Checkmate: The Dating App for Royalty

Long ago in a faraway kingdom, there lived a boy named Quincy who was so unremarkable that even his own mother often forgot he existed. She became especially neglectful after she married the kingdom’s ruler, who really only liked her for her looks, though, to be fair, she was really hot. All who laid eyes on her agreed that she had the perkiest breasts in all the land.

In the years after she became queen, Quincy’s mother had children at a rate that was barely mathematically feasible, so that by the time her firstborn was twelve years old, he had been completely forgotten. There was no plant, animal, or mineral you could name that was lonelier than Quincy.

The boy kept himself in the shadows and out of trouble, surviving off the scraps he would find in the dumpster behind a local pub called Meadlovers. His only friends were the rats who ate from the dumpster alongside him. However, they were not good company. Being rats, they could not sympathize with him. They did not know what it meant to be as unwanted as he, nor could they love him the way he needed to be loved. Besides that, they often bit him, which he did not like.

As Quincy entered adulthood, he was horny pretty much all the time and yearned for a female companion with whom he could have relations. However, all the women of the kingdom preferred to “date up,” and no one who roamed within the castle walls was of lower status than the queen’s unwanted son.

Of course, Quincy could have left the castle to seek love in the villages where the peasants lived. But he didn’t want this, for dating a peasant would only solidify his status as a commoner. He wanted a high-class woman, and every night, he prayed for an opportunity to climb the social ladder so that he could find a classy companion.

Then, one day, the king and queen, along with two dozen of Quincy’s relatives, died while climbing Mount Everest. They had done this in the hope that they would gain some clout with the royals of neighbouring kingdoms. Which they did, but they also died. A new king had to be named, but his reign lasted only five days before he died when he was crushed by a tree. Over the next year, it seemed like every week another monarch was dying in some freak accident until one day, Quincy found himself next in the line of succession. His prayers had been answered.

On his coronation day, King Quincy was filled with delight, for he could have any woman he wanted now that he outranked every other man in the kingdom. For the duration of the coronation ceremony, he daydreamt about receiving a woman’s hand in marriage and then having relations with her. It was this last thing that consumed the largest portion of his mind, for he was now in his twenty-second year and had still not had relations with a woman and was anxious to know what it felt like.

He was so anxious, in fact, that when the ceremony concluded, he asked the first noblewoman he saw if she would marry him. She wasn’t anyone in particular; she had simply been leaving the ladies’ room near the hall where the coronation had taken place, and Quincy saw her, and she was a woman, and he was anxious to have relations.

“Yes, I will marry you,” the noblewoman responded to Quincy’s proposal, “for you are king, and if I refuse, you will have me beheaded.”

They got married a week later, and Quincy’s heart was brimming with cheer as he carried his new wife across the threshold of his candlelit chamber. He gently placed her on her feet in front of his bed, where he planted sweet kisses on her neck while he disrobed.

Then he started to remove his wife’s gown, and she recoiled. “I cannot do this,” said she.

“Sure, you can,” said Quincy, who was completely naked except for the crown on his head. “It’s easy. You just have to lie there while I do things to your body.”

But it was like she couldn’t hear him. She just stood there, staring at her feet, her eyes glazed over.

“No,” said she at last, barely more than a whisper. “I cannot, for though you are king, you are still ratty and common at your core.” She shook her head slowly, her eyes maintaining that not-quite-there look, for she knew the punishment for rejecting a king was death.

“I thought I could go through with it,” she went on in her distant voice. “I told myself that when the time came, I would be able to grin and bear it, to white-knuckle my way through it. But I cannot.”

Quincy felt humiliated. How pathetic he was if the high status of king was insufficient to attract a woman!

But he pushed the feeling aside. Taking his wife’s hands in his, he looked at her softly. “I really need to have relations,” said he, a shade desperately. “I don’t think you understand.”

“I understand your needs,” returned his wife, meeting his gaze, “but I cannot satisfy them. I am literally unable to do what you want.”

Such a firm rejection only added to Quincy’s humiliation. He released his wife’s hands. They dropped to her sides like they were of iron. Her eyes filled with tears.

“Well, then what am I supposed to do with this?” inquired Quincy, motioning to his pelvis. He glanced down to notice his member had grown to lengths hitherto unseen. Humiliation and rejection, it would seem, were Quincy’s kink.

 This discovery gave him a lascivious and embarrassing idea. Even though he knew no one else was in his chamber, he looked about the room, just in case, before making his request. “What if you, like, jerked me off while telling me what a disgusting loser I am?”

“I cannot comply,” replied his wife. A tear rolled down her cheek, for she knew that each refusal was another shovelful of dirt from her grave.

“Ok,” said Quincy. “Then how about this. . . What if I lie here on the floor, and you step on my face and demand that I lick your feet while I jerk myself off? Could you manage that?”

In response to this request, Quincy’s wife could only bury her head in her palms and weep.

A ruler can take only so much rejection, even if it does turn him on, and King Quincy had reached his limit. His lust turned into a volcanic rage, and he began shouting at his wife. Clearly, he had unresolved mommy issues and was actually yelling at his neglectful mother, but he was too close to the problem to see this. So, he called his wife all sorts of nasty names that I cannot in good conscience reproduce here. And when I say this, bear in mind that I was fully willing to relay Quincy's indecent sexual requests verbatim just a moment ago. That’s how fucked up some of the things he was saying were.

Ultimately, King Quincy decided that his wife would lose her head the following morning. While her execution gave him some measure of satisfaction, he noticed a peculiar thing in the days that followed: he could find no unmarried noblewomen in his kingdom. It was as if they had all vanished.

He spent every waking moment pondering this matter until one night, as he lay in bed, it hit him like an arrow to the chest. The beheading, he realized, had caused all the available noblewomen in his kingdom to go into hiding, fearing that they, too, would be beheaded if they caught their king’s eye and could not meet his abnormal sexual demands.

The king sat bolt upright in his bed. He stayed that way for minutes, in a state of panic and regret, until a memory from his teenage years came to him. He remembered skulking in the shadows as he followed a handsome, burly servant who led four beautiful women into the servants’ quarters. Quincy had been amazed that a lowly servant could lure multiple high-ranking noblewomen to his bed, but this man had a magnetism to him that these women couldn’t resist. Quincy had stood with his ear to the servant’s door for the next hour, enthralled by the sounds of unrefined, unconstrained pleasure which the women produced.

If anyone was fit to help King Quincy attract a woman, it was this servant.

He picked up the bell which sat on his nightstand and rang it. When the doorman entered a moment later, Quincy gave his order. “Bring Chadwick to me at once.”

Chadwick arrived presently and listened while Quincy explained his dilemma. “Yes, that is quite the problem,” stated the ruggedly handsome servant in his deep voice. “It would seem that you’ve blown your chance with literally every woman in this kingdom.”

Quincy shook his head. “Ah, crud.”

“Worry not,” said the servant in comforting tones. “You can still attract a woman from another kingdom.”

“I don’t think that idea is a good one,” responded Quincy.

“Why not? News of your previous wife’s beheading will not have reached their ears. And I will see to it that nothing incriminating will come up should anyone put your name into a search engine.”

“What’s a search engine?” asked the king curiously, for he had never heard this term before. This was in part because these were the olden days, and the internet wasn’t supposed to exist yet. But it was also because Quincy had spent most of his life scavenging for food in dumpsters and associating with rats, which can make it difficult to keep up with technological advancements. “Are search engines, like, that internet thing?”

“Umm, no, search engines themselves are not the entire internet, if that’s what you’re asking,” said Chadwick, “but you do need the internet to use them.”

“Ah,” said Quincy as if he understood, though he did not. “In any case, I’m not worried about search engines. My concern is that the only women who ever cross borders between kingdoms are peasants and refugees seeking better lives. And I am a king, and I deserve a high-class woman.”

“This is true,” admitted Chadwick. “Fortunately, you don’t need to physically cross borders to meet women from other kingdoms anymore.”

“How do you mean?” asked Quincy with great interest.

“Well, these days, most people are doing online dating.”

“On-line da-ting,” repeated Quincy slowly, for he had never heard this expression, either. “Is that on the internet, too?”

“Yes, my liege.”

“In that case, I believe I will require your assistance.”

Chadwick smiled warmly. “It would be an honour to serve my king in this way.”

“And you really think I can attract a high-class woman?”

Chadwick looked Quincy up and down. “It’s. . . possible. After all, you will literally have hundreds of women to choose from.”

The words stirred within Quincy an excitement that was too great to measure. He barely got any sleep that night, imagining all the classy women he might have relations with.

First thing the next morning, Quincy called for Chadwick, who presented his king with a phone, onto which was installed an app called Checkmate. This was a dating app developed to help high-ranking royal men hook up with noblewomen.

Quincy eagerly created an account, but as he answered the questions required to complete his profile, his zeal wilted, and in its place bloomed self-doubt. The questions forced him to admit all his shortcomings—both literally in that he was a short man and figuratively in that he ruled a small kingdom and had no socially acceptable hobbies. Fraternizing with rats wasn’t even on the list of options.

Then, after he had answered the last question, the app prompted him to fill in an ‘about-me’ section. He hadn’t the remotest idea what to do, but his composed servant assured him there was no need to fret. “People usually just put a funny or ironic sentence that doesn’t really say anything of substance.”

“Like what?” asked Quincy.

“Well, I’ve recently found success with, ‘physically six-foot-four, emotionally four-foot-six'."

Quincy stared blankly at his servant.

"The idea," Chadwick continued, "is to show that you don’t really care what other people think of you, even though you’re so desperate for someone to like you that you’ve resorted to meeting strangers through your phone.”

“Oh, I think I see your angle,” said Quincy, regaining some of his enthusiasm. “Yes, now I’ve got my ticket. The trick is to play it like I’m on Checkmate as a joke. Because if I’m only putting myself out there ironically, then technically, I can’t be rejected.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty much the idea,” returned the servant. “The important thing to remember is that being authentic is cringe and must be avoided at all costs.”

“I think I understand the gimmick now,” said Quincy, his thumbs tap-tap-tapping away on his phone. When he was done tapping, he cleared his throat. “Ok, check it out. I put, ‘Here for a good reign, not a long reign’.”

Chadwick’s face fell. “That could work,” he replied dutifully.

“I won’t have you beheaded if you don’t like it,” said Quincy, reading his servant’s countenance. “You can tell me if it’s cringe.”

“It’s cringe.”

“Damn it to hell,” said the monarch, throwing his arms up. “I don’t know what to put, then.”

Chadwick looked thoughtful for a moment before offering his suggestion. “Why don’t you say, ‘Looking for a woman with a strong back who can dig me a new moat’?”

“I don’t get it,” said Quincy.

“That’s actually a good sign,” replied the manservant. “You should put it. And don’t use punctuation. It makes you look like a try-hard.”

Quincy did not oppose Chadwick in this, for he was eager to finish his task. But he quickly found once again that he wasn’t done. “Oh my God!” he groaned in frustration. “Now it wants pictures!” He looked to his servant with pleading eyes. “Do I have to do pictures?”

“Yes, my liege. It’s literally the most important part of the whole thing.”

“But that shouldn’t be the way,” countered the king. “It should be about personality.”

“I agree,” said Chadwick. “And in a perfect world, it would be about personality. But it’s not a perfect world. To be perfectly honest, things are pretty messed up.”

Unable to argue with this claim, Quincy agreed to let Chadwick take some pictures of him. They rode in the royal carriage into the nearby woods, for, according to Chadwick, the first thing Quincy needed was a portrait-style photo in a natural setting.

However, the natural theme was quite ironic, for Chadwick instructed his king to pose in very unnatural ways. Mostly, he had him leaning against a tree while drinking coffee.

“Ok, now this time, when you take a sip of your coffee,” Chadwick was saying half an hour into their shoot, “pretend someone off-camera told you something funny, and you’re trying not to laugh and spit it out.”

“But that’s not something I would ever naturally do,” protested the king. He was stubbornly clinging to the idea that it should be about personality. “Like, why do I even have a mug of coffee with me in the woods in the first place? That makes no sense.”

“Yeah, that’s the bit,” returned the manservant. “Just do it.”

“But why does everything have to be a bit?”

“Because, like I keep telling you, to be authentic is to show vulnerability and weakness. Would you be impressed by a king who shows weakness if you were a woman?”

“I suppose not,” Quincy sighed and allowed his servant to snap more photos on his phone from different angles.

“That felt so staged,” the king commented after the ordeal was over. “I felt like I was trying way too hard.”

“Well, you don’t look like a try-hard,” replied the servant, showing Quincy one of the photos. “See?”

Quincy was bound to admit that he looked as carefree as a housecat. Yet he had his scruples. “It doesn’t look like me,” he stated. “I’m worried women won't see who I really am.”

“Listen,” said Chadwick, locking his eyes on to his ruler’s. “No matter who a man really is, women will always make up stories in their heads about who he is within a second of seeing him. Do you see what I’m saying?”

“I think so,” said Quincy gloomily. “You’re saying that women will never see me for who I am, no matter what I do, so I might as well prompt them to tell themselves good stories about me.”

“That’s the idea,” said a smiling Chadwick. “Now, let’s go to our next location and take some more pics, you handsome devil.”

Quincy agreed, but it was with slow steps that he returned to the carriage, for he felt he had lost a part of himself in those woods.

For the next photo, Chadwick took Quincy up to the ski hill. The king had never been skiing before in his life, and he did not ski on this day. But Chadwick said that every man worth dating has an action photo on his profile. So, Quincy put on the equipment and had Chadwick take his photo in it. After that, Chadwick brought Quincy to the servants’ farm (another place the king had never been) and took a picture of him feeding a baby goat with a bottle. That night, per Chadwick's instruction, Quincy ordered some of his servants to join him at a nightclub so Chadwick could get a good picture of him drinking cocktails and carousing, to prove he had a social life, even though he didn’t.

When Quincy returned to his throne room that night, he added the photos to his Checkmate profile. Though he barely recognized himself, he was glad to have finally completed his toilsome task.

The instant he activated his profile, he was rewarded with the image of a breathtaking young princess. She had a face as sweet as custard, framed by long locks of luxurious blonde hair. What’s more, a shot of her in a bikini showed that she had a perfect tan and plenty going on in the chest.

“Larks!” exclaimed Quincy. “I must say, this is the fairest woman I’ve ever laid eyes on.”

Her bio revealed only that her name was Anastasia, and she was from Aristelle, two kingdoms over. Quincy thought it somewhat lazy on Anastasia’s part to provide so few details, but Chadwick informed his king that this was perfectly normal behaviour. “Women aren’t expected to have personalities, skills, or opinions,” he explained. “They just need to look good.”

“Oh, yeah. I almost forgot how society worked for a second, there,” chuckled Quincy as he swiped right on the flawless princess.

He proceeded to swipe many more women this way and that until he started to feel a little queasy. He stopped to ask his servant if this was the right way to find love. “I feel like I’m selecting plums to either be put in pies or tossed to the goats,” he mused aloud, “as if these women aren’t human beings at all but commodities.”

“You’re overthinking it,” came Chadwick’s stable response. “This is how love works these days. And, in my experience, women like being treated like commodities, though they would never admit it.”

“That doesn’t sound right,” King Quincy said. “Maybe I'm just ahead of my time, but I think that kind of thinking is sexist. Because, for one thing—”

He was interrupted when his phone pinged with a notification that he had matched with Anastasia, the ripest plum on the tree.

He squealed with delight, but he also felt some discomfort underneath the merriment, for he knew Anastasia hadn’t really swiped right on him. She hadn’t chosen the man who had spent his youth running with rats and eating garbage. The man Anastasia had chosen was some fabricated version of Quincy who didn’t exist.

The day’s occurrences had taught the king a disheartening lesson: to find love, you had to keep up a breezy, natural appearance while every move you made was meticulously calculated behind the scenes. You had to highlight only the best parts of yourself while keeping in the shadows the rat and dumpster parts, which, ironically, are the parts that need to be loved the most.

But as Quincy messaged Anastasia, his uneasiness was overcome by the excitement of potentially meeting her for a date and maybe even having relations with her. With Chadwick’s assistance, Quincy had an agreeable conversation with the princess, which ended with their making arrangements to go out for dinner.

“Should I take her to Meadlovers?” asked Quincy of his servant.

Chadwick shuddered. “I would not recommend it, my liege.”

Quincy gave his servant a puzzled look. “Why not? The food’s amazing.”

“True,” agreed Chadwick, “but in my experience, women of the royal class do not appreciate the unique qualities of pub food. And besides that, as the man, you should accept the burden of travelling to her kingdom for your date.”

“But I thought, as the man, it was my burden to pay for the meal.”

“As the man, every burden is yours. Every last one of them. For the rest of your life.”

“Fine, then,” said the king. “But where should I take her? I don’t even know what restaurants are in Aristelle.”

“I would suggest inviting her to The Crown & Sceptre.”

“The Crown & Sceptre, eh? Sounds fancy,” said King Quincy as he typed the name into a search engine, which he had recently learned how to use.

As he perused the establishment’s menu, he pulled a face. “Ew, they serve snails. That’s really gross,” he remarked. “And that’s coming from a man who spent most of his life eating literal garbage.”

“On the contrary, my liege, people of the upper class consider escargot a delicacy,” stated Chadwick.

Quincy inspected his servant’s face for any sign he was joking, but found none. “Alright, then,” said he. “I will ask Anastasia to meet me at The Crown & Sceptre, and we will eat snails.”

The following Saturday, Quincy could not have felt more out of place as he sat across from the most beautiful creature on earth in the fanciest restaurant in Aristelle. He was still new to the upper-class life and was unaccustomed to sparkling chandeliers, gilded tablecloths, the aroma of truffles, and the lilting harmonies of violins. But the thing that made Quincy most uncomfortable was that he would not have Chadwick by his side, telling him what to do and say.

Nevertheless, by some miracle, King Quincy had managed to engage Anastasia in a decent conversation.

“You know, I wouldn’t normally go out with a king who has only twenty thousand subjects,” the princess was saying, “but when I saw that you like skiing, I thought what the hell. You seem like fun.”

“Guilty as charged,” said Quincy through a fake smile that he hoped wasn’t too big.

“Do you ski often?” asked the princess of Aristelle.

“Absolutely,” lied the king through his smile. “I can’t get enough of those slopes.”

“Omg, same,” said Anastasia, her eyes lighting up. “Whenever it snows, everyone in the castle automatically assumes I’m going skiing. Like, it’s at the point where I don’t even have to tell the servants to load my gear into the coach.”

Quincy laughed, not because he found the princess’s remark funny but rather because he sensed she was expecting him to laugh based on how she said it. “Don’t get me started on ski gear,” said Quincy with false enthusiasm. “I’ll be yakking all night.”

“Oh, yeah?” said the princess, leaning forward over the table. “What are your go-to twigs?”

This question ruffled Quincy. Chadwick had coached him on some skiing terminology in anticipation that Anastasia would bring up the sport as a topic of conversation; however, they had not gone over the term twigs. But Quincy was pretty sure it was ski-slang for poles. What else could twigs possibly be?

“Oh, I don’t use ’em,” said he with an easy flick of his wrist.

The words seemed to bewilder the princess. “What do you mean?”

“I just find it easier to ski without twigs. They just get in the way.”

Quincy could tell from the look on his date’s face that he had said something scandalous. Luckily, before Anastasia could ask any more questions, the server came and asked if the king would like to see the wine list.

Quincy took the list and read it without consulting Anastasia. This, Chadwick had told him, would make him look like a take-charge kind of king. He looked at the wine list for precisely two minutes, occasionally making a thoughtful face and uttering, “Ah, interesting,” so that he would appear discerning but not indecisive.

At the end of his deliberation, Quincy ceremoniously ordered a bottle of Oakthorn Reserve. He very much liked how earthy his selection sounded.

“Excellent choice,” the server said, then walked off.

As Quincy turned to his date, he noticed she was frowning at him. “Is something the matter?” asked he.

“Did you seriously just order a bottle of Oakthorn Reserve?” She said these last two words as though she were spitting out poison.

“Yes. It is a very fine wine,” returned Quincy with as much confidence as he could muster. “It’s very earthy.”

“It’s peasants’ wine,” Anastasia spat.

Quincy saw no option but to double down. “I can assure you it is of the highest standard, for why else would they serve it at an establishment as classy as this?”

“I can assure you it is of the lowest standard,” responded Anastasia. “My cousin owns the vineyard that produces it. I know how it is made, how much a bottle costs, and who the target clientele is, and that is peasants. This establishment only serves it because they can get a bottle for two silver, knowing they can sell it for two gold to uncultured plebeians who don’t know the first thing about wine.”

Heat rushed to Quincy’s face, for he knew he’d been exposed as the low-class piece of scum he was. But then he remembered a piece of advice from Chadwick: you can do anything you like without judgment, so long as you say you did it ironically.

“I’m just kidding,” said Quincy through a smile that was definitely too big. “I only ordered Oakthorn Reserve as a joke.”

“I don’t believe you,” said the princess with some heat. She rose from her chair and grabbed her purse. “I think you’re positively vile.”

“Don’t go!” pleaded Quincy much too loudly and desperately. He could sense everyone in the restaurant staring at him, but he didn’t care. “Please give me another chance!”

“You don’t deserve another chance,” retorted the princess. Then she spat in Quincy’s face. “That’s what you deserve.” And with that, she walked away.

Sexually, Quincy was more turned on than he’d ever been in his life. But emotionally, he was crushed, for his greatest fear had come true. He had shown a sliver of his true self and had been told in no uncertain terms that he was not enough. He left The Crown & Sceptre with his head hung low, never again to show his face in Aristelle.

He stayed on Checkmate and went on a few more dates, but the result of each was another stab of rejection. He simply could not maintain the façade beyond the messaging phase. He could not help revealing his true, ratty self whenever he met a woman in person. And because of this, he fell into a deep depression that lasted for months.

One night, as he sat on his throne, drinking a bottle of Oakthorn Reserve (he had acquired a taste for the stuff), he was overcome by a fit of frustration. He deleted his Checkmate profile and uninstalled the app from his phone, which he proceeded to throw across the throne room. He took the last swig of wine, flung the empty bottle against the wall, and watched it shatter into a thousand pieces. Then he threw his crown, which did not shatter when it hit the wall, but it got a pretty good dent in it so that it matched his bruised ego.

Chadwick appeared in the room, the rumpus having attracted his notice. “Is something the matter, my liege?

The dispirited king clutched his hair in his hands and stared off into space. “I’m gonna die alone,” said he, not to Chadwick specifically, but just sort of into the ether.

“You’ll find someone,” said Chadwick unconvincingly, coming closer to his king.

“Nah, man,” said Quincy. “I’m screwed. Because no one else is out there trying to make an actual, genuine human connection.” Running out of things to throw, he removed one of his boots and chucked it. “Everyone’s so damn guarded. Everyone’s performing, and they don’t know how to handle it when I don’t play their game. Like, I share one little meaningful thing about myself with a woman, and it scares her off. It’s like the world is afraid of authenticity.”

Quincy massaged his temples. After a time, he looked upon his servant. “Maybe I should just accept that porn is the best I can do,” said he, nodding firmly.

He ordered Chadwick to retrieve his phone, which by good fortune was still functional. He told his servant to leave, then opened a pornographic website. But just as he had typed the letters ‘sph joi’ into the search bar, he remembered something of importance.

“Dammit,” said he. “I forgot I have to get groceries.”

Chadwick, who had only one foot out the door, paused and turned to his king. “Can’t it wait until tomorrow, my liege?”

“No,” groaned Quincy. “I don’t have the stuff for my morning protein shake.” He sat there for a moment, shaking his head in dismay. “Fuck!”

The careworn king put on his crown and boot, gathered his reusable bags, and made his way to the grocer’s, where he got his bananas, his peanut butter, and his oat milk, so that all that was left was to retrieve the protein powder from the health food section.

As he took the tub of chocolate-flavoured stuff from the shelf and stepped back, he didn’t notice the peasant woman standing behind him. In each hand, she held a bottle of vitamins. She was staring at the labels so intently that she did not notice Quincy until he bumped into her.

Quincy spun around and viewed the unsightly woman. Scraggly, knotted locks of brown hair hung down from a torn bonnet. She wore a drab, threadbare dress which looked to be fashioned from an ancient curtain.

“Pardon me,” said she. It took Quincy a moment to reconcile himself to the fact that such a musical voice could be produced by such a homely creature. “By chance, can you read?” asked the girl.

“Yes, I can,” said the king proudly.

The peasant held the two bottles out to him. “Then could you please tell me which of these has more iron? I think I’m dying because I’m not getting enough iron.”

Quincy took the bottles, observed them, and handed the unkempt woman the one with more iron. As he put the other bottle back on the shelf, he told her that it was for children, and even if she couldn’t read, she should have known that based on the cartoon caveman on the bottle.

“Oh my God, that’s so embarrassing!” the woman giggled. If her speaking voice was like music, then her giggle was the greatest symphony ever composed. “I’m so stupid.”

“You’re not stupid,” said Quincy, “To be fair, the caveman does look like he gets a lot of iron.”

“I know, right? That’s why I picked up the bottle in the first place,” the peasant remarked. Then she tilted her head, her expressive eyes taking on a puzzled look. “Why do you dress like a king, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“I dress this way because I am a king.”

The girl’s brown eyes went wide as saucers, and Quincy had to admit that they were quite nice to look at. They reminded him of cinnamon.

“Really?” asked she. “You’re, like, a legit king?”

“Yes. I am King Quincy. You are in my kingdom.”

“Oh. My. God. That’s amazing!” said the enraptured woman. “I can’t believe I’m talking to an actual king! At a grocery store, of all places.”

Since Quincy had given up on love and was no longer concerned with impressing women, he saw no need to perform or embellish. He simply said, “It’s not a huge deal. Honestly, my kingdom only has twenty thousand subjects. So, yeah, I’m technically a king, but it’s whatever.”

“You’re nothing like I thought a king would be,” said the woman in impressed tones. “You’re so down to earth.”

“That’s because I haven’t been a king all that long,” explained Quincy. “I actually was never supposed to be king. In my youth, I was a big nobody. I ate garbage with rats, and I would tell them of my woes, and they would watch me cry.”

“Oh my God,” said the woman brightly. “In my youth, I made friends with pigeons! I would put on plays for them.”

“No way! I thought I was the only one who befriended vermin,” said Quincy. He couldn't remember the last time he had smiled so genuinely.

“Me too,” said the woman sweetly, her cinnamon eyes soft and glistening and locked on to Quincy’s. “I’m Colleen, by the way.” She extended her hand, which Quincy took and kissed.

“Charmed,” said he. She really did have nice eyes.

As they stood among the health foods, they talked about their lonely childhoods and failed marriages. Colleen didn’t even flinch when Quincy confided that he had had his first wife beheaded. For her part, Colleen was in Quincy’s kingdom because she was on the run for killing her husband. He was violent, and she had done it in self-defence, but she knew the entire village would vilify her, these being the times when literally all marital issues were perceived as the woman’s fault.

They remained in the health food aisle for some time, sharing with each other the darkest parts of themselves. And as they talked, Quincy came to realize that his dark side couldn’t be all that dark, not if someone else could see it.

They didn’t stop talking until the guy came on the PA system to say the store would be closing pretty soon. Quincy added Colleen’s vitamins to his cart and paid for them, not to flaunt his wealth but rather because she was a peasant and would have resorted to stealing them otherwise.

Once they were outside, Colleen thanked Quincy for the vitamins and said it had been wonderful meeting him. But as she walked off, something tugged at Quincy. It was as if his heart were bound to Colleen’s by an invisible chain so that the more distance there was between them, the more it hurt him to think he would never again see her cinnamon eyes or hear her musical voice.

Somehow knowing that letting her go would be his greatest regret in life, he called for her to wait, then went to her. “I was just thinking,” said he, rubbing the back of his neck, his hands sweating like crazy. “If you’re getting tired of the whole being-on-the-run thing, you could always stay in my kingdom for a while. I’ve got plenty of spare chambers in the castle, and, well, to be honest. . .” He trailed off.

“What is it?” said Colleen.

“Nah, I shouldn’t say it,” said Quincy. “You'll think it's stupid.”

“Tell me.” Colleen smiled such a sweet smile as she made this request that Quincy was physically unable to deny it.

“I was just gonna say. . . I know we haven’t known each other long, but I’d miss you if you left.”

Colleen’s smile grew into something too beautiful to describe. “That’s not stupid,” said she. “I think it’s cute.”

Colleen remained in Quincy’s kingdom, and with each passing day, the monarch fell more deeply in love with the hideous peasant. Before long, he concluded that he could not live without her, and he asked for her hand in marriage. She happily accepted the proposal.

Their wedding was not extravagant (the reception was held at Meadlovers), and they were probably the ugliest king–queen duo in history. Yet their union was honourable, for Quincy had chosen someone he truly loved over any number of better-looking, classier women. He knew Colleen’s best qualities, as well as her darkest secrets, and he loved every piece of her. And he knew she loved him in the same way.

That night, they had relations. The experience was even more wonderful than King Quincy had ever imagined, for Colleen was willing and able to do all kinds of things that no man should ever imagine doing to a lady.

A few days after the wedding, Chadwick was combing his majesty’s hair after his evening bath. Meanwhile, Quincy was reflecting on how queer it was that he’d found true love when he was only looking for protein powder. “Hey, do you remember when I went on that dating app and was, like, super doubting myself?” he asked his servant.

“I remember it,” returned Chadwick.

“You know what I think the problem was?”

“What was the problem, my liege?”

“The problem,” said King Quincy philosophically, “was that I was trying to force love into my life with women who weren’t right for me. I should have just been vibing and letting love find me.”

Chadwick nodded as he absorbed the king’s words.

“Searching for love,” continued Quincy, “is like trying to make the sun come out on a cloudy day. You can’t force it. All you can do is get out there and do your thing your way, so that when the clouds part, the sun might kiss your skin.”

“Well said, my liege,” said Chadwick, smiling to himself. “Well said indeed.”