Lily…

  Had not foreseen this!

  Nor had her ghosts!

  Although she was chosen to represent the Friendly Commonwealth of Wisconsin…

  She wasn’t a native Wisconsinite!

  However…

  However!

  Sophie’s parents were the Duke and Duchess Emeritus of Bourbon!

  As experienced nobles of the Glorious Sun Kingdom of France…

  They totally saw this coming!

  They already had a parlor ready, with a big table.

  On one side of the table sat Duchess and Birthday Girl Sophie, her parents, Mimi, and the Queen herself!

  On the other side of the table sat the Revolutionary Council: Lionel the Baker, Gilbert the Marquis of Lafayette, General Napoleon, and Max Robesy-P.

  And, on a third side of the table, in a neutral and Friendly position…

  Lily!

  And her Mama, and Mr. Cat!

  And, invisibly…

  Her ghostly advisors!

  Ray Croc was taking this super seriously!

  Unless the Revolution ended, they couldn’t start opening franchises…

  Unless the Revolution ended, they couldn’t buy wheat for a reasonable price!

  He had a lot riding on this meeting!

  Well, Lily had a lot riding on this meeting…

  “Uh, welcome everybody! Let’s all stay Friendly and end the Revolution as fast as possible… Please and thank you, Mister Gods and Misses Goddesses!” Lily said.

  That’s right!

  She opened with a prayer!

  “Indeed, let’s end this Revolution nonsense as fast as possible, and get Mimi more Friendly Fries!” the Queen added.

  Sophie and her parents nodded and folded their hands and said a short prayer, themselves.

  Mimi…

  Yawned!

  That made Mr. Cat yawn!

  It was distractingly cute!

  But, on the other side of the negotiating table…

  The Revolutionary Council was frowning!

  “For the record,” Gilbert said, “it was the Queen who started the Revolution with her tyranny.”

  He was playing the blame game!

  “No I didn’t, it was the bakers who started it by refusing to bake any more cakes!”

  Queen Marie joined in!

  “It was super cap, right in the middle of party season! There was like, six, seven different parties where the cakes were late or never arrived at all! Big sus! Much treason!”

  Queen Marie was sixteen years old!

  It almost made one wonder if it was a good idea for sixteen year olds to be Queens of entire countries…

  Not Lily though!

  She was an emancipated businesslady with a bunch of awards!

  And she was half the Queen’s age!

  Ghostly Duke rolled his eyes.

  “Mrow!” said Mimi, and she put a paw on the Queen’s arm, next to her on the table. “Marie, watch your tongue…”

  “Oh my!”

  Marie covered her mouth with a fan, and blushed a little!

  She was trying to control her generational tendencies…

  It was hard, no cap!

  Still, Baker Lionel responded to the charge!

  “That wasn’t treason! You were throwing too many parties! We bakers can only bake so many cakes, and we also have standing orders for bread, for the markets! If we don’t bake enough bread, the people will go hungry…

  Now, you might expect that Queen Marie would say it here!

  The famous line: ‘Then let them eat cake!’

  But she was too wise and brave for that!

  Instead…

  She explained her side of the story!

  “Look, real talk.”

  Marie glanced at Mimi, who rolled her eyes and mewed for her to continue.

  “Real talk,” Marie continued, “how do you think any governing actually gets done in a Kingdom like the Glorious Sun Kingdom of France?”

  At this, the Revolutionaries tilted their heads in confusion!

  So did Lily!

  The nobles at the table, Gilbert, Sophie, and her parents, on the other hand, listened with knowing expressions.

  “We decide everything at parties! Duh! We don’t have a parliament or a congress or a million councils and bureaus pretending to run everything. We govern in the most ancient tradition of deciding everything at parties and in backroom deals!”

  The young queen gestured grandly at the very room they were in!

  “This is a backroom! We’re making a deal! At a party! Come on!”

  Lily…

  Was shocked!

  “Whoa, so it’s true…” Ghostly Duke muttered!

  The other three ghosts merely rubbed their chins. “So is that why parties are so important? I thought they were just about free food…”

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  Marie continued to lay down the law!

  “So we’re here, we’re going to make a deal, we’re going to come out, announce the decision, I’m still going to be the Queen, everyone’s going to be reassured that order has been maintained and nothing crazy is happening, and everyone will eat cake!”

  She narrowed her eyes and glared at the troublesome Revolutionaries.

  “The cake is critical to that! It distracts people if they’re not happy with the decision, and they go home full of cake and when they wake up in the morning they mainly remember the nice party and yummy food, and forget about taxes or infrastructure projects or political appointments!”

  Marie opened her fan just to snap it shut again with a loud sound!

  “Your job,” she pointed her fan at Lionel, the biggest and most famous baker in all of France, “is to bake as much cake as we need! If you can’t bake enough cake and bread, then train more bakers, and make more bakeries!”

  The Queen was on a scolding streak!

  “Marquis!”

  Gilbert jumped, and straightened up.

  “If you don’t like how we do things in France, you can move to Texas!”

  “The Great and Everlasting Free State of Texas,” Lily said.

  “Whatever! If you want freedom so much, go have it! Go spend all day arguing and getting nothing done to the point the capital city doesn’t even have paved roads, and all the places have silly names like Bandit’s Hideaway!”

  The Queen pressed, but Gilbert…

  The Marquis…

  Pushed back!

  “Marie! The people of France deserve better than a tyrant! They deserve to have rights, and deserve a government that won’t boss them around!”

  Sophie looked nervous, her head turning back and forth between the Queen and the Marquis, but her parents were helping her!

  “Just keep a calm expression, don’t worry… There’ll be cake afterwards, just pretend like you know what you’re doing, like your friend Lily…”

  Lily…

  Had a stern expression on her face!

  “Whoa whoa, let’s slow down a second!” she said. “We need to stay friendly, and focus on the important thing.”

  Resuming wheat exports!

  She wasn’t on the same page at all!

  Ghostly Ray Croc nodded with a satisfied smile on his face, invisibly.

  He was proud of Lily!

  Still…

  They were at an impasse!

  And two of those at the table shared a look.

  Mr. Cat, and…

  Lily’s Mama!

  Sally raised a hand, and in a Friendly way, everyone was quiet and listened to her speak!

  “Look, why can’t you just agree to a rule that the Queen can have up to a certain amount of cakes at a time? And the Queen can promise not to order more than that!”

  Reasonable!

  Perhaps…

  Too reasonable for France!

  “The Queen of France cannot be limited!” Queen Marie declared.

  Imagine only having forty cakes?

  Oh, the horror!

  And Gilbert…

  Also refused!

  “No, the people of France need not compromise with a tyrant! For, you see, the Revolution controls the Army, the Police, and the Food Supply! We have all the power here! The Queen simply needs to step down, and implement a republic with universal rights for everyone like I wrote in my book…”

  A little girl narrowed her eyes.

  It was Sophie!

  “Universal rights for boys and girls, right?”

  There was a menacing rumble as the little Duchess came into her own!

  “Huh?”

  The Queen made a confused sound!

  “Rights? Huh? What’re those? And why wouldn’t girls have them, too?”

  As the Queen, she didn’t recognize the concept of rights!

  As a young woman, she was confused why boys would have them, and not girls!

  As a member of her generation, she hadn’t read the book!

  Not even a summary!

  “Mimi, what’s this book about?”

  “I don’t know, Marie. I haven’t read it either. It looked boring.”

  Gilbert was shocked!

  “I sent you a copy, with the list of demands for the Revolution…”

  But the Queen scoffed!

  “Pfft, reading? Yeah right…”

  The Queen had more important things to do, like fawn over Mimi, or dance!

  While the generation gap made itself plain, Lily was starting to realize…

  Uh oh!

  The Queen might be in trouble!

  And so was Lily!

  Lily needed their wheat!

  And the Army and Police sounded pretty important, too!

  If the Revolution had all that, what did the Queen have…?

  Whisper whisper

  “Sophie!” Lily whispered.

  “What is it, Lily?” Sophie whispered back while the Queen and Marquis argued.

  “If the Revolution has the food, the army, and the police, what does the Queen have?”

  “She’s really good at throwing parties! She picks great music, and comes up with new dances, and, uh… I guess tradition?”

  Lily looked up at Sophie’s parents, and they nodded.

  Lily leaned back in her seat.

  She was nervous!

  She started praying!

  Dear Mister Gods and Goddesses, help! I don’t know what to do!

  But, up in heaven…

  Uzume and the God of Business were already celebrating!

  “Heh, it’s a fait accompli…” Uzume chuckled, using some Frenchy words!

  “Nothing personnel…” said the God of Business.

  Homer even stopped his ceremony to look over and roll his eyes!

  “Personal isn’t really a French word, you know… And it has a different meaning than personnel...”

  The God of Literature would know all about that!

  “You’re just trying to pronounce it Frenchy…”

  “It doesn’t matter!” the God of Business declared! “Lily’s already got this in the bag!”

  Uzume giggled, and…

  “Guys! I got her! I caught her blessing Lily a little while ago and tracked her down!”

  It was Sarah, the Goddess of Finding!

  She was the number one Goddess at hide and seek!

  She brought over a cage, and inside was a sneaky fox!

  “Tricksy!”

  “You caught him!”

  “Good job, Sarah! Did you get him in time?”

  Sadly, Sarah shook her head.

  “No… he’s been up to all kinds of mischief!”

  Tricksy, the God of Tricks and Trials, giggled from inside the cage.

  That little rascal!

  Connie and Blyde!

  The Dairy Cow Strike!

  The French Revolution!

  And lots more!

  He’d been behind the scenes, moving pieces around, setting up problems!

  Well, just a little.

  Sometimes bad things just happen, and it’s nobody’s fault!

  Tricksy wasn’t a bad God.

  He was just a rascal!

  He hid his blessings behind Trials, for those who overcame his Tricks!

  And, as it turned out…

  He loved hardworking little girls!

  Lily’s hard work doing chores all day, every day to pay for her parents’ retirement had caught his eye!

  Tricksy barked out a foxy laugh.

  “Hahaha! It’s too late! I set up the final Trial already! Just you watch!”

  All the Gods and Goddesses groaned.

  Now that his Trials were set up, they could only watch as Lily tried to overcome them with her blessings…

  Back down in the backroom negotiation, at Sophie’s birthday party…

  The Marquis threw down the gauntlet!

  He made his declaration!

  “We have all the cards here, Queen! You have to abdicate and let France be a Republic!”

  The Queen scoffed!

  “Nuh uh!” she retorted!

  Lily’s Mama put a hand on her cheek!

  Gilbert, the Marquis, turned to…

  General Napoleon!

  “Napoleon! Summon the Grande Armee! We’re overthrowing the nobility tonight!”

  Queen Marie’s face fell flat.

  Napoleon stood up.

  He was wearing his big army hat, and his general’s uniform!

  He stood up!