Termination Shock

So during much of the subsequent journey down the Brazos, Saskia had been pondering how to handle this overture from her daughter. Saskia had been widowed when her husband had caught COVID while doing volunteer work in a hospital. Since then she had not had sex with anyone. Tabloids were forever claiming that she was getting it on with some tech magnate or Eurotrash princeling, but it was all just fabricated clickbait. It seemed quite striking and revealing to her that her daughter, upon hearing that Mama had crashed a jet and was fleeing the scene in a flotilla of Cajun gator hunters, would—of all things—construe it primarily as an opportunity for her to engage in casual sex. Saskia sat in the boat and watched the Brazos go by, pondering what it meant for her and for Lotte.

Every so often—not in the first year or two of widowhood, but since then—she had asked herself in a theoretical way whether she would ever have sex again. There was no reason not to. Even if the story got out, the Netherlands was famously liberal about such things. Even the most hard-bitten Bible-pounders among her subjects would probably just set their jaws and look the other way. Many might even feel a sense of relief. But Saskia had written sex off as being just too complicated to be worth it. With so many other things to worry about, it was enormously simplifying for her to never think about that. It was a whole portion of her life she’d been able to push indefinitely into the future. She rather suspected that menopause had recently fired a couple of shots across her bow and it had led her to wonder how she might feel after that—whether she’d want to pursue anything romantic beyond some pro forma arrangement just for the cameras.

But it now occurred to her that prolonged celibacy might elicit more gossip than just having a normal sex life. She began to look at the people around her in a new light. People such as Willem and Fenna and Amelia. Of course, these weren’t potential sex partners. But it did occur to her to wonder if, when they were in the back of the plane, or having a drink together after work, they speculated among themselves as to whether, at any point in the remainder of her natural life span, Saskia was going to get some. She wondered if, were she to show interest in some man, they would be horrified—which had always been her assumption—or—and here was the new idea—would they instead give huge sighs of relief.

So much for Saskia. As for Lotte: years had passed since the Talk. An eternity for someone of Lotte’s age, the blink of an eye for Saskia. Lotte—who would be the next queen—had perhaps been wondering whether being a celibate nun for the Netherlands might be in the cards for her. Lotte most definitely was not interested in flying airplanes, or some of the more classic avocations of royals such as fancy horse riding. There was no question that she was interested in boys. As any sane person would be, Lotte was ambivalent about the prospect of becoming the queen. Saskia knew she’d looked to the example of Prince Harry and his American wife, Meghan, who had simply walked away, renounced their titles, and moved to the West Coast to live like normal humans. Lotte was perhaps wondering if the punishingly austere approach to romantic life exhibited by Saskia during her widowhood was somehow going to be the expectation for her.

The royal line could terminate at any point. The monarchy could fade into history. The decision might be Lotte’s to make. Could it be that Saskia needed to go out and get laid as an act of self-sacrifice to perpetuate the House of Orange? Not to produce an heir (which she’d already accomplished) but to prevent that heir from bailing out?

Yes. That was the ticket. If Saskia let Lotte know that she had done someone and liked it, it would be something that she was doing not just because she was horny (though, to be honest, she was that) but out of a sense of duty to the royal line and to the office to which she had devoted her life.

Best of all, it could begin to pay dividends long before anything actually happened. Lotte’s crack about getting some had been an opening on her part—a bid to connect with her mother, woman to woman. There weren’t that many levels on which they could really have a relationship. Obviously they were mother and daughter and they would always have that. But in terms of things that they had in common, ways they could relate to each other, there wasn’t much there. Saskia dared to convince herself that Lotte wasn’t sexually active yet. She’d prefer she weren’t. But girls that age had sex all the time, and so it was a thing that Saskia and Lotte could conceivably have in common and bond over. Politics was off the table—Lotte would be horrified and furious when she found out what her mother was up to in Texas—but maybe as that door was closing this other one could open.

> Relaxing day so far

she texted on the second day of the Brazos journey. Then:

> No D yet.