Write Something New Today: A Tale of Two Princes
Borrowed ancestors, rabbit holes, and finding stories in the everyday
Guess what’s in the bag?
I’ve been treasure hunting for stories — something I used to do a lot growing up in a small town that’s mostly made up of charity shops and flea markets. I’d spend hours sifting through other people’s cast off and cleared out things, but my favourites were always the photographs. Whole suitcases full of them — decades-old anonymous black and white pictures — sometimes personal, sometimes commemorative, sometimes postcards from exotic or mundane places, sometimes even love letters spanning oceans.
(Fun fact: When I was about 12, I won a £5 book voucher for a history research project after finding one such packet of letters in an antique shop that contained a years-long yearning exchange between a WWII soldier and his gal back home. My first ‘paid’ non-fiction work, I guess?)
And that, my friends, is free story real estate.
I’m a big fan (huge) of finding stories in the everyday. Weird local events. News reports. Super specific facts about stuff you’ll only find in the depths of Wikipedia. Chance encounters. And character studies from real life people whose identities you can (mostly) ethically steal…
I’ll show you how to do that last one in just a moment.
So, back to my bag of treasure. A few months ago, my kid started at a new school in a new town opposite an absolute gem of an antique shop. I have been doing my very best not to spend all my time and money in there every time I drop him off/pick him up, but the other day, just as I was passing, the shop owner just happened to be setting up a display of wicker baskets full to the brim of old photos and, well, I am only human.
Guys. I found some doozies. I’m not going to share them all just yet, as I think this could be a fun little series to eke out a few at a time, but I will give you a sneak peak of these two striking chaps:
I didn’t pay much attention to what was scrawled on the back at the time — my little goblin hands were too busy plucking out as many interesting photos as I could afford — but later I discovered that not only are they both princes, but they both have the same name. Almost as if they were fated to be found by a procrastinating writer, 150 years after having their picture taken.
Now, in general, I have little to zero interest in royal lineages of any sort, but I was immediately intrigued by this duo of long-dead dudes. I mean, just look at them:
The one on the left, looking so absolutely unimpressed at having his picture taken, with his awkwardly turned ankle and his coat tails shoved haphazardly through the arm of the chair — arms tightly crossed, face even crosser, and every fibre of him in defiance of the whole situation.
And the one on the right, leaning so winsomely on the back of his chair (like one of the cool kids), with his little bow tie and wavy coif; his lilywhite hands that’ve clearly never done a day’s work; his soft, pensive expression — this 90s-boy-band-Timothy-Chalamet-lookin’ motherfucker.
What a pair.
So who were they? And how do you make stories out of old photographs?
Well, first off, I deliberately did nothing more than just look and think about who they might be. How old they are in these pictures. How they felt when they were taken. What they were thinking. What kind of lives they led, where they led them, whomst they led them with. And what might lie in their future…
And beyond the subjects themselves, you gotta really look. And imagine. What materials and colours are hidden behind the monochrome? What sounds and smells couldn’t be captured by the camera? Was the photographer smoking a cigar? Were there street vendors yelling outside? Was music playing? Did the chair creak?
I like to note down these first instincts before I’ve had the chance to colour my opinion with any further context. Kinda like reading the book before you watch the film adaptation. Also, for the most part, when you come across personal photographs, chances are you won’t have much tangible info to go on beyond a sense of time and place anyhow. So you have to make the best of what you’ve got. But for these guys, the moment I flipped over the pictures and read the word ‘prince’ on each, I had some solid leads, and it was time to sleuth.
Some context:
The photos were taken in 1870 by two separate London portrait studios run by two pairs of brothers who were renowned for photographing ‘culturally significant’ notables during the Victorian era.
The guy on the left? Louis (Ludwig) IV, Grand Duke of Hesse, and Queen Victoria’s son-in-law.
The guy on the right? Louis-Napoléon (ahem, that’s Napoléon Eugène Louis Jean Joseph Bonaparte to you), Prince Imperial of France, son of Napoléon III (not the one you’re thinking of, but closely related).
And, after a little light googling (ok, a few hours of hyperfixation), I discovered a whole lot more…
German Louis’ pic was taken seven years before he became Grand Duke, and eight years after he married Queen Vic’s second daughter, Alice — who, as it turns out, was much more interesting than him…
According to Wiki:
“Princess Alice's interest in social services, scientific development, hands-on child-rearing, charity and intellectual stimulation were not shared by Louis who, although dutiful and benevolent, was bluff in manner and conventional in his pursuits.”
Some excellent character description there, if ever I saw it. Instantly want to know what their breakfast discussions were like. Or how their arranged marriage fared when they were clearly so opposite in nature.
Tragically, the couple lost their youngest son ‘Frittie’ three years after this photo was taken, after the toddler accidentally fell out of a window and died due to complications connected to the infamously royal condition of haemophilia.
In a very different and infamous tragedy, their daughter ‘Alix’ later married the last Tsar of Russia (yes, that one), was super into supervillain mystic Rasputin (yeah, that one), and was the mother of the long-lost Princess Anastasia (yup, that one). And if you don’t know how this story ends, then I won’t spoil it for you…
But Louis didn’t live to see all that. Because more tragedy happened in between — the duke and most of his family contracted diphtheria, and he lost his youngest daughter and his wife Alice to the disease. He then attempted to marry a countess who was scandalously below his station, but the marriage was staunchly opposed by his in-laws and annulled three months later. Was this his one chance at a love-match? Who knows. But fictional speculation is free.
Poor Louis raised his remaining five children alone (or, y’know, probably with a whole buttload of servants) until he died of a heart attack at the age of 54.
Lil’ French Louis’ pic was taken at the fresh-faced age of 14, after his dad got deposed and the family were exiled to England. Strong start. Three years later, his old man died and Louis Jr was proclaimed Napoléon IV by the Bonapartist faction, who had high hopes of him reinstating the French Empire.
But instead of doing that, Louis trained as a British Army officer, got top marks in riding and fencing, and persuaded them to let him go fight in the Anglo-Zulu War. However, after ‘scornfully’ disregarding attempts to ensure his safety, he led a scouting party deep into Zululand and almost immediately got himself killed, aged 23.
I’ll let you search it up if you want to, but his death was pretty brutal and kinda cinematic, and his body was recovered naked, wearing only a locket containing a picture of his mother.
His death sparked a host of dramatic rumours, including suspicions that he’d been deliberately bumped off by either the British, the French republicans, the Freemasons, or even Queen Victoria herself, while the Zulus later admitted they probably wouldn’t have killed him if they’d known who he was. Oops.
His ‘legacy’ (?) has since been kinda over-romanticised in literature, art, and even science — in 1998 an asteroid moon was named after him, ‘The Petit-Prince’, as it orbits another asteroid named after his dear mama, Eugenia.
Aaaaaand, uh, that’s kinda it for Louis-Nap. Although if you go to the National Gallery website you can find a whole bunch of other portraits that offer more snippets of his short life — from a lil kid in bloomers to a waifish adolescent, to his first attempts at a moustache and a dashing pose in his military uniform. A whole catalogue of photos to get lost in.
Are you addicted to this shit yet?
Because by this point I was fully down the research rabbit hole, and already had about two dozen new ideas buzzing about my head.
And it wasn’t that I necessarily wanted to write about these exact people and their actual lives.
Maybe I want to write about someone who looks like French Louis, or talks the way I think he might have talked.
Maybe I want to write about someone like effervescent Alice, clashing with her ‘bluff’ and ‘conservative’ husband.
Maybe I want to tell a story about an ill-fated naive young soldier, way out of his depth.
Maybe I want to tell a story about a haemophiliac.
Maybe I want to tell a story about a photographer of ‘notable and culturally significant clientele’.
Maybe I want to tell a story about someone who religiously collects these commemorative portraits.
Maybe these pictures have inspired you to write about something, too.
Well, go on then.
Take them, they’re your princes now.
WRITING EXERCISE: Steal from the past
Write something new today.
Take my flea market princes and spin some new tales.
Go treasure hunting in your local charity/thrift/antique shop and find a hoard of photographic treasure. Or search out your own family albums and do a little genealogy.
Y’know, the internet is a pretty cool place for this stuff, too. Resources like Babel Colour and Dead Fred could keep you writing for centuries.
And once you have your pics, try these story starters:
Start with a descriptive warm-up: the people, the place, the time of day, the sensory details, the poses, the weather, the objects in the background.
Then add another layer or two — things out of frame. What does the photographer say to make their subject smile? What happens just after the shutter clicks? What can’t we see, hear, smell, feel, taste through the picture? Whose idea was it to take the photo? Who do they give it to, afterwards?
Next: who are these people? Can you track down or make up a short biography for them, like the ones above? Parentage, childhood, relationships, ambitions, hopes, dreams, successes, fatal mistakes? Who do they love? Who do they fight with? Who do they lose?
And can you find a point of conflict in there, somewhere? A moment where their life takes a turn. Or perhaps it’s this very moment, captured by the camera lens. A moment where things are never the same again…
A few things to do with your stolen stories:
Tell me all about your photographic discoveries!
Send me your story drafts for eager-eyed feedback, editing, and writerly advice »
Learn how to craft your picture into a piece of flash fiction with my Smash Your Flash course »
Join Sub Club for a weekly list of curated places to submit your stories (thanks
).Put a whole string of photo-based stories together and make it a collection.
And keep diving for treasure whenever you pass a flea market. ‘Cause there be tall tales in those snippets of history…
Whatever you do — thanks for reading, and happy writing!
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:)
Great post. I love writing about old photos. In fact, my new novel is about a woman who does this during lockdown, and gradually gets obsessed with the characters she’s made up. Sometimes it’s hard to know where the pictures come from and who they are. Looks like you struck lucky with some famous people. Ali
Ah, now I know why that one “nobody knows who it is” photo showed up in our family’s envelope of pictures. And why my sisters put it in my pile. (Give it to Denna. She’ll take anything.”) I’m supposed to imagine a story, craft the characters and have fun with it. I just hope dear great-aunt Florence doesn’t pop out of her grave and grab my throat!