Royal Babies: The Commoner While We're Waiting for Kate to Give Birth

There's been a lot about the impending birth of the new third in line to the British throne: the Duchess of Cambridge, the former Kate Middleton was due to give birth July 13, but didn't.  Probably a good thing because the British press reports that Prince William was out playing polo on Saturday.

But as the royal watchers wait with bated breath, I've been thinking about an American novel about a royal couple who have a very difficult time producing an heir.  The book is The Commoner by John Burnham Schwartz and the throne in question is the Chrysanthemum Throne of Japan.  It's not a novel I would have picked to read, but it was on the list for a book group I began leading last year: the previous leader had chosen it.

Not that it was hard going.  Told from the point of view of a young woman of good but not noble family who falls in love witht the Jap
anese crown prince, the novel is arresting and well-paced.  Schwartz seems to have done his homework assiduously:a little rummaging around on the Net reveals just how closely the story follows what happened to the current Empress Michiko. 

Schwartz gives us a great deal about Japanese royal politics as well as the Emperor's changing role since the end of World War II.  But the heart of the story is struggle of the narrator  to find a place in the court and--most importantly--to conceive an heir.  When she does and the baby is in effect taken away from her to be raised by courtiers, I imagine many readers will shed a tear or two.

The novel has  a certain fairy tale quality--after all, the commoner is seen from afar by the Crown Prince who persues her and wisks her away to a life in a castle. But the real unbelievable episode comes at the end.  That is when the narrator helps her daugher-in-law, another commoner, escape the oppression of royalty. Not very likely that would happen, it seems to me.

I haven't been able to find out if the book has been translated into Japanese, but I doubt it has.  Imagine what hackles would rise among the British Royal Family's friends  if a Japanese writer wrote a novel about Princess Diana and her unhappy life.

Or about Kate Middleton, who seems to be doing much better than her husband's mother did.