Once she had got the Beaver trimmed in level flight and headed in the right direction she spent ten minutes crying. Not that she was particularly sad. It was just that during important transitions you had to get this out of your system, and she hadn’t performed that task yet. The Dutch didn’t do formal coronations and so Lotte had become the new queen in a basically secular ceremony in Amsterdam’s Nieuwe Kerk, which was a church only in name. No crown had been placed on her head. They didn’t even have a crown. In attendance had been everyone who mattered in the Netherlands as well as a smattering of foreign royalty and international diplomats. Very convenient for Saskia who’d been able to exchange pleasantries with, and say goodbye to, many people in very little time. But when you had abdicated, you needed to get out of the country. To make a clean break and clear the stage for your successor. So after a quick change of clothes in the adjoining Royal Palace—as of ten minutes ago, her daughter’s official Amsterdam residence—Saskia had walked down to the IJ, jostling and dodging through pedestrian traffic like a private citizen, and climbed into the waiting plane and simply flown away.