The main characters (which are the only ones I will use) belong to Meg Cabot and Disney. All characters are fictional, even when based on real people.

My story is inspired by ´Through love comes understanding´ by Annette-Rose, also on fanfiction.

´Kidnap´ takes place in November of the year when the Queen travelled to San Francisco to meet her granddaughter.

~ Kidnap ~

Chapter 1 - Prelude

Joe Romero, Head of Security of Her Majesty the Queen of Genovia, could imagine foreigners thinking that the small Kingdom of Genovia was a fairy tale country.

Its capital had become wealthy in the days of the Baroque, and unfortunatelly that showed.

Joe had once heard an American child, who was walking in Pyrus´s main street, cry out: ´Where are Donald, and Mickey, and Captain Hook and Tinkerbell?´

The parents were unsuccessful in convincing their son that they were not in Disney World.

The boy had pointed at the De La Fleur hotel, with its pink-ish ornamental towers and could only forget the absence of his heroes when a chocolate covered pear was pushed in his hands.

A fairy tale country because of the architecture and because of this: the Royal Audience.

Long forgotten in other western countries, but fully functional in Genovia. You have a problem, and the regular ways of solving it don´t work, and you don´t know what to do any more: go to the Castle and bother the Monarch with it.

Joe studied the line of waiting countrymen.

He would be relieved when the last Genovian had left the Castle. It wasn´t that he worried about curious people sneaking into the Castle. There was security everywhere.

Almost everywhere. Custom demanded that the subjects should be able to ask their liege´s advice without anyone eavesdropping. It meant that the nearest guard to defend Her Majesty stood ten metres to her left.

Joe and several of his men were scanning the crowd.

There were men and women waiting, old and young alike, poor and rich. He was pleased to see people with a non-Genovian background. When they had found their way to the Queen, they had found their way in Genovia, he reasoned.

Everyone was a little nervous and the closer they got to Her Majesty, the less they spoke. Some were moving their lips, silently rehearsing what they would tell their Queen. Others looked in every direction, except to the throne.

Joe wasn´t too shy to stare at his charming Queen. She listened, advised, and reassured and everyone who left the throne room was relieved and impressed.

A young woman had brought her child with her and when they walked away from the Queen, the boy freed his hand from his mother´s to run back to the throne. The mother panicked, but the Queen smiled when the child handed her yellow flowers that he had held in his pocket.

The boy´s action made most people relax, so the monitors at the side of the Throne Room showed. Joe noticed that the man who was next in line was very tense. Joe hurried forward, without actually running.

When the man knelt for the Queen, Joe started to think he had been overreacting.