“Can I tell you something?” I said, my event-savvy instincts returning. “The way you’re talking to me right now, it’s so easy and appealing, and that’s how you should give your speech. In fact, let’s not call it a speech at all. Just make it a conversation, and pretend the audience is just a batch of friends, hanging out in your . . . castle. And remember to smile. Because your smile, oh my God . . .”

“What?” Prince Edgar asked. “What about my smile? I think it comes across as mechanical, like I’m pretending to be attentive and fulfill my duties while really I’m just activating a royal reflex or downloading my official mindless smile function. I hate my smile.”

He hates his smile? Is he out of his mind? If I could smile like that, I’d spend all day looking in the mirror, smiling and sending myself selfies and begging for a date.

“Your smile,” I said, firmly, “is your secret weapon. Because everyone probably expects you to be distant and formal, but when you smile . . . Okay, do it. Try it out. Let’s have a test drive. Smile at me.”

“I will not! That’s absurd! First you make me fling myself about, and now this! I’d feel like a grinning idiot!” protested Prince Edgar. “Smiling has nothing to do with clean drinking water or resource management or climate change!”

“You’re one hundred percent right,” I said. “But there are going to be Nobel Prize–winning scientists on this panel, only nobody will pay the slightest attention to them unless you’re here to introduce them and unless you smile.”

“So you’re claiming that my smile, and my royal presence, are essential to the future of our planet? And our species? And all plant and animal life as we know it?”

I was pretty sure he was joking, but his gaze was solemn, and he wasn’t giving anything away.

“Yes,” I answered. “If you don’t smile, the global ecosphere is doomed.”

He sighed manfully, as if he didn’t like it but knew what he had to do for world survival.

He paused. He readied himself, like an Olympic athlete seconds before an event. He adjusted his stance, for maximum stability. He took a deep, preparatory breath. He smiled.

I couldn’t speak. I was about to faint or embarrass myself in countless other ways. Because I wasn’t kidding: his smile didn’t just disarm people and make them abandon any preconceptions about the prince; right now his smile was making me want to grab him and kiss him, which was something I’d probably regret from my jail cell.

“Let’s see your smile,” the prince demanded. “If you regard these facial expressions as so indispensable.”