After Drina's uncle dies far earlier than he did in a different world, she gets the crown on her heavy head, but the hated Mother and Sir Conroy gets their hands in her, reduce her to a puppet under their controlling regency. And the aristocrats all welcome it, much to her silent dismay and later disdain. Of course they would, they all love power. Nothing more.
Drina starts to embrace... heterodox thinking while isolated more and more as the so-called monarch but actually trapped trapped
trapped in the System. While she would of course be the smiling queen in public (even as she recoils more and more upon seeing the destroyed and impoverished areas full of "wretched huts and carts and little ragged children"), in private her thinking radicalises more and more. More burning hatred against the golden cage, against Mother, against Sir Conroy, against the aristocracy, against the
System...
A well-polished German starts talking to her when she was on a visit to Hanover and decided to escape the 'aristocratic parts'. One talk leads to another, and eventually they start secretly exchanging letters that ends up sharpening her world-view into a more radical viewpoint. The well-polished man passes on his and his friend's manifesto for her to read in advance, and she loves it at first read, locking her ideology down for good.
As Europe and Britain burns and the red flag of Communism is lofted up, the Queen of the United Kingdom and British Empire (by then one she knows is more a rotten extension of the hated
System), silently smiles behind her golden cage.
One day, she will be free.