Free Royal Wedding by Meg Cabot

out differently between us.
    XOXO J.P.
    Ugh. UGH UGH UGH UGH.
    Someone with full cognitive development who is also self-actualized would never take pleasure in the pain of someone else—even their ex-boyfriend who completely betrayed them and who has now fallen on hard times and made a movie called Nymphomania 3-D (which, by the way, I looked up and it’s about “a young girl’s sensual journey from frigidity to sexual awakening in the arms of a skilled older lover” who also happens to be a writer named John Paul)—but I’m going to be honest:
    It’s possible this is the best birthday present I’ve ever received. Because it gives me free rein not to feel the least bit bad about COMPLETELY HATING J.P.
    But because I’m a princess, instead of reveling in J.P.’s pain, I’ll simply write back to him and tell him “Thanks for the birthday wishes” and to send his book along, but that since I’m quite busy, I don’t know how long it will be before I can read it, if ever.
    (Wrong: I will read it immediately and laugh and laugh at how stupid it is. Plus I’m going to make sure to get a copy of Nymphomania 3-D and play it in the palace theater and laugh at that, too.)
    (Well, probably not, because it sounds completely disgusting.)
    It’s not all good news, though.
    RateTheRoyals.com chimed in to let me know my royal popularity rating has now sunk to an all-time low, “thanks to recent highly publicized events.” This has now made me less popular than a royal baby.
    Thanks, Rate the Royals. Happy birthday to me.

CHAPTER 11
    9:05 a . m ., Friday, May 1
    Third-Floor Apartment
    Consulate General of Genovia
    Rate the Royals Rating: 5
    Marie Rose just arrived with breakfast (Belgian waffles still hot from the kitchen downstairs and a soft-boiled egg with buttered toast and a pot of steaming hot Genovian black tea with milk and fresh squeezed juice).
    I told her she didn’t have to keep doing this—she’s supposed to be the chef for the consulate general, not me—but she only rolled her eyes and said, “C’est pas grave.”
    She is a lovely woman and a true patriot of the sovereign city-state, though she got her green card in 1997, and both her daughters are American citizens.
    Of course Marie Rose checked Rate the Royals, too. She says the site is an outrage and ought to be shut down. She says I’m “definitely a four,” right after Kate, William, and Prince Harry. Royal babies, she said, shouldn’t count.
    â€œOn good days, after having had your hair blown out, Princesse,” she says, “you’re probably a two, after Kate, or maybe even a one if Paolo’s used that airbrush makeup that makes your skin look so smooth on high-definition television.”
    I tried to explain to her that Rate the Royals is not an attractiveness rating scale, but a popularity ranking,* but she’s staying firm.
    *Not that rating women on a numerical scale of attractiveness is ever okay, even when we do it to ourselves. It is always sexist and wrong. Popularity rankings are not much better, though, because they’re basically about how well a celebrity—in this case, a person born into a royal family—is marketing themselves, which is an exhausting job in and of itself.
    I wish I could take Marie Rose with me everywhere I go. But of course it’s rude to poach other people’s staff.
    I’m sure my current unpopularity has nothing whatsoever to do with yesterday’s events (sarcasm).
    According to Brian Fitzpatrick (founder and developer of Rate the Royals), the lowest-ranked royals in the world right now (besides me) are:
    1.   His Highness General Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Faisal, crown prince and deputy supreme commander of Qalif, who only last night imposed martial law after his own wife was found trying to flee across the border into Saudi Arabia.
    2.   My father, the Crown