The Royal Baby Scandal: Lena Wallace on Crashing a Royal Romance in a Torn Dress

What is The Royal Baby Scandal about?

Two pink lines on a bathroom floor, a disconnected number, and a boyfriend who promised two weeks and has been gone months. Then the news puts him in a motorcade: Crown Prince Alexander of Eldoria, engaged to Duchess Camilla. Lena writes one letter. What comes back is cream paper with a royal seal — the Queen's lawyers, denying all claims and threatening to prosecute her for extortion.

So she spends her Aunt Roxie's emergency savings on a one-way ticket and squeezes through a loose stone in the Royal Botanical Gardens wall to say it to his face. Alex drops his whiskey glass, calls it a shakedown, and lets security walk her out across the gravel. Duchess Eleanor picks her up off it, and Alex's friend Duke Evan is the first person in Eldoria to say the words royal baby out loud.

Did Lena know Alex was the Crown Prince?

InterviewerYou found out from the television. What was on screen first — his face, or the word "wedding"?

LenaThe word. Then his face, in a suit I'd never seen, next to a woman I'd never heard of. I was holding a takeout container. \[pause\] My first thought was that he hates crowds.

InterviewerA whole relationship of History classes, borrowed notes and bad coffee. No hint at all?

LenaEverything he told me was true except his name. People keep calling that naive. I'd call it efficient.

InterviewerAnd Duchess Camilla?

LenaI could describe her posture from memory now.

Why fly to Eldoria after the palace said no?

LenaBecause nobody had ever called me a liar on paper that nice.

InterviewerThe Queen's lawyers threatened to prosecute you for extortion. Most people would have framed that letter and stayed home.

LenaMy Aunt Roxie put three thousand dollars on the kitchen table and told me bullies hate it when you punch back. That was every cent she had. I wasn't going to spend it on being reasonable.

InterviewerAnd then you went through a wall.

LenaI went through a gap Alex told me about himself, months ago, when it was a charming story about sneaking out of his own garden. Say what you like about the dress. I used the door he gave me.

InterviewerThe dress.

LenaIt was the nicest thing I owned. It isn't anything now.

On the tea, the ultrasound, and the gravel

She answers this part fast, like a form she has filled in before.

InterviewerThe ultrasound had a date on it. That date was your whole case.

LenaIt was the only proof I had, and it's a black smear now. Duchess Camilla said "oops."

InterviewerShe threw a cup of hot tea over you.

LenaOver me and over the photograph, in one movement, in front of a room of people who all decided they hadn't seen it. I want to be fair to her: she is extremely good at this.

InterviewerAlex called security.

LenaAlex turned around. The security was just staffing.

InterviewerWere you hurt?

Lena\[silence\]

InterviewerWe'll move on. Something lighter: what's the hardest part of living in a palace?

LenaThe staircases. Nobody here walks down anything — they descend. And Evan slides down the banister, which I have decided not to have an opinion about.

What does Lena want from the royal romance everyone else is planning?

InterviewerThe wedding is in three weeks. Evan said the point of last night was to make sure Alex couldn't look away — and then you came down that staircase in emerald green and he pushed a Duchess aside to get across the floor. Is that the plan working?

LenaThe plan was a dress. What he does about it is his business.

InterviewerHe grabbed your friend by the lapels.

LenaHe did. He still hasn't said one word to me about the baby.

InterviewerWhat happens when he finally believes you?

LenaI know exactly what I'm going to say to him — and I'm not rehearsing it for a magazine.

InterviewerThe Queen?

LenaI've been instructed in writing not to discuss Her Majesty. \[pause\] I'll honour that for as long as it's useful to me.

InterviewerPeople are about to watch all of this happen to you from the very beginning. What should they know going in?

LenaThat I didn't come here for a palace. I came so this baby's father has to say it to my face, one way or the other. The room is borrowed. The gown is borrowed. The money was my aunt's. That part is mine.

She would not say, twice, whether she still loves him. She did ask us to describe the emerald dress accurately, because her aunt will want details.