The newspaper blares the headline in black and white, bold as a striker in a church: PRINCESS ANASTASIA, ROYAL GONE ROGUE!
It comes as no surprise to Anastasia when the newspaper is plastered across the windows in every newsagents in Godric's Hollow, and it's even less of a surprise that they don't recognise her when she purchases one with a crisp fifty pound note and a magazine worthy smile.
She is, above all else, a pretender. She is a princess, a girl with the golden life beyond the golden gates of Meadowhall Palace. She smiles amicably to her people, waving a gentle hand with magic beyond comprehension trapped in her fingertips. She leans her head onto her fiancés shoulder, Duke Hamilton twenty years her senior and one of the most boring people she has ever met, and sighs lovingly as they take their engagement photos and act nauseatingly in love.
Sure, Hamilton is a perfectly nice man, with his yellowing teeth and hands akin to a shrimp. He's perfectly nice, and Anastasia hates every bit of him. It isn't that he peeps his head into her bedroom at night, allowed by the guards because they are to be wed, and stares at her like she is a prime piece of meat. It isn't that he laughs with her father about how women are so naive, because the Crown may be hers but the Kingdom will belong to him the minute he has a ring on her finger.
Anastasia is sure that if it had been anyone else, anyone that was not Hamilton, who has known her since she was a child, that she could live her life in a loveless marriage. She is positive that if it had been a man of her own age, then she could have managed. She could have been one and done, pop out an heir and call it a day. But it is not the man that she so dreams of, and it is the dreadful old bag of bones that her father picked himself, and Anastasia is almost certain that this is not going to work.
And so, with one week until her wedding day, Anastasia hatches her plan. She will act perfectly normal, not too naughty and not too nice, and she will plan her wedding. She will take pictures with Hamilton with the same amount of enthusiasm as she always does, and she will retire to her bedroom alone and pretend not to notice when his bald head peeks in later that night. She will live her life the exact same way she has been since the engagement went public. When it comes time for her to walk the aisle on Friday, May 6th, 1977, she will do exactly that.
Only it's the aisle of a stingy old bus in London, packed with groups of young girls and boys doing things that surely aren't appropriate to be doing in front of an acting royal, and she will drop off the face of planet earth.
She ends up in the small town of Godric's Hollow, a place she never knew existed until a tourist pamphlet was slid under her door little over a week ago. She finds magic at every turn and fears that if she blinks, it will all disappear. It's here, in Godric's Hollow, that Anastasia finds herself knocked over onto the ground by a rowdy group of teenage boys, and it's that very same group of rowdy teenage boys who are the real key to her escape.
It's only later that she finds this out, obviously. In the moment she is furious, covered in mud with tears threatening to spill from her eyes, about ready to stamp her feet and pitch a fit. James Potter is bloody lucky that he's cute, or Anastasia would have his head on a stick.
LUCY BOYNTON ━ ANASTASIA EVELYN WEBSTER ( Crown Princess, First in line to the British Throne )
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JODIE COMER ━ MILLICENT ALEXANDRA WEBSTER ( Princess Royal, Second in line to the British Throne )
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King Philipe, Reigning Monarch of the United Kingdom - As Described Queen Consort Maria - As Described
HIIIII!!!!!! never thought i'd see the day where i was writing an authors note again. welcome to runaway bride! anastasia's story has gone through so many changes and been passed from author to author, but finally i have it figured out and she is home. i have struggled for over a year now trying to figure out my own writing style and spent months developing plot after plot, but its only anastasia who really stuck with me. i am so excited for you to all meet her in the prologue and i hope you'll love her and millicent as much as i do. thank you for taking a chance on us.
