Louis fell for Prince Harry when he was ten and Harry was eight and peeked behind the Queen's elegant gown for his first public appearance—a shy smile and a mess of curls. He fell for him when he caught Lottie putting up a magazine cover of Harry on her wall and all she had to say for herself was, "He's such a good person, yeah?" and, yeah. He fell for him when Harry gracefully accepted his demotion. He fell for him when Harry came out and stayed out.
........
When Louis is fifteen some twat calls him "princess". It's not the first time, but this time he's picking Lottie up from school and the offender is possibly twelve years old. Louis' pretty sure when he went to primary school he didn't know shit about homosexuality, let alone slur words. He'd been too busy with classes or eating glue or whatever; he didn't make a habit of walking around the schoolyard calling fifteen-year-olds "fags" or "princesses".
He quickly discovers Lottie is as naive as he'd been. They run out of the school (a race, he tells her as he leaves his dignity behind), and when they stop she's still giggling. "Princess Boo!"
It's his sister, and he knows she has no idea what she's saying, but he still feels this tightness in his throat. It's probably the running. "Don't call me that."
She looks at him with all the innocence of tiny blonde eight-year-old girls. "Why?"
"It's not nice."
"Why?" Thankfully it's not the beginning of an endless cycle of questions he can't answer. Just an incredibly awkward conversation with his little sister. "I want to be princess when I grow up. You can be princess too."
"How can I be a princess?" he asks too sharply. "Even if I somehow marry Princess Gemma I'd only be Duke of Edinburgh or something."
Lottie rolls her eyes with such skill it might be genetic. "You idiot, if you marry Prince Harry you could be Princess of Wales."
Louis swears. Mentally. He really thought he could avoid this discussion. "Uh, that's not really. Uh. Okay, so like, there's – homosexualism – when a boy – "
"I know what it is," she interrupts him, thank god. "I watch telly, you know. I'm still right. If you go into Prince Harry's closet he could fall in love with you and then you'll be princess. But I won't visit Wales. They're not nice to sheep."
Louis would like to comment on all the plot holes in that statement. He settles for, "What on Earth do you watch on telly?"
She shrugs and actually starts skipping away.
***
There are one or two Disney movies where children's wishes affect the universe and Destiny. This may be one of those tales.
***
When Louis is nineteen his life turns upside-down. Simon Cowell puts him in a band with Zayn Malik and Liam Payne, they become instantly, amazingly and inexplicably popular, they make it to the X Factor finale and almost immediately go on tour. In 2011 he sings for thousands of people with his two new brothers, and thinks he might as well be in heaven.
When Prince Harry is seventeen his life turns upside-down. He graduates from school and before he starts attending college to take art or whatever princes study, he goes on a trip to Italy. His Instagram account is full of Vespas and bracelets. The rags are full of pictures of him snogging Italian boys.
It starts with blurry shots in The Sun. It continues with in-depth Guardian analyses about why the Prince "turned gay" (the messy divorce of Queen Anne and Prince Des, being the youngest sibling and, with the Act of Settlement amended, not succeeding the throne, how he's declared he won't join the RAF and began the "moral decline of the British Crown"). It doesn't really end. 2011 is not a good year for the Prince of Wales. Louis, as objectively as a British subject that's been in love with the prince since he was ten, thinks that if a royal gets so much shit, a pop star can take it when his management specifically requests he won't "make any claims" himself.
