He nods. "So you want to be in charge of something formally."

"It'd sweeten the deal."

"You might have to establish a track record of competence to the relevant people, first, though that can be before the wedding if you don't trust me  and shouldn't take too long and depends on what exactly you want."

"Frontrunner is the department of education but not by very much, I'd consider suggestions."

"That sounds reasonable to me and you'd be good at it and it matters and I think I could pull it as title-awarded-with-marriage instead of you having to trust me to see to it after we're in power - not that I can afford to annoy you the minute after my coronation anyway, but this way seems cleaner."

"And admits of fewer clever attempts to evade annoyance without producing results. Just in case."

"I want you in power, I'm actually not surrounded by so many people with a gift for it that I can afford to give them vague advisory roles."

"All right. ...So now that we're not pretending the answer is 'decorous amounts of lustful' how do you actually feel about me, what would the social dynamic here look like."

"I like you. I think you have good priorities and good judgment. I'd like to be able to talk political problems over with you over dinner. I'd like to be able to trust each other. I'd like you to tell me when you think I'm making a mistake and I will try to tell you enough you'll notice. If we decide to raise children I would like to raise them together, whoever's they are. I want to support your ambitions and help acquire you the resources to realize them. I think we'd be good partners on projects that were immediately demanding of lots of logistics and I think you'd make the average wisdom in the family go up by a substantial margin. Someday I want to rule the world together though if we get immortality then if you don't want me to have boyfriends we'll have to renegotiate some things."

"I concluded that it would be very silly of me to marry a gay guy and then insist that he not have any boyfriends."

"Okay. I can do utmost discretion with boyfriends or I can tell you all about them, whatever makes you more comfortable. How about you? What do you want?"

"Well, I don't have an ex to go re-seduce lined up - I like him, by the way, he's very sensible - and foresee disaster if anyone decides to stir things up and finds a way to identify my kids as not technically royalty, so some spell development is in order but I too might want a boyfriend at some point."

"He is very sensible, isn't he?" He smiles fondly. "I expected you would and have no problems with that. I am a little nervous about having our children be a test case of a new spell but it probably is the way to go. Unless you happen to like someone else in the family, I do have six brothers and twenty-three cousins."

"Most of whom I have not yet met and who will probably not be trying to appeal to someone they think is taken, but we'll see. I could always publish the spell under a pen name or something so as to avoid being the first test case."

"That seems like a good precaution, if it turns out to be learnable without a lot of shortcuts specific to you or anything."

"Should be."

"Were those all your questions?"

She flips through her notebook - "How secret is this? My parents' last word on the subject is me cooing about how I met you at Raney's aunt's party and thought you liked me, I have not updated them but Raney in particular lives in town and expects more frequent information -"

"I don't have a good sense of how much it would derail things for it to be known - the last time it came up, it would have been completely disqualifying, but that was a hundred fifty years ago, and it's certainly not like all royal marriages are love matches...my preference would be to be securely in power before we let it be an open secret but if you trust your mother's discretion - there is already one familiar who's going to be spitting at me at the wedding -"

"I can probably get Cricket to behave himself for the duration of the event. My mother's discretion is... not great, it might suffice but it might not."

"...then I would prefer not to risk it, if that's all right."

"She's going to want to meet you."

"Unless you'd actively prefer I not do that I can be the most devoted fiance ever in public." 

"Of this I have no doubt; I'm just wondering if there's a way to pull it off without actually lying to her."

"I met Iobel at the party, I very much enjoyed her company, we've spent time together the last few weeks, we've decided to get married..."