ENNUI // the heir and the spare.
by free magic
The thing was, instead of having done it wrong, the parents started things off exactly as they were supposed to. Second cousins, arranged marriage. She was pretty as a girl and beautiful as a woman, lively and attractive and now strong and virtuous. He was intelligent and highly refined, a good ruler and a popular public figure. They were engaged on Midsummer’s day, wed six months later in a dainty snow-strewn ceremony. She looked like a fairy princess, the Sugar Plum Fairy, all dressed in white, silver lining her great furry mantle, and he looked every inch the prince: stately, solemn, proud, calm, golden-haired with soft, boyish eyes.
Marriage itself was a pretty thing between them: kisses exchanged at breakfast, socks folded neatly by her own tender hands, whispered prayers accompanied by wistful glances at her stomach on his part. They were courteous and politely affectionate.
The heir came as everyone had hoped, one warm August evening, and that was where everything began to go wrong.
Having done their first duty to the family – providing a boy to carry on the name – they were now obliged to look for a suitable wife for him. A French princess or an Italian duchessa was looking like a good choice at the time, so at the tender age of four, the heir was betrothed to a girl who barely knew her own name. The Russian line would finally prosper now, in the capable hands of the czar who did everything the right way.
Seven years later, the spare arrived.
The spare was a pretentious little todler; he crawled around, made a mess, decorated his own face with a curly moustache modelled after his father’s. When the spare was six years old, he shattered all the glass windows in his room with uncontrolled magic alone; his face was horribly cut up, and three hours later, the cuts had healed and he was sleeping peacefully in his nurse’s bed. They grew alarmed at todlers showing signs of magic, but, eventually writing it off as a powerful storm instead, attempted to ignore any further discrepancies. They were the ones who did things correctly, so an abnormality was not an option.
Trouble came again, but not until the heir was happily married and settled for a time in St. Petersburg. Five years he had been married. Five years, and no issue. Rumours began to spread, diffusing around the great country like a plague. Something is wrong with the Prince, they would whisper. I suppose it is difficult with that Italian servant walking around the palace… The heir could not conceive. Unrest stirred within the courts at Moscow. And meanwhile, the spare also waited, waited for the dreaded word.
The spare’s sixteenth birthday was marked by a profoundly unsettling silence. No celebrations at the palace, now. Three days after the sombre affair his mother said to him, You need to help your family. And so the spare was sent off, packed light, brought too many fur coats and too many pairs of shorts. Help your family, for your brother cannot.
Mama, but, he is doing fine…
He arrived in Switzerland as someone flammable. He stopped being the spare and started being Stepan Savelijevich instead.
