THE ROYAL WE

Fashion bloggers Cocks and Morgan (Spoiled, 2011, etc.) debunk the princess fantasy in a fictional tell-all inspired by the courtship of Kate Middleton and Prince William.

On the night before her wedding, Rebecca Porter admits that she wasn’t an obvious match for Prince Nicholas of Wales when they first met in the dorms at Oxford. Bex’s account of going from suburban America to Westminster Abbey on the arm of a prince stretches as far back as the train on Princess Diana’s wedding gown, but royal watchers will appreciate the craftsmanship that went into fitting the fictional Lyons dynasty into the timeline of the existing monarchy. Some of the details are invented while others are tweaked. Nick’s rakish brother, Freddie, stands in for Vegas-loving Prince Harry, while Bex’s twin, Lacey, hogs the camera like Pippa Middleton. (And yes, they have a fling while Freddie juggles unfortunately named socialites like Tuppence and Turret.) On a tour of Kensington Palace, Nick and Freddie tease Bex about wanting to steal their Aunt Agatha’s collection of Fabergé eggs while complaining that Henry VIII sullied the rest of the antiques “with his great greasy bum.” Wild parties, sibling rivalry and fashion blunders inevitably land them all in the tabloids with punderful headlines—“Trouble in Porterdise?”—giving Nick doubts about putting Bex in the spotlight. Bex feels the weight of the crown when Nick heads off to military duty, leaving her with a team of stylists who stick fake hair on her head and banish her sister in an effort to improve her image. The question is not whether she loves Nick but whether his love is worth a lifetime of public scrutiny.

Pages of biting humor and breathtaking glamour rewrite a fairy tale into something more satisfying than a stack of tabloids.