Waterloo Vase

The Waterloo Vase is a monumental neoclassical vase standing in the Buckingham Palace Gardens, a relic of British imperial grandeur that, in the course of the novel, is transformed into something far more private and precious. It is first encountered through Prince Henry's own account of his inner life, in which he describes his method of coping with grief by mentally sorting his memories into the rooms of Buckingham Palace. The vase becomes the unlikely repository for the single most important memory he possesses: the first time he saw Alex Claremont-Diaz, in Rio, when Alex was talking with Nora Holleran and June Catalina June Claremont-Diaz, happy and animated and fully alive. Henry pressed that memory into the leaves of a silver maple and recited it to the Waterloo Vase, because, as he puts it, it did not fit in any rooms. The vase, a fixture of the palace grounds, thus becomes a confessional — a silent witness to a love that could not yet be spoken aloud, a place where Henry could entrust the memory of the man who would later set him on fire.

The Vase as a Vessel for Memory

Henry's description of the vase is inseparable from his larger system of coping with grief. He explains that memories are difficult for him, that grief takes an entire life and makes it painful to look back upon, and that he had to invent an entirely new system to manage the pain. He sorted his memories into the dark, dusty rooms of Buckingham Palace: the night he visited his sister Beatrice Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor in rehab and begged her to take it seriously went into a room with pink peonies on the wallpaper and a golden harp in the center of the floor; his first sexual encounter, with one of his brother's mates from university when he was seventeen, was shoved into the smallest, most cramped little broom cupboard he could muster; his father's last night — the slack face, the smell of his hands, the fever, the waiting and waiting and terrible waiting and the even worse not-waiting anymore — was locked in the biggest room, a ballroom, wide open and dark, with windows drawn and covered. But the first time he saw Alex did not fit in any of these rooms. He took it down to the gardens and pressed it into the leaves of a silver maple, reciting it to the Waterloo Vase. The vase, unlike the rooms of the palace, was open to the sky, a place where a memory too large and too bright for the dark interior could be kept safe. It is a striking inversion: the vase, a monument to a military victory, becomes the keeper of a memory of love at first sight, of a man who was not yet a president's son but who was not afraid, with a yellow ipê-amarelo in his pocket.

The Vase as Namesake of the Scandal

The Waterloo Vase's second and more public role comes when the leaked email correspondence between Alex and Henry is published by the Daily Mail and uploaded to WikiLeaks under the moniker "The Waterloo Letters." The name is seemingly drawn from a reference to the Waterloo Vase in the Buckingham Palace Gardens in one email composed by Henry. The scandal, which breaks on September 27, 2020, reveals that Alex has been involved romantically and sexually with Henry since at least February of that year, according to emails and photographs obtained by the paper. The full email transcripts are uploaded to WikiLeaks, and the correspondence continues regularly up to the Sunday night before the leak, appearing to have been lifted from a private email server used by residents of the White House. The name of the vase, once a private symbol of Henry's most cherished memory, is thus appropriated by the scandal that threatens to destroy the relationship it once sheltered. The irony is sharp: the very object that held Henry's secret love in confidence becomes the label under which that love is exposed to the world. The vase, which had been a place of refuge for a memory, becomes the namesake of a public reckoning.

The Vase and the Gift of the Signet Ring

The Waterloo Vase also stands in implicit contrast to another object of deep significance in the lovers' story: Henry's signet ring. When Henry charters a private plane to get Alex back home, at the airstrip with the wind whipping his hair across his forehead, Henry fishes inside his jacket for something and presses something small and heavy into Alex's palm. He removes his hand and there, sitting in the center of Alex's callused palm, is the signet ring. "Keep it," Henry tells him. "I'm sick of wearing it." The ring, a symbol of the old blood kept in perpetuity within the walls of the palace, is given away as a token of certainty — "I want you to know, I'm sure. A thousand percent." The vase, by contrast, is not given away; it remains fixed in the palace gardens, a permanent fixture of the world Henry cannot leave. The ring travels with Alex, a portable token of their bond, while the vase stays behind, rooted in the very ground of Henry's confinement. Together they mark the two poles of the lovers' material world: the object that can be carried away and the object that must be left behind, the gift that seals a promise and the monument that keeps a secret.

The Vase and the Future of the Foundation

The vase's significance is further deepened by the trajectory of Henry's charitable work, which moves from the national to the global. Henry reveals that he and his mother, Princess Catherine, agreed the foundation should not just be national, that there was work to be done all over the world, and that he specifically wanted to focus on homeless queer youth. Percy Okonjo signed all the Okonjo Foundation youth shelters over to the effort, making Henry the proud father of four worldwide soon-to-be shelters for disenfranchised queer teenagers, including one in Brooklyn. The vase, a monument to a British victory over France, thus stands at the center of a story that ends with a prince of the British monarchy dedicating himself to sheltering queer youth across the globe — a quiet repudiation of the imperial legacy the vase represents. The memory Henry pressed into the vase's leaves, of a man who was not afraid, finds its fulfillment in a life devoted to making others less afraid. The vase, which once held a secret too precious for any room, becomes the silent anchor of a love that ultimately refuses to remain hidden.