Thousand+ Words for October 31, 2025

Roman-a-Clef: A British Prince Discovers that a "Friend" has some Photos of Him

Sophia was always a little tense in church. All those little red lights on all those cameras just waiting for her to make a mistake. Her prayer, usually was that no one would notice what was seeming to be increaingly obvious to her.

Sophia's father, the Prince Albert George Christian Arthur, known as Prince Albert, the once notoriously dashing, jet-setting, playboy favorite son of his mother, the late, beloved queen, had in an earlier age been loved for his irrascability and was even, at one point, showing signs of growing up, cleaning up his act, and becoming a respectable member of the British Royal Family.

Those days, however, were long gone--a series of increasingly disturbing scandals, precipatated by his inability to control his hormones on the one hand and a pronounced and severe dull-wittedness on the other, had branded him as a paunchy, aging hypocrite who had as little concept of public relations and the business world as a fish has for how to ride a bicycle.

He was so stupid, in fact, that when a beautiful young woman--one who turned out to be much younger than he had imagined--expressed a sudden and enthusiastic romantic interest in him at a party hosted for him by a shady businessman in New York, he found himself unable to imagine that she might be anything other than a young woman infatuated with his practiced charm and high status.

So he did what he had always done--he did not restrain himself. Unfortunately, he so failed to restrain himself in one of the secret-cameras-and-microphone-laden bedrooms of his host.

Some weeks later, his host, a man by the name of Christopher, called the Prince into his office.

Prince Albert flew to New York for the meeting the day before, spent that day and the night in Christopher's expansive eight-bedroom apartment on the East Side. The time for his appointment came and Prince Albert was shown into the office by a pleasant-looking woman and invited to sit at one of the two chairs in front of the elaborate Edwardian table that served as Christopher's desk. All the women in the apartment seemed to be young and beautiful, but this woman was not--she was perhaps 30, pleasant-looking, yes, but all business. "Mr. Christopher will be with you momentarily," she said in a clipped Queens accent. She turned on her heel and departed, closing the door behind her.

The prince looked around the room--it was outfitted much like offices in Buckingham Palace were outfitted: giant portraits of ancient statesmen on the walls, punctuated by bucolic landscapes; distinctly abstract sculptures at eye level on Roman pillars; dark, gleaming furniture along the walls. Prince Albert found his gaze settling on the scattered papers on Christopher's desk. Although the photographs and papers were upside-down from his point of view, he clearly recognized on photograph, which was placed such that it was easily visible to him from his side of the table.

It was a full-page photograph of the woman with whom he had been with that night. She was stretched out on a bed; the photograph appeared to have been taken from the ceiling of the room. She was alone in the photograph, but Albert recognized immediately that she appeared much as she might have appeared when, after having completed his activities with her and then slept for several hours, he heavily rolled out of the bed and passed into the suite's bathroom, which, the prince knew from previous visits, would be stocked with the toiletry items he preferred.

As soon as he had moved out of the bedroom, the woman no longer existed for him. He had taken care of his immediate toilet needs and continued not back to the bedroom to say his farewells to the young woman, but instead through the door on the opposite side of the bathroom to an adjoining dressing room, whcih would be stocked with hangover cure, fresh fruit, clean underclothes, several shirts and suits from him to choose from, and his personal items. Christopher knew how to host British royalty, as well as international celebrities and eminence from a variety of fields.

In the photograph, the young woman was face up and gazing into the camera, her shapely form visible under a thin silk sheet, bare shoulders visible and a bare foot extending from the opposite edge. The photograph could have easily been the cover of any of the risque magazines which polluted the sensibilities of fine, upstanding citizens on either side of the Atlantic. Prince Albert could see that the photograph was only one of several that were assembled in a loose stack on the desk.

He was flirting with the idea of reaching out and moving the top photograph over enough to see the one underneath when the door on the other side of the room opened and Christopher's form appears. He wore blue jeans and an athletic sweatshirt with the word "Oxford" across the front. "Ah, Albert," Christopher said. "Thanks for coming in."

"Of course," Albert said. He struggled to find a comfortable position in the chair; suddenly the room seemed hot, or perhaps that was his face flushing, as it often did lately, much to his chagrin. Christopher never called him Prince, and certainly never as Your Royal Highness or sir. as protocol and custom demanded. Even on their first meeting, he had been addressed casually as Albert. The prince was willing to afford a good deal of latitude to Christopher, given his status as an international businessman on the one hand and his obvious status as a well-to-do New Yorker on the other.

Christopher stepped over and sat in the over-upholstered swivel chair and leaned back, and turned his gaze to the cellphone he carried. Minutes went by and the tension in the room clocked upward as Christopher continued to pay attention to his phone while Prince Albert struggled not to fidget. Finally, Christopher threw the phone on the desk and looked up. "I've got something to show you." He reached forward, grasped the short stack of photographs, and turned them around so that they were right-side up from Albert's point of view. "Recognize her?" he asked with a smile.

"Uh, why, yes, I think I do," Prince Albert stammered, his face surely flushing now. "What was her name? Melinda, I think it was?"

"Yes. Well, that's the name I gave her," Christopher said, still smiling. "Take a look at the photos."

Albert leaned forward and turned the top photo over. Under it was a similar photograph, taken from the same ceiling perspective as the first one had been. In this photo, the woman was not alone. As she stared at the camera, a form lay next to her, about the same length but at least three times her size. Albert immediately recognized--himself--in the photograph. He looked up at Christopher, who was still smiling broadly. "What the hell is this?"

"Security camera was on," Christopher said. "They're movement activated. They were supposed to be off, but you know how hard it is to get good help." Albert continued to stare as Christopher's smiling face, unable to formulate a response. Christopher reached forward, retrieved his phone, and started looking at it. "Go ahead and look at all of them."

Albert did so, increasingly alarmed. There were 12 photographs in all. In at least half of them, the woman's naked body was plainly visible; in many of them various parts of Albert's naked body was visible also, which was much less aesthetically pleasant. It at least four or five of the photographs, the activity which the woman and he were engaged in was painfully obvious. "Oh, my God..." Albert managed to choke out.

Christopher looked up and feigned as if he only that moment perceived that the prince would be concerned that these photographs existed. "Oh! Don't worry about it, Al," Christopher said. "Nobody has these except me. I just thought you might like to have a little souvenir of yourself in action." The smile never left his craggy face. Still staring at the phone, he contined to speak. "You can take those, if you like."

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