'A Christmas Prince' Was An Inside Job
Grayson Chalmers
(WARNING: The article below contains spoilers for the 2017 Netflix film “A Christmas Prince.” If you do not wish to learn about specific plot points from that film, then please watch it before proceeding.)
The United States has been eliminated from the World Cup, nothing is happening in the FC world, and there is no other soccer news that might explain away the rest of this piece as displaced paranoid and conspiratorial thinking from a mind virus spreading through the USMNT online fanbase. But take heart: The Christmas season is upon us. (That's right, we at The Post aren't afraid to say "Christmas." Up yours, woke moralists.)
If you have a wife or other prominent woman in your life, are a woman yourself, reject this gender characterization entirely because it is reductive and offensive, or are noted fascist Stephen Miller…
The Alpha Males are back.
… then this means that it’s the time of year where you watch Hallmark movies.
Perhaps the ur-work of the Hallmark genre is “A Christmas Prince,” which is technically not a Hallmark movie because it is a Netflix movie. “A Christmas Prince” is about a journalist (Emily) who travels to some made-up European country to cover the transition of power from the deceased king to his son – or, as is rumored, to cover the prince formally abdicating his throne. When she arrives, she is immediately mistaken as the tutor for the prince’s younger sister and allowed to stay in the palace. With this access, she thinks, she can get the inside information about the prince and his family and write quite the story. Inevitably, however, she and the prince fall in love, and she drops any precepts of exposing anything.
(The movie spawned two sequels, which I have not seen and do not consider canon.)
After watching the film, however, I quickly realized that it was not simply a light film about unlikely romance. Rather, it is in fact the story of a surreptitious coup d’etat so subtle that no one in the audience, and few people in the movie itself, even know it is happening. Through this lens, events in the film that seem to have no point or seem to be unlikely and unexplainable coincidence, are in fact revealed to occur exactly as designed.
My theory, supported by the facts below, is as follows: Shortly before the king’s death, Prince Richard learned that he was adopted and, therefore, was not included in the line of succession. This revelation angered Richard and, in the heat of an argument, he killed his father. To cover up the crime, he hid the adoption certificate in a secret compartment in his father’s hunting cabin, forged a royal decree in his father’s handwriting legitimizing himself, and hid that decree in an ornament. Then, he had to orchestrate a chain of events to make it appear that he “learned” of the adoption and decree after his father’s death through the actions of others, to make it seem as if he had no motive for the murder and played no part in the events leading to him assuming the throne.
The first thing we learn about the prince, for example, is that he has the reputation of being an irresponsible playboy with no interest in the throne. But we are only told this. Nothing we see about this character supports this reputation. He seems, overall, kind of a nice, normal guy who, though not hungry for power, loves his family and wants to do what’s best for them. We are thus left with the conclusion that this reputation is planted to paint the prince as unambitious and cast any suspicion away from him.
Second, are we supposed to believe that the royal family of a whole freaking country would hire a tutor who they never interviewed or even Googled? How can it be possible that they have no idea what she looks like? And then, throughout the film, this tutor never shows up or even calls ahead to let the family know that she is delayed or isn’t coming. It is obvious, then, that there never was a tutor. The family needed someone to “discover” both the prince’s adoption and the “king’s” decree, and a reporter duped into thinking that she is snooping – but is in fact seeing only what you want her to see – is the perfect candidate.
Third, the prince clearly leads Emily into the woods on purpose. She thinks that she is secretly following him on horseback, but horses aren’t exactly stealthy and she’s a terrible rider. When she inevitably falls off and is cornered by the wolf, the prince shows up to save her – both revealing that he knew she was there the whole time and was in perfect command of both horses. (I do not think the wolf was a plant – I’m not a “no wolfer.” I think he was going to come back and help her after she fell, and the wolf just happened to be there.) Then, he takes her to the king’s cabin, which coincidentally is nearby.
At the cabin, Richard reveals his cover version of the fight with the king – that he told his father he would renounce the throne, which upset the king, who then just happened to die shortly thereafter for unexplained reasons. Then, for no apparent reason, Richard pulls a terrible and meaningless poem from his father’s desk, drawing Emily’s attention there. The horses neigh (likely on command from hearing a terrible poem) and Richard goes to check on them, even though there’s no emergency – certainly no reason to interrupt getting it on – because horses just neigh sometimes. Richard’s absence, however, allows Emily to continue prying around the desk to find the worst-concealed secret compartment of all time, which contains the prince’s certificate of adoption. This revelation – “discovered” by Emily – allows the prince to be publicly shocked about that news.
Fourth, there is a very telling scene in the movie that at first seems out of place and to serve no purpose. In this scene, Emily is snooping around the palace and the camera briefly shifts perspective to that of Mrs. Averill, the royal family’s butler (or whatever you call a lady butler). Mrs. Averill tells an unnamed servant how important it is that one ornament in particular be properly placed on the tree. Later, we learn that this ornament contains the decree making Richard the heir to the throne. But supposedly no one knew about that decree! If that were true, then why was it so important that this particular dumb ornament be front and center on the tree? It’s not because the writers of the movie are lazy, I’ll tell you that – it’s because they are revealing, in this scene, Mrs. Averill’s complicity in the plot!
Finally, Emily uses “clues” from the poem – that Richard should not have known about and certainly had no good reason to read to her - and decides to look in the ornament, where she finds the decree. She then takes that decree to court, where no one questions it. Why, after all, should they? It was found in the king’s own ornament by someone with no connection to the family and no reason to lie about it. After this, Prince Richard becomes King Richard. The conspiracy has achieved its objective.
This leaves one loose end: Emily. Why would the prince, having assumed the throne, nevertheless travel to the United States and ask her to marry him, if not for true love? The answer is obvious:
