Dizzy Land

She took a piece of peppermint bark from the bag. "Ah, the personal and the political. Like the time Arabia almost went to war with Albion over a rejected marriage proposal. Well, no, that was actually more political than personal. You know the routine: the marriage to cement the alliance, et cetera. Only Gloriana was having none of it. Too dangerous, in the end. And everything else going on at the time..." She trailed off, lost for a moment in the memory of that strange and wonderful parallel. There'd been rumours that after Gloriana's rejection of him, the prince of Arabia had consoled himself with Una—your figure's boyish enough for his taste, Gloriana had said—but apart from a few tense dinners and tête-a-têtes and a badly fumbled kiss, nothing had actually happened. She'd never bothered to correct anyone apart from Gloriana; more interesting to keep them guessing.