"Right! To tell you the truth I'm not as sure as Grandfather is that I'll be the next Frothen one," Patience confides. "But I might as well go around meeting the people I'll have to know if I am."

"Why aren't you sure?"

"Well, you can't be sure, sure. It could be some really distant cousin, or maybe somebody we don't even know is related because of a scandalous secret affair who is more torz-y than I am. My dad drew power for me when I was born, sure, but maybe that means I am going to be an ambassador or that I will have seventeen children and boss them all around or that I'm going to run the navy, I don't know."

The prince giggles. "Seventeen children? Wow."

"I dunno, I just made up the number. I'm not wearing fertility in my hair. It'd be sort of embarrassing if I was! I guess some people must get it as a random blessing but it must be awfully strange."

"It wouldn't have to mean a lot of children even if you were, I guess," he says thoughtfully. "Like it could just mean that you're going to be, I dunno, a really good gardener. But probably people will think you're going to have a lot of children and I bet it wouldn't be nice growing up like that, especially if you didn't want to."

"Yeah. Or it could be extra metaphorical, maybe it means a fertile imagination - although I suppose then you'd just get imagination, wouldn't you - but at any rate there are other things it could mean and everybody always thinks the 'seventeen children' meaning first. I'm not categorically opposed to having large numbers of children although seventeen might be kind of pushing it? It is not my life ambition though. I'm glad that wasn't what Dad pulled."

"I don't know if I'm going to want to have kids," the prince says thoughtfully. "I guess it'll be important to do it if I'm king."

"Probably, yeah. Got to keep having royalty or... something... happens. I'm not actually sure what happens, do you know?"

"Well, probably they can find somebody somewhere who's related enough to royalty to be king or queen if there's nobody better around, and then they'd have to do it. I don't know what would happen if the country just ran out of anyone who was even a little tiny bit royal. Maybe the primes would pick a new king or queen to start over with."

"I guess. I wonder how they'd pick."

"Whoever they thought would be good at it, I hope," he says with a smile.

"Yeah, but how do you know whether somebody is going to be good at royaling? Are you going to be good at royaling?"

"Dunno," he says, shrugging. "I probably would. But I might not even do it; Father might decide he likes Isten better."

Patience nods. "Do you want him to?"

He shrugs. "I don't really care."

"I have sort of mixed feelings about maybe being prime one day. Like on the one hand, it might be cool? On the other hand there might be a lot of things involved I don't want to do? On the third hand also my grandfather would have to die?"

"Grandparents do that anyway," the prince observes.

"They do, that's true."

"I never met any of mine. Is it nice having a grandpa?"

"I like him! And my other grandpa too for that matter."

"That's nice," he says, smiling. "Except for the part where he's gonna die, I guess."

"Yeah, except that. He doesn't seem to mind that much talking about how I'll probably be prime next, considering."

He shrugs. "Probably he's had time to get used to it."

"Yeah. But I haven't! I'm only almost ten! I guess I'll probably get used to it sooner or later."