A palace can feel quite cosy if you share it with someone you love. Is this a) the tagline for The Crown on Netflix or b) something Prince Edward says in The Princess Switch: Switched Again, a sequel to The Princess Switch.
It is the latter. Prince Edward is a royal from Belgravia. According to a map shown briefly in a related film, A Christmas Prince (I do my research), Belgravia is a Balkan nation, though everyone living there has English accents, English class deference and, as my detail-oriented wife noted, English plugs on their appliances. Unusually, the people of Belgravia subsist entirely on Christmas-themed industries tinsel, Christmas trees, candy cane, sleigh rides and magical meddling old men who turn up from to time as deus ex machinas to propel the plot.
Prince Edward is now married to our heroine Stacy (Vanessa Hudgens) who first appeared in the original Princess Switch as a plucky baker from the United States, sent to this European hellhole to compete in Belgravias version of Bake Off. She was, it turns out, the spitting image of Princess Margaret (Vanessa Hudgens), Edwards fiancee from the first film.
In that film, they switch lives as a jape and do so without somehow triggering a constitutional crisis. By the end of their escapades, they are firm friends. We are not so different, you and I, Princess Margaret seemed to say. For though I am of royal birth and you are a commoner from the colonies, are we not both, in a very real way, Vanessa Hudgens?
I shouldnt be surprised that Santa Claus is a part of their freakish menage. These people are deranged with Christmas
Yes, we all dream of a world in which Vanessa Hudgens can live in harmony with herself, so understandably this was a big hit for Netflix. At no point is it suggested that Stacy and Margaret are actually related, by the way, even though its not uncommon for royals to, and I quote a history graduate I know, go riding all over the place. No, instead their resemblance is just presented as the sort of cosmic coincidence that the simple peasants of Belgravia just accept, like absolute monarchy, subsistence agriculture and rickets from eating nothing but candy cane.
