The Final Address

The young prince, age nineteen, stands before the crowd as he awaits the gunshots. Breathing heavily, but slowly, he lands a pat to the chest to calm himself down. He then reaches inside the pocket of his military-like uniform, the navy blue jacket matching the golden decorations that flower it. He grazes the microphone with the tip his index finger, and the feedback sends the millions in attendance to break into irked reactions. As annoying as it might have been, it at the very least silenced the thousand different chatters that riddled Valentino Square. It silenced manly cries of “get on with it” and the barely noticeable whimpers of a few women. The letter which he had grabbed from his jacket pocket, opened as the cold autumn air shot a gust unto the stage. Folded into three, the parchment swung open nearly leaving Nicholai’s fingertips. He stares out into the mob, searching for eyes of solace among the hundred pairs that stared with persecution. He gulped down before breaking open his lips, eyes now locked on to the first line of the speech he had wrote the night before.

He coughs and begins, ‘To call you now my friends would be a crime, but to address you as my people shall only stir stronger the wrath that has befallen me. It is only then appropriate that I shall address you with the name that should always have been, with the title you have earned for yourselves, the free People of Amnestrea.’

‘No monarch in the generations that have preceded me would dare bare such a shame, to concede his rektikano, his right to rule, out of fear of annihilation or mortal tribulations. My forefathers have taken arms with the men of their banners, against rebellions by heretics against the order upon which our great nation bloomed out of. My forefathers stroke down all those who would not heel to their kingship, reminding the great people of Amnestrea the boiling blood of courage and strength that ran through our veins. My forefathers would never let the sun set on the circumstances my lineage now faces, they would halt the heavens to set the stars on the path they wrote to be right.’

The crowd grew rowdy, and objects began to take flight as boos in the crowd played in beat with the crash of vegetables and eggs on the stage’s wooden floorboards. One zipped close to the prince’s face, while another smack-dab center on his chest. Nicholai grunted as he braced for more to come before continuing. Once the crowd showed no sign of stopping, he pressed onwards with his speech. ‘Yet, I am relieved,’ he calmly cries to the microphone.

The crowd stopped, and a wave of shushes spread across the square. ‘I am relieved.’

‘Is it wrong to be selfish in the moments before my death? Is it wrong for a dead man to dream? Is it wrong for a boy to wish himself peace?’

As if saying to press on out of curiosity, the crowd silenced themselves just enough for Nicholai to carry on. ‘I was born into the royal family as the third child of King Aridam and Queen Trista, the only son in the current bloodline. I was to succeed the throne when the time of my father’s passing would come, yet under the circumstances you have crafted in the present, I believe I do not have the luxury of ascending the crown. This reality, this destiny I was made to believe though, was one that was thrust harshly and hastily unto me at the age of five.’

‘At seven I was rigorously taught on a daily basis the crafts suited for and expected of royalty and statesmen. I cannot count the times I had to repeat the acts of mere walking, sitting, and even breathing. Every action, was meant to be “princely” as my tutor would say. By eight the history of our country had been drilled into the very fabric of my thoughts, with my mind being interwoven with what they would call as the history of Amnestrea. I, was to make it, to continue and carry both the glory and the darkest secrets of our ancestry. By fifteen I was suffocating under the pressures that was burdened on my shoulders. I struggled, with the death of my elder sister Tatiana by tobacco in her chest, and the suicide of my closer sister Elize. I had my attempts of rebellion, my episodes of frustration, begging to be set free of the crown. All of this was for naught, for by sixteen I was out of breath. I was now empty, and succumbed to every word of my heinous father. By nineteen I was to wed the Princess of Luvenbrug, a woman who I did not know, but whose eyes reflected a tale all too familiar to mine. By twenty, all of my life would have been for naught.’

‘Seventeen days ago the Holy Secessionist Movement, the burning remnant of the Free Catholic Amnestrea which my father had sworn to have quelled at the start of the century, engulfed Amnestrea’s capital in a wave of hellfire and pools of blood. It ravaged every monarch’s office, killing every royal guard, and hanging every royalty one could find by the noose. All of this happened in the span of three days as my pathetic father did nothing but stare into the fire. He watched as men and women, young and old, died for his sake as he sipped his next cup of brandy and smoked his fine cigar. By the third day you had broken through the front gates, and on the fourth you held the public execution of King Aridam the Pathetic.’

‘I hated my father, but not as much as you, not as much as you could have. For while I lay in my princely mattress at the dead of night, staring blankly into the abyss thinking of my personal turmoil, you dream of nightmares as you sleep in the abyss. For while I hold my breath when among dignitaries, you scratch and claw your way through to breathe. For while I eat away at myself in the storm of my mind, your stomach churns itself to ease the pain of starvation. Five years ago, more than five hundred Amnestrians lost their jobs when the Amnestrian economy crashed. Four years ago, more than thirty thousand farmers died in ruin and blight in what is now known as the Wheat Famine. Three years ago my father joined the Great War of Nations sending more than half a million of our boys, men as young as me, into the slaughter house that is the Western trenches, and two years ago we lost. Those five years alone my father did nothing, I, did nothing. And now the poor rise, now the people stand, and we, we have fallen.’

At this, the crowd cheered. Though the reaction was mixed in essence, a jumble of bloodlust roars and solemn stares at what has been lost. ‘I did not ask to be a prince,’ Nicholai continued. ‘I did not hunger for power, I did not wish for the throne, but neither did you pray to be poor, nor desire to die. And while I could have done something instead of looking away, you had no choice, no other direction but up. To rise, when you have been shoved into the greatest of downfalls is not a choice, but a reminder of what one has to do to survive.’

‘And so I am relieved, that in my final moments I die not as the prince you all so hated, but the human I have always wished to become.’

He drops the paper. It floats to the ground. The people back away from the huge wooden stage. The snare drum begins to roll, and the officer begins his call. Ready. Aim. Nicholai salutes, raises his right arm, fixed into a right angle. Shuts his eyes. And it ends.