The Crown Prince's Double

Summary

In the velvet-lined corridors of a crumbling Ruritanian fantasy, Prince Oscar—his blood bluer than glacier melt yet his pulse syncopated to ragtime—skates across gilded parquet toward a dynastic altar, betrothed to a porcelain princess whose retinue carries more artillery than dowry. A revolutionary spark, sulfurous and sudden, torches the betrothal; the princess flees, tiaras clattering like shell casings, and Oscar, unshackled, dives head-first into Soho’s gas-lit demimonde where a burlesque Venus twirls tassels of moral ambiguity. Enter King Gustave, patriarchal thundercloud, who exiles his heir to Manhattan’s iron lattice, hoping Atlantic brine will scrub the perfume of actress from princely pores. Instead, Oscar collides with Isabelle Hart—Brooklyn accent sharp as cracked crystal, laughter caffeinated—and marries her in a candle-lit municipal hiccup, thus detonating continental scandal. The king retaliates by dispatching Baron Hagar, a monocled bloodhound whose boots echo with ancestral obedience, to annul the mésalliance and drag the truant prince home. Flight, disguise, and the fortuitous discovery of Barry Lawrence—an out-of-work clerk whose jawline mirrors royal bone structure—set the stage for a comic danse macabre. A thousand dollars buys Barry the role of decoy, but when Shirley Rives, Barry’s heart-spangled sweetheart, is mistaken for the princess-in-hiding, Oscar steps from the shadows, renounces ermine and orb, and swears fealty to star-spangled possibility.

Synopsis

Prince Oscar of Ostrau, about to marry a princess from a neighboring country to please his father, King Gustave, is saved from that fate when an uprising causes the princess to leave. After Prince Oscar indulges in a dalliance with a burlesque actress in London, England, King Gustave arranges for his American friend, Peter Hart, to take Oscar to the U.S., where Oscar marries Peter's sister, Isabelle. The wedding news, coming as the king returns to the throne, causes him to send his chief of police, Baron Hagar, to have the marriage annulled and return the prince home. After Peter, Isabelle, and Oscar escape from the baron, they discover an unemployed clerk, Barry Lawrence, who looks just like Oscar. They give him $1,000 to lead the baron off their trail, but when Barry's sweetheart, Shirley Rives, thought to be Isabelle, is endangered, Oscar reveals himself to the baron and refuses to return. He then renounces his claim to the throne and becomes an American citizen.