The Waterloo Letters Leak

The Waterloo Letters Leak is the novel's central catastrophe, the moment when the private world that First Son Alexander Gabriel Claremont-Diaz and Prince Henry George Edward James Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor had built in secret is violently pried open and sold to the world. Named for a reference to the Waterloo Vase in the Buckingham Palace Gardens that appears in one of Henry's emails, the leak consists of stolen email transcripts and surveillance photographs published by the British tabloid the Daily Mail. The scandal erupts on September 27, 2020, less than two months before the United States votes on President Ellen Claremont's second term, and it is not an accident of fate but a calculated act of political warfare: Senator Jeffrey Richards's campaign hired a firm that hired the hackers who breached the White House's private email server and the photographers who captured the couple on camera, then bought the material through a third party and resold it to the tabloid. The leak is thus both a gross violation of personal privacy and a deliberate attempt to induce a sex scandal to win a presidential race.

The Moment of Exposure

The scandal breaks while Alex is in a meeting with his sister June Catalina June Claremont-Diaz and Nora Holleran, who has detailed agendas for each of them, bullet-pointed and double-sided, for an upcoming voter registration drive in Cedar Rapids. Nora's phone pings with a notification, and her face is taken over with a furious gasp as she reads a CNN push notification: leaked surveillance footage shows Prince Henry at a DNC hotel. Alex's own phone buzzes in his lap with the same breaking news, and he realizes that an anonymous source has obtained the security camera footage from the lobby of the Beekman hotel from the night of the Democratic National Committee event. The initial shock of the surveillance footage is only the beginning. When Alex types his own name into Google, his stomach drops through the floor as he reads a cascade of headlines: BREAKING: PHOTOS REVEAL ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PRINCE HENRY AND ALEX CLAREMONT-DIAZ, OMFG: FSOTUS AND PRINCE HENRY—TOTALLY DOING IT, THE ORAL OFFICE: READ FSOTUS'S STEAMY EMAILS TO PRINCE HENRY, and ROYAL FAMILY DECLINES TO COMMENT ON REPORTS OF PRINCE HENRY'S RELATIONSHIP WITH FIRST SON. A bubble of hysterical laughter emerges from his throat as he confronts the scale of the disaster.

The Daily Mail's Publication

The Daily Mail's cover splashes the headline QUEEN HENRY! in gigantic letters, with the subheading INSIDE THE PRINCE'S GAY AFFAIR WITH THE FIRST SON OF THE UNITED STATES. The cover is dominated by a blown-up photograph of what is undeniably Alex and Henry kissing in the back seat of a car behind a cafe, apparently shot with a long-range lens through the windshield. Alex had remembered the tinted windows but forgotten about the windshield. Two smaller photos are inset on the bottom of the page: one of the shots of them on the Beekman's elevator and a photo of them side by side at Wimbledon, with Alex whispering something in Henry's ear while Henry smiles a soft, private smile. Inside the magazine, on the second page, Alex finds printed and annotated excerpts of their emails, one labeled PRINCE HENRY: SECRET POET? It begins with a line Alex has read about a thousand times: "Should I tell you that when we're apart, your body comes back to me in dreams..." That line was his own, and seeing it in print feels obscene. He spiked the magazine at the floor and shouted, wondering how the hell they got these. The full email transcripts are subsequently uploaded to WikiLeaks under the moniker "The Waterloo Letters," and the correspondence is revealed to have been lifted from a private email server used by residents of the White House.

The Political and Institutional Response

The leak triggers an immediate crisis response across two governments. Zahra Bankston, the White House deputy chief of staff, slams on the light in Alex's bedroom with a steely expression of rage barely concealing sheer terror, and declares Alex is on communications lockdown. She snatches his phone out of his hand and shoves it down the front of her blouse, which has been buttoned wrong in her rush, then dumps an armload of magazines onto his bedspread. She tells him the president is sitting down with as many members of the Office of Communications as could be dragged out of bed at three in the morning, and that it is about to be gay DEFCON five in the administration. The White House goes silent, with no official statement from the First Son. Press Secretary Davis Sutherland issues a brief prepared statement asking for patience and understanding from the American people as the First Family handles this very private matter. The Washington Post reports that security experts within the FBI and the Claremont administration are scrambling to find the sources that provided the tabloid with evidence of the affair. Senator Richards seizes the moment at a press conference, declaring himself extremely concerned about the private email server and demanding to know what kind of information was being disseminated on it, insisting that American voters have a right to know everything else for which the president's server may have been used. Sources close to the administration insist the server is similar to the one set up during President George W. Bush's administration and used only for communication within the White House about day-to-day operations and personal correspondence. First rounds of examination of the Waterloo Letters by experts have yet to reveal any evidence of classified information or otherwise compromising content outside of the nature of the First Son's relationship with Prince Henry. For five endless, unbearable hours, Alex is shuffled from room to room in the West Wing, meeting with what seems to be every strategist, press staffer, and crisis manager his mother's administration has to offer.

The Conspiracy Revealed

The true origin of the leak is uncovered not by the FBI but by Nora Holleran, who has been digging through financial records. She reveals to Alex that Richards outed him: as soon as Alex left the campaign, Richards hired a firm that hired the hackers who got the surveillance tapes from the Beekman. The same firm hired the photographers who followed Alex and the hackers who breached the White House server, and then Richards hired another third party to buy everything and resell it to the Daily Mail. Nora explains that there are pay stubs, invoices, and requests of service, all through back channels and go-between firms and fake names, but there is a digital paper trail for everything, enough for a federal investigation which could subpoena the financial stuff. She summarizes the enormity of the crime: having private contractors surveil a member of the First Family and infiltrate White House security to try to induce a sex scandal to win a presidential race. Nora delivers this revelation while flying on nine Red Bulls and a weed gummy she ate to level back out, sitting down heavily after June asks her to stop. The conspiracy transforms the leak from a personal tragedy into a federal crime and a campaign weapon, exposing Richards's willingness to destroy lives for electoral gain.

The Personal Aftermath and the Road to Coming Out

The leak forces the couple's hand. Alex flies to London and finds Henry not at Kensington Palace but in the music room on the second floor, slumped on a settee with a bottle of brandy, smiling weakly and greeting Alex with a Star Wars reference: "Bit short for a stormtrooper." It is Beatrice Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor who answers the door, brandishing a guitar over her shoulder, ready to attack who she thought was Philip, and she scoops Alex into a surprisingly bone-crushing hug, telling him she was about to come get him herself. The scandal also brings Henry's mother, Princess Catherine, into the open. When Henry introduces Alex to her, he says, "Mum, this is Alex," and adds, as if it's not obvious, "my boyfriend." She pulls Alex toward her and kisses his cheek, thanking him for what he has done for her son. The leak, which was meant to destroy them, instead forces the public acknowledgment of their relationship. Ellen Claremont, after asking Alex if he truly loves Henry and receiving a firm yes, exhales slowly and grins a small, secret grin, the crooked, unflattering one she never uses in public, the one he knows best from when he was a kid around her knees in a small kitchen in Travis County, and says, "Then, fuck it." The scandal that was designed to end the Claremont campaign becomes the occasion for the First Son's public coming-out and, ultimately, for the family's defiant embrace of who Alex is. On election night, November 3, 2020, Henry stands hesitantly in the wings, always reluctant to step on anyone's moment, but Alex waves him onto the stage, declaring that Henry is family, part of it all now, headlines and oil paintings and pages in the Library of Congress, etched right alongside, and part of them, goddamn forever. The Waterloo Letters Leak, intended as the weapon that would destroy the First Family, instead becomes the crucible in which their love is publicly forged and vindicated.