Kalistan

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Princess Regent Prepares for Retirement
Her Highness says she's ready to be done with public life
Luxon, Grand Duchy of Ananto
July 20, 5695


Her Highness, the Princess Regent Nicolette Ananto-Collins, with husband Sir Andrew Rohrbach in Kaliburg, this Spring

As Her Highness, the Princess Regent Nicolette Ananto-Collins enters the last two months of her Regency, she reflects on her time as Regent for the soon to be crowned sovereign, Her Imperial Majesty Empress Carolina II Ananto. She spoke with La Moda from her home in Luxon, where she has officially relocated, having moved completely out of Cliff House in Kaliburg. "I tried to make as few changes as I possibly could while I was the Regent," said Her Highness, the Princess Regent. "It was always my intention to leave the Empire as my brother and sister in law had left it when they died for their daughter, the rightful Empress of this Nation. It will very soon be her nation to change as she sees fit, as is her birthright. But it was never mine, nor did I hope anyone would have thought I intended it to be."

Her Highness visited with our reporter in the company of His Majesty, the King of Hutori, William James Steuart-Carmichael, who has been a guest of the Royal Family since soon after his accession to the Hutorian Throne while his grandfather governs the country as the Regent. "We have been happy to have His Majesty with us all this time, and he is doing exceptionally well here. We have spent the better part of the last few years ensuring that James attends school in the day, and then gets the opportunity to spend his afternoons with me as I finish up my day's activities. I have also been able to introduce the Minor King to the Chancellor, so he can see what she does. In September, he will move back to Kaliburg and shall stay with Her Imperial Majesty. Since he is 15 now, she will continue as his guardian and will be the perfect person for him to begin formal training under in preparation for his return to Hutori in a few years and his assumption of his own reign."

The Princess Regent was asked what she planned to do when her regency was over. "I've had more than my share of the capital for a while," she said with a smile. "I am a very private person, by my nature and much more of an introvert than I was when I was a kid. I grew to very much prefer the quiet life, where I can live free of a bunch of demands placed on me by people who can't do anything without me saying so. I have had a very privileged life. After I stopped surfing professionally, I found my real calling as a teacher: I got to teach surfing to about a dozen little girls each summer, and it was such a joy to see them stand on their boards for the first time, or catch their first little waves, or carve up the face a little. I had so much fun doing that and I don't think I am too old to go back to teaching, but we'll see. I have the rest of the season and then the winter to think about what I want to do. I'll be fifty next summer. And I haven't done nearly enough surfing while I was regent. I really got to get back in shape."

Her Highness said part of that regimen was holding to her sobriety, which is something she had to adopt when she took her niece in. "It was kind of against my will," she said with a smile. "I was smoking a lot of Dah when my brother died. It was a daily thing. I'd get up in the morning, blaze up, and then go surfing for a couple hours, and then I'd teach until mid afternoon, come back home, have a salad or something, burn a bowl, make some pasta for supper and spend the evening either hanging out with my husband or watching tv or something... I had to give all that up when I got Carolina... And to be honest with you, it had been so long since I had spent a whole day sober, it was kind of a bummer, but I also found that I felt a lot better after a while. And I got more stuff done, I started exercising more, and being more interested in what was going on around me. And I think I became a somewhat more interesting person." She said that even though her husband, Andrew Rohrbach is the Director of ODEN-K, he himself rarely uses drugs. "Since I became sober, I think Andrew and I have got a second chance at our marriage, and we plan on travelling more together when I am done with the regency. He's a very sweet man and I think I was a pretty boring wife, and so now I look forward to the next part of our lives together."

She said she also would like to take a cooking class. "I never really realized how bad a cook I am," she said. "I never really learned how to cook anything, and those around me were so polite about it that they basically ate whatever I fixed on the stove. I think Carolina was more honest, in her own way because I remember one time I came out of my bedroom and she was cooking something on the stove and I told her that she didn't need to cook anything, I was planning dinner already, and she smiled and told me that she just wanted to try a recipe. I was convinced that whatever she was going to make would be inedible, and I tried to take over and she just smiled, and said something like, No offence, Aunt Nicki, but I already know this will be better than whatever you are planning to make. So let me do it, and you can cook tomorrow if you want. And I'll be damned if she wasn't right. She explained to me that my food was food, properly speaking, but it either had too much seasoning in it, or the spices didn't go with the food they were in, or there was no flavor whatsoever. So, I started learning how to cook basic stuff with her and it was a lot of fun. And now I want to take a class and show her a thing or two."

The thing the Princess Regent looks forward most to is travelling. "Well, I am going to do it," she said. "I've already booked a flight for October 1 to Gaduridos with Andrew. We are going to go to Ciudad de Gadur. I have kind of been paralyzed of flying anywhere since I lost my brother and his family. But when I am done being the Regent and don't have to be responsible for keeping the nation afloat anymore, I am going to take the risk. They say that airplane transportation is far less dangerous than travel by car, but I would really like to return to Gaduri at last and October is such a wonderful time for a visit. We will stay in Vespiano with Lady Alvarez and her family for a couple weeks and just stare out at the ocean and relax and do absolutely nothing, turn the phones off, and just vanish from the earth for a while. It will be such a wonderful vacation. And then I also want to travel more in Seleya, and maybe even go back up to Hutori someday. That would be a real trip."

Over all, Her Highness said she feels that her retirement from the regency will open up a new chapter in her life. "I completely wasted much of the first half of my life in idleness," she said. "Part of that was losing my brother and sister in law, who were my best friends, but also I made a lot of really, I guess you might say, shortsighted, or maybe you might also say stupid personal choices that left me nothing but a bunch of hazy memories. I have the chance now to start over, and I think I am ready to take the step into a new life. I'll have my dear Andrew with me--together we really going to embrace everything there is in life, before we both in walkers and are playing cribbage all day with people at the old folks home like my mom does these days."

The Princess Regent thanked us for the interview, and then asked us to please excuse her. She and the Minor King William of Hutori were going up the coast to Sunset Beach this afternoon to catch some waves. And with that, the interview was over.

@LaModa