Third In Line

Chapter Twenty Eight - The Actress and the Prince

The living room was pitch black, except for the dim glow coming from the television. If they had been watching something a bit more cheerful perhaps the room might have been a little brighter, but they were watching a horror instead. Pippa had voted to watch The Notebook, but that was no surprise. Pippa always voted for a romantic film, but was always shot down by someone calling it a snore fest. Will and Mark always wanted to watch action films, but could never agree between Bond and Bourne.

In the end it was her daughters that decided, and as usual they had picked a horror. They watched other films, that was clear, but they always held this one as a favourite. She would have worried more about her young children liking such a scary horror if she didn't know better, but the truth was that they enjoyed watching a particular cast member more than rest of the film.

North of Blood Forest was a dark film, following a young woman on the hunt for a murderer that killed her husband. It wasn't really a classic horror, and wasn't really that scary either. The fact was that it was only successful because it was Emma Burton's first film. Her performance earned her worldwide praise and catapulted her into stardom, leading to a string of even more successful films with her in the lead.

To everyone around the world Emma Burton was celebrity royalty, Hollywood gold, but these days Kate and the family knew her by a different name, Princess Emma.

At the time of the film's release in 2011 she was a twenty-seven year old nobody from Hollywood, Florida. Many people at the time thought that even though her performance was incredible, she was too old to be embraced by the movie industry and turned into a star. They believed that Emma would only appear in a few films before she was overtaken by the many hot young actresses that were starring in all the blockbuster films.

But that didn't happen, Kate thought to herself, getting excited about it all over again.

Emma starred in another successful film, Golden Lotus, and gave another powerhouse performance, then another, another and another. It was obvious that she wasn't going to fade into obscurity.

Emma didn't know it yet, but she actually had quite a few admirers within the Royal family. Kate was one, Zara another, Beatrice and Eugenie idolized her. Harry was in love without even meeting her. They all enjoyed hearing about Emma's increasing success through the years, and they all hoped to meet her. When that chance finally came for Kate at the annual BAFTA dinner, she wasn't going to miss it.

She and Will were there as guests of honour, but in her eyes there was only one guest of honour there that night and she was sitting just a few feet away from them. It wasn't long before she worked her way across the floor and found herself having one of the most entertaining conversations she could remember, with the one and only Emma Burton.

"Quiet, quiet! This is my favourite bit!" Ellie said, smacking her shoulder even though nobody was actually talking over the film.

On screen, Emma's character Lizzie was having a shouting match with the police chief who wasn't working hard enough to find her husband's killer. Kate was always so struck by how powerful Emma could be, even if it was just acting. She could see a lot of the real life Emma in the characters that she played, even the ones who were quieter and timid. No matter what you could always see how passionate and caring she was, but what Kate enjoyed most about Emma was how fierce she could be.

She could encourage anyone to do anything, motivate you when you couldn't motivate yourself and then make you feel unbeatable. With that same power and energy she could put anyone in their place, make them feel horrible and then make them apologise over and over again to the point where they forget why they found themselves on her bad side to begin with.