Once upon a time, in a grand and ancient kingdom, a dashing but dim-witted prince named Theodore fell hopelessly in love with Lady Cassandra, a woman of common birth but boundless ambition. She was neither exceptionally beautiful nor particularly gifted, but she possessed one skill in abundance: the ability to convince others that she was destined for greatness.

Their romance was scandalous, a fairytale rewritten in modern ink. The newspapers declared them visionaries, revolutionaries who would dismantle the old order and forge a new one—on their own terms. Theodore, ever the willing pawn, abandoned his royal duties, his noble lineage, and the gilded halls of his forefathers to follow Cassandra into the unknown.

Together, they set forth into the world, armed with little more than their carefully curated grievances and a desperate need for attention. For a fleeting moment, they were the toast of high society. Lavish interviews, extravagant deals, standing ovations for empty words—Cassandra spun their exile as an act of courageous independence. Theodore, ever agreeable, nodded along as she spoke of their boundless potential.

But soon, the cracks began to show.

The world, once charmed by their defiance, began to notice a rather inconvenient truth: they had nothing to offer.

Cassandra’s promises of an empire built on “inspiration” yielded little more than trite speeches and a failed podcast. Theodore, free from the constraints of his birthright, found himself adrift, lost without a script, utterly useless outside the palace walls.

The audiences dwindled. The invitations ceased. The lucrative deals evaporated.

It was then that Cassandra devised her greatest scheme yet. “If the world has tired of our love story, darling,” she whispered to Theodore, “then we shall give them a tragedy.”

And so, they divorced.

Not bitterly, of course. No, it was a tale of heartbreak and unbearable sacrifice, the sort of thing that would sell books. Cassandra’s memoir, A Crown of Thorns, painted her as the noble outsider, burdened by an unworthy prince and shackled by tradition. Theodore, meanwhile, produced Broken Wings, a lament on his suffering at the hands of an unsympathetic world.

And, for a time, it worked. The book tours were grand, the talk shows indulgent, the headlines glowing with carefully crafted sorrow. Theodore, now penniless and without purpose, crawled back to the palace. He begged for forgiveness, for a place—any place—amongst his family. The kingdom, out of pity rather than affection, granted him a quiet corner to live out his days as a relic of what might have been.

But Cassandra, ever the strategist, knew their story was not yet finished.

Two years passed. The world had moved on, as it always does. The people had new heroes, new scandals, new distractions. Their books sat on the discount shelf, their interviews now recycled clickbait.

And so, they staged the ultimate reunion.

Love, they declared, could not be conquered. Their years apart had been agony. The world needed their story once more. Together, they were unstoppable.

The headlines roared. The cameras flashed. A second round of books was commissioned—Rekindled by Cassandra, Coming Home by Theodore. Talk shows were booked, magazine covers arranged. They reminisced on their shared pain, their unbreakable bond, and how, despite everything, they still believed in love.

The world, by now, had grown weary.

The whispers began.

“This again?”

“Why are they still talking?”

“Do they not realize their time has passed?”

But Cassandra and Theodore, blind to their own irrelevance, carried on, oblivious to the slow but inevitable truth: the world had stopped listening.

And thus, as the grand stage of history moved forward, they remained behind—two figures forever chasing the spotlight, unable to accept that it had long since dimmed.

The End.