day they would put him to death.
They led him through the park, penned in by two companies of infantrymen. The crowd was thick and he had spent much of the night wondering how they would react when they saw him. With tears? Jeers? Try to snatch him to safety or spit on him in contempt? It depended who had paid them best. But there was no outburst; they stood in silence, dejected, cowed, still not believing what was about to take place in their name. A young woman cried out and fell in a dead faint as he passed, but nobody tried to impede his progress across the frost-hard ground. The guards were hurrying him on.
Within minutes they were in Whitehall, where he was lodged in a small room. It was just after ten o’clock on a January morning, and he expected at any moment to hear the knock on the door that would summon him. But something had delayed them; they didn’t come until nearly two. Four hours of waiting, of demons gnawing at his courage, of feeling himself fall to pieces inside. During the night he had achieved a serenity and sense of inner peace, almost a state of grace, but with the heavy passage of unexpected minutes, growing into hours, the calm was replaced by a sickening sense of panic which began somewhere in his brain and stretched right through his body to pour into his bladder and his bowels. His thoughts became scrambled and the considered words, crafted with such care to illuminate the justice of his cause and impeach their twisted logic, were suddenly gone. He dug his finger nails deep into his palms; somehow he would find the words, when the time came.
The door opened. The captain stood in the dark entrance and gave a curt, sombre nod of his helmeted head. No need for words. They took him and within seconds he was in the Banqueting Hall, a place he cherished with its Rubens ceiling and magnificent oaken doors, but he had difficulty in making out the details through the unnatural gloom. The tall windows had been partially bricked up and boarded during the war to provide better defensive positions. Only at one of the farther windows was there light where the masonry and barricades had been torn down and a harsh grey glow surrounded the hole, like the entrance to another world. The corridor formed by the line of soldiers led directly to it.
My God, but it was cold. He’d had nothing to eat since yesterday, he’d refused the meal they had offered, and he was grateful for the second shirt he had asked for, to prevent him shivering. It wouldn’t do to be seen to shiver. They would think it was fear.
He climbed up two rough wooden steps and bowed his head as he crossed the threshold of the window, onto a platform they had erected immediately outside. There were half a dozen other men on the freshly built wooden stage while every point around was crammed by teeming thousands, on foot, on carriages, on roofs, leaning from windows and other vantage points. Surely now there would be some response? But as he stepped out into the harsh light and their view, their restlessness froze in the icy wind and the huddled figures stood silent and sullen, ever incredulous. It still could not be.
Driven into the stage on which he stood were four iron staples. They would rope him down, spread-eagled between the staples, if he struggled, yet it was but one more sign of how little they understood him. He would not struggle. He had been born to a better end than that. He would but speak his few words to the throng and that would be sufficient. He prayed that the weakness he felt in his knees would not betray him; surely he had been betrayed enough. They handed him a small cap into which with great care he tucked his hair, as if preparing for nothing more than a walk through the park with his wife and children. He must make a fine show of it. He dropped his cloak to the ground so that he might be better seen.
Heavens! The cold cut through him as if the frost were reaching for his racing heart and turning it straightway to stone. He took a deep, searing breath to recover from the shock. He must not tremble! And there was the captain of his guard, already in front of him, beads of sweat on his brow despite the weather.
‘Just a few words, Captain. I would say a few words.’ He racked his mind in search of them.
The captain shook his head.
‘For the love of God, the commonest man in all the world has the right to a few words.’
‘Your few words would be more than my life is worth, Sir.’
‘As my words and thoughts are more than my life to me. It is my beliefs that have brought me to this place, Captain. I will share them one last time.’
‘I cannot let you. Truly, I am sorry. But I cannot.’
‘Will you deny me even now?’ The composure in his voice had been supplanted by the heat of indignation and a fresh wave of panic. It was all going wrong.
‘Sir, it is not in my hands. Forgive me.’
The captain reached out to touch him on the arm but the prisoner stepped back and his eyes burned in rebuke. ‘You may silence me, but you will never make me what I am not. I am no coward, Captain. I have no need of your arm!’
The captain withdrew, chided.
The time had come. There would be no more words, no more delay. No hiding place. This was the moment when both they and he would peer deep inside and discover what sort of man he truly was. He took another searing lungful of air, clinging to it as long as he could as he looked to the heavens. The priest had intoned that death
