"We was Huguenot royalty", murmured my father as often as he had an audience.

He'd been a ship-welder for 20 years, when an on-site accident left him permanently disabled.

In their unbounded benevolence, the shipping company had paid for his operation, and had left him with a parting gift of £20,000 for his 20 years of 50-hour-a-7-day-week of ship-welding

My father, in his singular optimism regarded this as an act of kindness. 

Until a year later, realizing  that he'd never be able to weld again, he reflected on the pages of convoluted text that he'd marked with his signature.

"These bastards!" he exclaimed. 

Alas, he had realized that he'd signed a settlement contract.

He had soon found Brown Ale to be his friend, and drank his way through £5,000 of the £20,000 settlement money within weeks.

In the midst a Brown-Ale-binge he had found a like-minded female drinking buddy - and so the seed was sown...

Still a better love story than...no

In fact, my parents only stayed together because of the state-subsidies that came with his rapidly declining disability - which meant she'd not have to work to maintain her alcoholic lifestyle.

We weren't like others though. We were special. 

We were Huguenot royals that had been usurped.

For context, we lived in one of the 100 small, moldy and state-funded apartments in a 20 floor rectangular high rise. 

One of these:

But we were Huguenot royals. We were refined - not like the others.

We sipped our ale, where others slurped. And had salad with out beans on toast. Unlike the other plebs.

"In the 17th century. Our ancestor...Francesco di Huguenot...Yeah! He created the name! Huguenot!" my father had explained once, after several dozen bottles of brown ale.

"Anywhoo. BURP. Oops. This brown ale got me burpin'! Bloody 'ell! This bloody ache will never end! Bring another ale lad!" he had commanded. Of course, as always our ale cabin was well-stocked.

"Anyways, yeah Francesco, the noble bastard. We were royalty, signin' treaties and stuff. All diplomatic-like. Balls and fancy dances. "Courting" those proper noble birds. That's what they called it. Hehehe. Courtin'! SLURP. Ahh. Jesus Christ, I love me ale-"

"So what happened to us after?" I had asked innocently. His face had sunk sullenly.

"Those cheeky Germanic royals took our thrones. Made us sign contracts in a language we didn't understand! Bunch of fancy words and "clauses". What on Earth is a bloody clause??" he had questioned, with according gestures.

"They was all smilin' and lovely and all that. While they was screwin' us! Cheeky bastards, if I ever get me hands on Prince Harry, and that classless Kate Middleton. Bloody smilin' usurpers..." he had then murmured off into an agitated twitch.

About 15 minutes later he had continued:

"...And they had the nerve to give us 20,000 gold nuggets - that was the currency back in the day, gold nuggets -  yeah...bloody hell where was I?...Right! 20k nuggets, and then sent us off on some dusty boat to England! Swindler-land if you ask me! The cheeky bastards. We coulda lived it large. Balls'n'All. Ballets. Dances! Pork, beef, chicken. Hunting! Fox-catching. Skiing! Socials. All that prancy stuff! Look where we are now? Mouldy flat with a bunch of plebs. But remember, son, we are different. We are refined. We are  Huguenots!"

Perhaps the lore was ale-inspired. But I believed it, and somewhat still do.

Note: This is fiction.

#writing