He took the opportunity to skim through the last twenty-four hours’ work-related message traffic. Until half an hour ago, the biggest concern on his mind had been how to manage a wave of speculation and gossip that was starting to build around the whereabouts and activities of the queen during the last week. Going out to look at the fallen branch would have served the same purpose as displaying a photograph of a kidnapping victim holding up today’s newspaper. What the queen was doing right now was much better than that. They were going to win this news cycle. The livid royal-haters and creepy royal-stans flourished when nothing was happening and they had nothing to latch on to besides their own obsessions. This would silence them for perhaps three days, long enough for Queen Frederika’s weeklong Texas absence to be washed out of the nation’s attention span. Then Willem would have to think up something else. It would be comparatively easy since the queen’s Budget Day speech to the States General was coming up soon. This was a lot of work but was something of a self-licking ice cream cone by this point. There would be a lot of articles about the fancy hats that ladies would wear to the event. There would be a stink about the queen’s horse-drawn carriage, which was decorated with ancient, stereotypical paintings of colonized people.