Katya and Mia Thermopolis are just normal girls living in San Francisco with their mother. When their estranged grandmother arrives for a surprise visit with some shocking information, she changes their lives forever.
By the time Katya got home it was dark out and as soon as she walked in the door, she could her Mia and their mother arguing in the kitchen.
"Oh, the right thing for who, mom?" Mia shouted
"For all of us," Helen defended as Katya joined them in the kitchen and leaned against the door way, "I mean, if we secretly divorced he would be able to find a woman who would stay by his side and produce heirs; and I would be free to live my life with you two."
Katya scoffed, "Did it ever occur to you that maybe, just maybe, we would have liked to have our father in our lives?"
"Kitty please," Their mother pleaded, "we met in college, and I was young! All I wanted to do was paint."
"Then you shouldn't have had two children with the man, Helen!" Katya exclaimed, tired of listening to her mother's 'woe is me' story.
Helen sighed, "Girls, could you really see me walking one step behind someone for the rest of my life with rules and regulations and the waving and the bowing and the scraping?" Their mother was a bit of a free spirit, "I was scared!"
"Well now I'm scared!" Katya yelled, "A country has just been dropped at my feet and I don't know a thing about how to deal, or what to do with it because you made a decision that was 'best for all of us'!" Then she turned and went to her room.
She had just enough time to change into her pajamas before her sister and mother joined her in the room. She really didn't want anything to do with her mother right then, so she walked into her adjoining bathroom and began brushing her teeth.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
"After the divorce, we all discussed it." Helen began telling the girls as they both tried to ignore her, "Your father and your grandmother both agreed to keep their distance so you two would have a chance at normal childhoods free of emotional complications."
Katya turned and frowned at her mother, "So it wasn't that they didn't want anything to do with us, you just didn't want them around? Great," she said sarcastically, "now instead of learning how to be queen while growing up, I've got to learn everything at once. Excellent parenting skills at play here, mom, really."
Helen sighed, "We were going to tell you both after Katya turned eighteen, but when your father died, things changed. Katya, Mia we just wanted to protect you."
"You know what," Mia's bottom lip began to quiver, "I don't feel protected." Then she walked out of her sister's bedroom.
Helen watched her leave, then turned back to her eldest daughter, "Katya, please try to understand." She begged.
Katya shook her head as she felt tears come to her eyes, "But I don't understand. All I see is that you were being selfish, not wanting to deal with the reprocutions of your actions, marrying a prince and future king, so you tore us away from our father and called it protection."
