When the king went into hospital, he expected his wife to hold his hand.
Instead, she picked up a pen,
sharpened her lawyers—and tried to hold the entire crown hostage.
In the spring of 2025, the usually discreet Regent Clinic in the capital of the Kingdom of Aldermere
became the stage for a royal tragedy no one saw coming.
King Alaric IV, 76, had just begun another round of treatment for a stubborn immune-related cancer. Doctors were cautiously optimistic, but the prognosis was clear: weeks in hospital, strict rest, no stress.
On the surface, the king did what he’d always done—smile. He joked with nurses, waved from the tinted window when cameras gathered outside the clinic, and sent warm messages to his people, insisting he would be back to duty “very soon.”
But beneath the calm, he was counting on one person above all:
his wife, Queen Maris—the woman he had once defied the world to love.
On the first morning, she arrived like a scene from a royal portrait.
Pale blue coat, careful smile, a brief embrace at his bedside.
“I’ll be with you through all of this,” she whispered, as palace photographers captured the moment.
The images were released within hours. Commentators praised the queen’s “steadfast devotion.” She even made a short, well-publicized tour of nearby wards, shaking hands with other patients, smiling for their families.
Then, just as the cameras were packed away, she vanished.
“I have an important engagement,” she said softly.
“I’ll be back tonight.”
Night came. She didn’t return.
Days passed. Still no queen.
The king’s room grew colder, despite the warm lamps and fresh flowers. Staff came and went with briefing papers and documents to sign. Crown Prince Rowan and his wife Princess Aria visited often, bringing stories about the grandchildren and little drawings from the children’s hands.
But the empty chair beside his bed became a wound.
While he stared out at the rain streaking the clinic windows, the networks flashed a different picture to the world: Queen Maris in Geneva, attending a prestigious global charity summit. Officially, she was there to support education and environmental causes. Unofficially, rumors began to whisper through the king’s inner circle.
A trusted aide, someone Alaric treated almost like family, delivered a quiet bombshell.
On the sidelines of that Geneva summit, the queen was holding private meetings with a powerful Swiss investment fund. Not to secure money for hospitals or schools—but for the struggling restaurant empire of her son from a previous marriage, Damien Valcourt.
His chain of “heritage royal cuisine” venues had been bleeding cash since the economic downturn. Now, Maris was allegedly offering the fund something only she could grant: permission to associate their investment with the royal name. A “discreet branding arrangement.” A golden seal of palace approval.
In exchange?
Millions pumped into Damien’s failing empire.
When this reached King Alaric’s ears, it hit harder than any diagnosis.
“She’s using the crown… while I’m lying here,” he muttered, clenching the bedsheets, eyes burning with disbelief and humiliation.
The palace tried to mask her absence with carefully worded statements: “pre-planned engagements,” “logistical constraints,” “virtual check-ins.” But staff saw the truth. The king’s health was fragile, his spirit bruised. Geneva had been the first crack. It wouldn’t be the last.
Weeks later, back at Rosemont House, his private residence, the air felt permanently chilled. Spring sunshine warmed the gardens, but inside, every corridor seemed lined with ghosts.
King Alaric threw himself into work—virtual calls with the Chancellor, environmental briefings, meetings with foreign leaders. For a few hours at a time, policy and protocol numbed the ache in his chest.
But when night fell and the doors closed, the silence roared.
Queen Maris eventually returned. In public, nothing seemed wrong. She smiled at charity events, waved from carriages, and posed beside him on balconies.
In private, their conversations had become clipped, formal, almost transactional.
Then came the afternoon that changed everything.
Rain traced slow paths down the study windows as Alaric reviewed reforestation plans. The door opened. Maris walked in—not in soft colors this time, but in severe black. Behind her: two elite divorce attorneys, briefcases in hand, faces like marble.
“Maris… what is this?” the king asked, already knowing he wouldn’t like the answer.
She placed a heavy folder on his desk.
The title on the front made his vision blur:
MARITAL DISSOLUTION AGREEMENT.
“We need to be realistic,” she said calmly. “I want us to end this quietly, with dignity.
Four hundred million crowns. You pay, I walk away. No scandal.”
He stared at her, stunned. This was the woman for whom he had endured decades of scandal, the one he had fought to legitimize in the eyes of a skeptical nation.
Maris leaned closer, voice turning colder.
“You know what I have,” she continued.
“Private financial transfers to offshore accounts. Unpublished letters with foreign backers. Recordings of conversations you never wanted public. If I choose, I can bring down your image, your government… your entire legacy.”
It wasn’t a plea. It was blackmail delivered with immaculate manners.
Alaric felt something inside him tear. He thought of the late Queen Isolde, his mother, who had drilled into him that the crown must always come before the heart. He thought of Diana, his first wife, whose pain had once scorched the tabloids. And he thought of his sons, Rowan and the more distant Prince Henrik, who would be dragged through the ashes if these threats became headlines.
“After everything we faced,” he rasped, fighting tears, “you would turn our secrets into weapons?”
Maris’s answer was devastating in its simplicity.
“I will do whatever it takes to secure my son’s future.”
That night, the king barely slept. He spoke in hushed tones with Rowan on a secure line.
“I’m standing in a storm I never imagined,” he confessed.
“If I move, the monarchy bleeds. If I don’t, it rots.”
Rowan’s reply was steady.
“Father, you defend the crown. We’ll stand behind you—no matter how much it hurts.”
By mid-June, the crisis spilled into the open.
At Sunrise Parade, the kingdom’s highest-profile military celebration, thousands lined the avenue. Cameras from around the world zoomed in as King Alaric, in full scarlet uniform, reviewed the troops. To the public, he looked steady, dignified, very inch the sovereign.
But anyone watching closely saw the fracture.
Queen Maris stood at the opposite end of the royal platform, carefully positioned at a distance that felt more like a line drawn in sand. She smiled for the crowds, feathers trembling on a wide-brimmed hat, but never once met her husband’s eyes.
Next to her stood a man in a gray suit: Damien’s financial strategist. An aide overheard her low words over the drum of the marching band:
“If he doesn’t agree, we release the files. The offshore trail alone will bury him.”
Within hours, social media exploded.
#RoyalRift dominated the feeds. Commentators replayed every cold glance and awkward silence in slow motion.
And the queen was not finished.
Days later, on the morning of Crownview Races, three of the kingdom’s major newspapers dropped matching bombshells:
Leaked documents, partial emails, carefully selected snippets painting a picture of a king secretly moving assets to Princess Aria’s name, “undermining” his queen. The narrative was razor-sharp: a monarch hiding money, a consort being “sidelined,” a palace at war with itself.
King Alaric read the headlines over breakfast. His hands shook so violently the coffee spilled.
He knew instantly who had pulled the trigger.
At Crownview, beneath the thundering hooves and glittering hats, the atmosphere around the royal box was suffocating. Alaric and Maris sat only a few seats apart, yet the emotional distance felt like a continent.
In full view of diplomats and cameras, she walked over, bent toward him, and delivered her most brazen threat yet in a voice just loud enough for nearby guests to hear:
“Send the money, or the next video goes out. The one where you discuss ‘helping’ an election. I ruin you, and there will be nothing left to defend.”
The king, drained but finally done being cornered, snapped.
“You would burn the entire crown for a payout?” he whispered back, face rigid.
“Then I will show you what happens when a sovereign stops bending.”
That night, there were no more debates. Only decisions.
On June 19th, inside the ancient council chamber of St. Edmund’s Palace, King Alaric convened the High Privy Council. The Prime Minister, the Archbishop, senior judges—every key guardian of the constitution took their seat. The air crackled with the awareness that history was about to change.
The king spoke without notes.
He laid out the pattern: abandonment in hospital, abuse of influence in Geneva, extortion in his study, leaks to the press, threats at Crownview. He did not scream. He didn’t need to. The facts landed like hammer blows.
“As sovereign of Aldermere,” he concluded, voice low but unyielding,
“I declare my intent to divorce Queen Maris. All official duties, privileges and succession rights attached to her name are revoked, effective immediately. The Princess of Arendale will assume her public responsibilities.
The crown will not be ruled by blackmail.”
The room was silent except for the scratch of his pen as he signed the decree.
At Rosemont House, security teams swept through the queen’s private rooms. Letters. Emails. Unreleased recordings. Any fragment that could still be used to hold the crown hostage was seized and locked under state seal.
Even then, Maris tried one final strike—drafting an email with a full explosive video attached. But palace security intercepted the message mid-send.
For the first time, her power truly failed her.
Standing in what was once their shared sitting room, now filled with boxes and officers, King Alaric looked at the woman he had once loved beyond reason.
“You chose war,” he told her quietly. “I chose the crown.
Now we both live with what we’ve destroyed.”
He walked away, leaving behind not just a marriage, but the last illusion that love and ambition could safely share the same throne.