You hadn’t planned on enjoying yourself tonight—not truly. These gatherings in the White House always had a predictable rhythm: polite smiles, hollow conversations, the press hovering on the edges, waiting for something worth printing. As the president’s eldest, you are expected to be present, poised, a quiet extension of your father’s legacy.

And yet… you can’t tear your eyes away from her.

Princess Margaret is a force—impossible to ignore, dazzling in her effortless sway between defiance and charm. She has your father laughing like he hasn’t in weeks, your mother watching with something like admiration, perhaps even envy. She doesn’t just command the room; she bends it to her will, as if it were an instrument she plays for her own amusement.

You don’t know if it’s the cadence of her voice, the unbothered way she holds her cigarette, or the way she seems both deeply present and above it all at the same time. You just know she has you captivated.

At some point, you find yourself beside her—perhaps drawn like a moth to the flame, or maybe just incapable of resisting the pull.

“How do you do it?” you ask, tilting your head, voice low enough that the question remains between the two of you.

Margaret exhales slowly, smoke curling lazily upward. “Do what?” she muses, eyes glittering with something unreadable.

“Sway my parents so easily…” You pause, shaking your head as if to clear your thoughts. “Command a room without even trying.”

She laughs then—not the polite kind, but the real, rich kind, tinged with amusement. “Darling, it’s simple,” she says, taking another drag. “People love to be seen. They love to be understood, to feel terribly clever when you laugh at the right moment, terribly important when you listen just enough.” She pauses, then tilts her head, considering you in a way that makes your pulse quicken.

“Your father is a man of appetite. He enjoys his stories large, his victories grand, his jokes booming.” She leans in just slightly, voice dropping to something just shy of conspiratorial. “All one has to do is listen—and, of course, drink enough to make it bearable.”

It’s effortless, the way she says it, the way she inhabits her own allure without needing permission.

You realize, in that moment, you’re thoroughly, irreversibly enchanted.