“Why, what could you have done?”
“Do you think I would have allowed my husband to resign his rights? Why, if he had been deprived of them, I would have set Europe in a blaze before I would have submitted; but to resign them meekly of his own accord——! No. Je maintiendray should have been my motto.”
“But still,” urged Queen Ernestine, waiving the question, “I cannot see how your family could have permitted Lord Caerleon to aspire to your hand before he was crowned. Surely such an alliance would have been subversive of all the traditions of our order?”
“My dear Ernestine, do you really believe that we belong to a separate race of beings, with some ethereal fluid in their veins, instead of blood like other mortals? No wonder that we in Dardania hear tales occasionally of troubles at the Thracian Court, caused by the Queen’s treatment of her entourage!”
“My dear Ottilie,”—with some resentment,—“no arguments could make me regard such a marriage as anything but morganatic.”
“And the mere wearing of a crown would make the difference? But suppose Carlino had been crowned, and had afterwards abdicated, what then? Would the marriage have been regular as long as he was King, but have become morganatic when he no longer possessed the crown?”
“The effect of the anointing would still remain, I suppose,” said the Queen doubtfully, but her words were drowned by a peal of laughter from her cousin.
“Nestchen, you are too delicious! Why weren’t you born before 1789? You ought to be put into a museum, and labelled, ‘Extraordinary survival of medieval methods of thought.’ Don’t you see that we have given up all those ideas of a superior caste nowadays? It is merely a matter of policy. Say that a parvenu mounts a throne and seems likely to retain it; surely the wisest thing to do is to welcome him into your mystic circle, and hold him there by chains so strong that your interests and his become identical? Lord Caerleon could show his quarterings with the best of us Germans; but if M. Drakovics were to become King of Thracia to-morrow, there are very few Courts at which he would be refused if he came seeking a bride.”
“Do you really mean this, Ottilie—that royal marriages are now arranged purely as matters of policy, and absolutely without regard to the claims of blood or the traditions of a princely house?”
“Absolutely. Why, my dear child, you seem to have no idea of the necessities of State. Surely you must see that if a young Princess falls in love with a simple noble, it is really immoral for them to marry; but that it is both right and eminently suitable for her to be handed over to any roturier who may succeed in winning himself a throne? What is the use of an exclusive caste unless outsiders may be admitted into it for a consideration? You must try to understand the wheels within wheels a little, Nestchen.”