Princess Izzy and The E Street Shuffle

Prologue 

The press always hated it when she wore brown. It wasn’t that it didn’t look smashing on her. It did. Oh, it did. Brown captured the hazel tint in her eyes, gave a glow to her skin, made her hair look slightly brighter, fresher, more alive. “But how are we supposed to write about it?” Ethelbald Candeloro would often say, speaking for all the reporters on the royalty beat. “We can write a smart sentence about a princess in an electric-blue suit with platinum buttons. And we can write a sweet story about a princess in a sea-green ball gown with pearl detailing. And we can go gaga about a princess in red. But what the hell are we supposed to write about a princess in brown?”

That’s how bronze became a chic fashion term during the height of her celebrity. But that is another story for another venue. I have not prepared a discussion on the princess’s influence on hemlines or hats or any other aspect of haute couture. I raise the subject now only because I want to start the story of Isabella Cordage on the unseasonably cool October day, all those years ago, when she agreed to become Her Royal Highness the Princess of Gallagher.

From that day forward, the world would always note what Isabella wore. So it seems I should mention what she wore that day, before it mattered so, before she had professional advisors and complaining photographers and the biting commentary of a nation of so-called journalists.

On that day, she wore a brown wool sweater, with a bright pink turtleneck that provided just a bit of color around her face. A wool skirt, which was also brown, barely reached her knees and below that she wore brown tights. It was a simple, unexceptional outfit that she wore an awful lot back then. It was comfortable and versatile and her mother told her the color looked great on her. So that was what she wore the morning she went for a walk in the gardens of Glassidy Castle with His Royal Highness the Prince of Gallagher, who was commonly known as Prince Raphael and whom she had called Rafie ever since they were quite young.

And he asked her to marry him. And she said yes.

She never wore that outfit again. For several years, in fact, she didn’t wear brown at all. People forget that. Her insistence on brown now, the press’s disdain for it — that has become part of her legend. In researching this book, I discovered that after the day of her engagement there was not a documented case of her wearing brown until five years into her marriage, on that infamous stormy morning … But now I’m getting hung up on fashion again. I apologize. I had merely wanted to mention that brown outfit she loved so much, the one she never wore again after accepting the proposal. Some people would read a lot into that. But not me. At least not yet. I never editorialize until the end. When you’ve seen all that I’ve seen and come to know the princess the way I’ve come to know her, you realize that things are not always the way they seem with her. Wait and see. That’s been my motto. Wait and see.

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