Royal Affairs is out next week on March 30th!

And to celebrate, here's a small story about one of the Royal Affairs side characters, Fabien. He's an old friend of the PC's mother, the queen of Westerlin. Here's a moment many years before Royal Affairs during which he, the PC's mother, and the PC's father graduate from university.

*

Inside, the Gessner graduation party's still going strong. Students and their companions and families spill into the lamplit summer evening, their laughter rising over the gardens. Full glass in hand, Fabien's deliberating between the ballroom and the garden when out of nowhere Estell grabs his hand and tugs him through the sparkling glass doors into the rosy sunset light.

"You can't be by yourself. You're a graduate now," she says, and he doesn't follow the path of logic there, but he falls happily into step with her.

Estell links arms with him, dragging him close against her. He spent a year away studying linguistics at Caltari in Jezhan, and when he returned, she insisted that they spend their final university year grabbing all the time together that they could. Before he left they'd been close, of course, spending nights talking and talking until their throats were sore and their eyes were sandy, but since his trip away there's been a greater intensity to her demand for him to be at her side.

Not that he minds. Those first lonely weeks in Jezhan, he'd wait eagerly for the morning post and stow her letters in a pocket for the day until he had time to savour them in the evening, imagining her scribbling in her beautiful Gessner suite. When his work grew more intense, when his days became fuller, when the Westerlind Ambassador strolled by to ask for a favour, when he learned to make friends and pretend to stumble over Jezhani vocabulary so people would laugh kindly and offer to teach him - that was when he became more comfortable, and Estell loomed less in his mind. But even so, he missed her, and when, on his return, she flew at him to give him the biggest hug she'd ever given him, he found his eyes stung as he laughed.

Now, though: they make their way down to the lake. He steps carefully with his shiny-buckled shoes and she gathers her huge layered skirts, sliding on her slippers. The heavy pink and white water lilies have nearly closed, but the scent remains hanging in the air.

And there's Georges sitting at the water's edge, his tie loose and his jacket discarded, his shoes sitting beside him and his feet dangling in the water. He waves enthusiastically, his graduation certificate clutched in his hand. "Fabien! Come here! You did so well! How on earth did you do it?"

Fabien's own first-class Linguistics certificate is in the inner pocket of his jacket. It's true: thanks to all his extra credits he far outstripped both Estell, who wouldn't have scraped her second-class History degree if she weren't the crown princess, and Georges, who got a middling third in Politics. "I told you to pace yourself," he says. "You can't get a decent grade if you do all-nighters every time."

Georges laughs. "You're entirely right, and I hated the whole thing," he says. He tosses the certificate in the air. "No more reading, no more exams. No more horrible studying!"

Estell flops down beside him and pulls Fabien to sit on her other side. "You didn't hate the whole thing," she says, sliding an arm arouond Georges's waist. Her other arm drapes over Fabien's shoulders, holding him tight.

"Not the whole thing," Georges concedes. "The social life was very decent."

They all laugh as Estell slips off her shoes and swishes her feet in the water, splashing up to Georges's rolled-up trousers. For a second Fabien feels so fortunate that his breath catches. Because it wasn't always so simple. It was Fabien and Estell at first; he happened to be living in the corridor beneath hers. He knew she was a princess, of course, and he was curious to know her. His parents suggested that it would be most useful, but he didn't particularly care about that. More so, he was interested in her cautious gaze, her restraint, the way she assessed everyone she spoke to. Fabien had a perfectly solid spread of people approving of him - but with Estell, he knew her approval was worthwhile. And when she assessed him and thought him worthy, that was that. They quickly fell into the kind of friendship where you never run out of anything to say.

Georges happened later, while Fabien was away. The same day the Westerlind Ambassador asked him for a chat about what his professor was teaching, Estell wrote to say that she had a new study partner and disliked him intensely. "He's not nearly as intelligent as you," she said. "He's tall and he's on the rowing team. I have nothing to say to him." Fabien cheerfully wrote back to say that perhaps Georges had hidden depths and thought little more about it, but when Estell's next letter described how good Georges was with the horses, he felt the sting of jealousy. A month later, the Westerlind Ambassador asked him, casually, to attend a couple of student politics meetings and let her know who was there too, and the day after that, Estell wrote about Georges walking her home after a dance and how "it felt so warm and right talking with him, Fabien, you wouldn't believe, it was just so natural", and Fabien was so furious that he waited a week to write back.

It wasn't - he reasoned - that he cared for Estell that way, but she was so far away, and he was desperately afraid that she'd decide that she'd rather spend time with Georges instead. He was also - he reasoned - concerned that this attractive rowing prodigy who liked horses was manipulating his friend so he could get closer to royalty. He went to the Westerlind Ambassador to ask what she knew about the Honorable Georges Oberle, and she smiled and said she'd look into it when she had a moment, and he was even more furious when it turned out that the Honorable Georges Oberle was a charming, if empty-headed, Politics student whose worst crime was accidentally kicking a rugby ball into his teammate's face when they were fourteen and giving them a black eye.

When he returned from Jezhan, he was ready to despise Georges, but Georges was so keen to hear all about Fabien and ask about his time away and even arrange lunches together without Estell so they could get to know each other that Fabien was quite disarmed. Within a month the three of them had become friends without Fabien even realising it.

Fabien's mind has wandered. He pulls it back. "We should go to Zaledo after this," he says. "I've never been."

"Would your parents let you?" Georges says, his hand on Estell's back; then, looking up at Fabien, "And the diplomatic office?"

Fabien shrugs, jostling Estell; she makes a protesting noise. "I'm sure we can arrange something. I want to see Merenil."

"Merenil's boring," Estell says, splashing her feet in the water again.

Fabien leans his head on her shoulder. "It was boring when you were ten years old. Imagine going out at night. Exploring properly."

"You want to sleep with Prince Mateo," Estell says, nudging him in the side, and he laughs, letting them think it's true. It's easy to let people fill in the gaps if you're good-humoured enough, so you don't have to bother making up a lie to get caught in: the Westerlind Ambassador showed him that.

"I'll come with you if Estell can't," Georges says. "I want to ride a Zaledoan thoroughbred. See the western desert. The stars are meant to be beautiful."

They all start making jokes about who wants to ride what. As usual, Georges is the first to get bashful and embarrassed. Estell's laughing so hard that she's doubling over and hitting Fabien's leg, Georges is steadying her so she doesn't fall in the water, and in that moment Fabien is so overfull with joy and so entirely in love with the pair of them that he could absolutely burst into tears.