1 Chapter 1: Castings In Little England

Life isn't exactly a bed of roses, I got to feel that at an early age. It's not nice to watch one's parents struggle day after day to keep themselves and our family alive. The new four-room flat was supposed to be a reason for us to rejoice. With the help of a lottery that was introduced a few years ago, we, the foursome, got the opportunity to move to an outskirt of the three-bedroom district. My family never thought we would be chosen. After all, as a Four, we were used to having no property and no will. According to the royal family and the other rich nobles who thought they were doing us some good, this arbitrary selection took place every year. I remembered very clearly that evening when my parents came home and I sat spellbound in front of the television. My hands clenched and heard our name. That moment changed everything.

No one in our rank was permitted to move as we pleased, no, they kept us imprisoned in a ghetto with no prospect of freedom. With the exception of the lottery. Sometimes I feel like the King of Little England is picking up a chessboard and making random decisions. The question I then ask myself is which side is he playing on? Is he for the pawns and horses or is he for the rooks, king and queen? All for the sake of entertainment, as if we were inanimate puppets, nothing more than toys.

Take for example these absurd castings which take place like the lottery every year. A handful of girls have the honour of joining the nobility and working their way up. Only the spoilt prince sends them all home again and the competition ends in three weeks at the latest. It's been a long time since there was a casting that was also completed and this was that of our current king.

I feel sorry for the girls, but it's their fault if they think Crown Prince Nicolas will choose one of them. The candidates were just the pretty, superfluous roses that bloomed in the palace garden. A mere means to an end. Rumour has it that Nicolas doesn't like women, but servants, but everything that is said doesn't have to be true. By which, of course, I do not wish to take sides with him, nor with the female candidates. I face the whole thing with great indifference. I admit, somehow I do like our Highness in a certain way, he rebelled against his father.

Questioning the system, not wanting to be just another pawn in its game. He made a clear statement. He didn't want to get married and be forever unhappily shackled to someone who would only want him for status and money. People can be so shallow, especially in these circles, the scandals and escapades didn't come from anywhere. But against all the negative headlines and popular opinion, King Merh desperately wanted his son to get hitched and his inheritance secured. That is why he did not let up and held this triad every damn year. At least according to a palace source.

The only ones who suffered were the poor spectators. In our outlying district, there was only one particular TV frequency that didn't cost money and since books were expensive since the e-book-revolution in 2020, and we couldn't afford them accordingly, this is our only way of getting information.

There are days when I sit with my girlfriends and we have fun deciding which of the girls will have to leave the palace next. Over the years I had developed a sixth sense and could tell from Nicola's facial expressions who was getting kicked out before he even said it. My success rate was about 80 per cent. At the beginning of the casting, the candidates still got money, an expensive affair, but it was discontinued after 4 years. The social grievances were too high because the budget was taken from the taxes. So this year is the first without a severance package. The show had been running for four years since the prince celebrated his 15th birthday. I was three years younger than Nicolas, so currently 16. This meant that if a winner was chosen this time, she would only get the place at the side of the next monarch of Little England. No money, just the crown, but that was enough for the girls. The main thing was to be noble and famous.

So it's no wonder that many YouTubers and bloggers signed up for the casting. After all, it was a good push for their PR and reach. For a while the castings were abolished, that was before my time, in the age of the 90s. Everyone was looking for freedom and got scared of the millennium. Decades of peace followed, but it had not worked well at some point, there were always riots and hostility towards former low castes.

There was so much unrest that in 2111 an old royal family, the family of the Kantonie, decided to take the helm and make Little England a monarchy again. The division of our society was not as bad as before, there were four class divisions. The fourth is for all workers and non-workers, that is, those for the poorest, which includes my family. There are no more homeless people, everyone can find a job nowadays if they wanted to, but we lived in a very cramped space together. As I mentioned earlier, the foursome was housed in a separate ward. Our shift was the biggest of all but had the smallest living space.

We are called "fours are the losers" by the upper people, again a denunciation of our status. There are lotteries every year, those who were lucky were allowed to move to an outlying district of the threes and work at a fixed job. This was the case with my family.

Nevertheless, in reality, it had a bitter aftertaste. The neighbourhood reacted negatively to our opportunity and soon we were the outlaws. Our family would always be the one to get everything and that was only because my father worked for an assistant, an assistant, a PR manager. Of course, we the Woodstocks had only got to the bottom through stupid circumstances. I hated these people deeply, they didn't see behind the façade, only appearances. Dad couldn't help it if he got a job just because our neighbours didn't want to work themselves.

We the Woodstocks, and no, we are not called like the festival from the New U.S.A, were an ambitious family who always tried to make the best of our situation. The name was derived from the English wood, meaning wood, and Stock, from the dead language German. My mother came from the United Kingdom of the Teutons. She moved to Little England where she married my father. It was not love at first sight, more an agreement. At that time there was a crisis on the continent of Europe, so my mum fled to Little England to look for a job. Instead of exchanging rings, they joined their surnames.

Foursomes couldn't afford wedding rings, the raw material gold was imported with high tariffs and the processing meant fees again. So when we were asked what our surnames were, we could immediately be recognised as foursomes, as most foursomes were of foreign origin. But we are also identified by the colour of our robes. We are only allowed uniform shades when we go out of the house, from earth tones to greys our colour palette is wide.

The Third Caste consisted of Youtubers, celebrities and PR managers. They are catered to from top to bottom and wallow in their money. Gossip is the order of the day with them. Because I worked for them, I also got the information from high society, among other things. They act as if they are entitled to everything and the foursomes are just their workhorses.

The Second Caste is the elite, it is very small because not many noble families had survived. Every 10 years the nobility would take turns to rule over the throne. A tenuous agreement, but presumably everyone was tired of the killing and the wars. But there were conditions: if the monarch had a male heir, he was allowed to rule for another 40 years after the king's death if he was married. So it is no wonder that King Merh tries to maintain his lineage and does so by all means.

The Last Caste, which is the First, is the royal family of Kantonie, a noble lineage from Little England that goes back a long way. The line of Kantonie had existed for ages, they had just managed to get an heir under their roof, this was King Mehr. The other noble houses, of course, did not take this lying down and tried to push the king from the throne with assassination attempts. A pure form of jealousy and retaliation. But the law was the law, for fear of possible assassination only representatives of the houses were invited to the palace and kept under twenty-four-hour surveillance.

I don't have to say very much about them except that they all get on my nerves and I loathe them. A week ago, my mother came home and had told me about a job offer as a maid. Her employer had told her that she needed extra strength and would even pay for me to go to university and all the school. We were only given five years of schooling, just enough to aspire to a profession. If you wanted to go on to school, you would have to pay and we couldn't afford that, like so many things. The rent was expensive enough. So to be able to go back to school, I was supposed to work for a three. This did not turn out to be a big expense for me.

While my parents are out of the house, I take care of the household and pick up Megan, Train and Marcel from school. Benjeman was much too young for that, he is our nestling. Whoever is omniscient also has power and I would need that to get along in this world. Madame Pariese, my supervisor, is a Youtuber and films everything that comes her way, and by that I really mean everything. Yesterday she made a vlog about how she buys a piece of chewing gum and tries to create the biggest bubble in the world. But as long as she left me alone and I could quickly leave the house to make lunch for my siblings, I didn't care how she financed her life.

Madame Pariese came to me today in her dressing gown, she always wore it when she had just finished editing a video. She stood in the doorway of her kitchen and asked me: "Maybelle, that's your name, isn't it?" Hearing only a small hiss and realising that Madame wanted something from me, I switched off the hoover to understand her better: "Yes, but everyone calls me Belle." Madame Pariese took a sip of coffee with mint, a brew that only famous people drank, I tried it once but it tasted awful. First the bitter taste of the coffee beans and then the coolness of the mint.

Madame's blonde hair waves bobbed as she answered me: "Fine by me, then Belle." She gallantly set her cup down on the table, it spilt over slightly. I had just cleaned it and groaned inwardly, coffee was so hard to get out of this table, it would take me hours to clean it again. She told me to sit across from her. I took a seat on a Chesterfield chair.

Madame Pariese was originally from the French kingdom, she had fallen in love with an older small Englishman. He was very rich and wealthy and gave her the world. But unfortunately, their happiness did not last long, as he was drafted into a war zone on the other side of the world. They never married because Mr Bernand had another wife. The wife knew nothing about the affair. He was killed in the New U.S.A. war against the Canadians, and his body was never found. Which made Madame a mistress and his wife the cuckolded one.

Mrs Bernand contested the will against Madame, as she was the sole heir. Madame lost in court and did not even receive a single penny. From one day to the next, Lola Pariese was out on the street without a house or money. But she didn't let it get her down and turned her suffering into money. That was all my mum had told me.

The rustling of paper brought me back to the present. My supervisor dragged a newspaper towards me. She smiled invitingly and replied: "What are you reading there, my child?" Before my eyes were emblazoned in capital letters: "Another Try For Prince Nicolas: Will He Find The Right Girl This Time?" Below was a picture of the "loser", as I called him. His fake smile made me feel sick.

I looked up at Lola, she had the typical look of a Youtuber, blonde hair, blue eyes, slim figure a pretty face. I could see why she was so popular in her circles. She batted her eyelashes and had her head propped up in her delicate hands. She watched me with interest and I felt like I was under a test tube. I screwed up my face questioningly and tapped on the headline: "Umm, it just says that the prince is holding another casting, that's nothing new." "Yes, that's true, but read on," she urged me, almost squealing excitedly. She reminded me of my little sister Megan at that moment. I rolled my eyes and looked at the article again. "For this year's anniversary of the casting, all girls between 16-20 are invited to sign up. You can find the casting dates on p.89, we the team and the royal family wish you all the best of luck," I read out loud, bored.

My counterpart laughed childishly again and her waves slid forward: "Belle, you are such a lucky girl, you finally have the opportunity to get out of your shithole, with the competition you would have a future." I felt instantly sick, my stomach seemed to have that premonition. I wanted everything but this. I would have volunteered to clean for free then make a fool of myself in front of everyone. I pushed the paper back to her and smiled politely: "Yes, this is a great opportunity for me." She took the paper in her hand and probably turned to page 89: "Oh, if only I were 20 again, then I could meet the prince." I rose again to go about my business. I dipped the mop into the bucket, stirred it around and mopped the floor with it.

"Yes, but I won't be taken anyway, besides, who would notice if I didn't show up, nobody else, which means I can save myself all this crap." I couldn't believe that I had spoken my thoughts out loud at that moment. I looked back at Madame Pariese and realised how her brain was rattling, suddenly she snapped the newspaper shut, grinned treacherously at me and sipped her coffee: "Exactly, who would remember a poor little mouse from Caste Four unless she becomes famous." A pause in speech followed. I somehow didn't like the direction the conversation was taking and certainly not her conspiratorial look. "This will be my big break," she stood up and pranced dreamily through the kitchen while laughing. Her coffie swept on the marble floor and I sigh. She was a very kind and nice employer, but cleaning up after her was a real sissiphos job.

As she did so, I made sure she didn't slip on the wet floor and set up my little cart as a blockade. My eyes fell on the antique wall clock from Switzerland. I tapped Madame on the shoulder and apologised for having to leave. Before that, I have cleaned up the mess and made sure her coffee cup was empty. She continued to laugh and waved her hand for me to leave: "Yes, yes, go ahead, the money is on the dresser in the entrance hall!" I thanked her and quickly stowed the cleaning items under the sink, then took a cloth and rubbed the floor dry as best I could. I then grabbed my coat, and my hat put the money on the dresser in my pocket and left the house.

As the sun was very high and shining intensely, I would carry my coat in my hand. I decided to sign this piece of paper, hand it in and move on with my life. Even if it meant effort on my part, afterwards no one could say I hadn't tried. What's more, I would have made Madame happy. I held the card against the sensor and the gate opened for me, I stepped out onto the street and left the estate behind me.

If only I had known then what was to come, I would have been spared a lot.