Of course, now is when Serena makes her speech.

"I'm not usually one for speeches, but I have to say how lucky I am to have Blair Waldorf as my best friend. I may be the maid of honor, but the true honor is just knowing you, B. There is simply no one like her... No matter how hard some of you try! Congratulations to the beautiful bride. You have become the strong, confident princess I always knew you would. I love you so much and wish you and your prince nothing but happiness. Cheers! And one more thing. We have a surprise for all the ladies tonight. We'll be handing out boxes. Most of us will open ours to find it empty, but one lucky lady will have a diamond ring inside. But you have to wait until I say so to open it. Enjoy!"

Ugh, Princess. You know, maybe that's the whole thing. Maybe the root of the problem this year is some egregious misread whereby that's supposedly Blair's deal. Some memo somewhere that said that made sense. Because if you try to make this a princess story -- with all the shallow, pretty-clothes, total lack of agency that implies -- then all the other weird warps of character and storyline really do start to make sense. All you have to do is subtract everything that makes Blair Blair, and then you have a really fun princess storyline, about princesses.

I mean, I loved the shoe thing once it was explained to me, there are levels on which there is awesome, but there's Diana and Grace Kelly princess, which is how it started, and then there's Disney Princess, which is what it immediately became. No wonder the fangirls were so insane about this stuff: They were reacting allergically to the entire idea, and just centered it on Chuck instead of realizing it, itself, for the woman-hating princess crap that it actually is.

Solution: Instead of Louis, make it Tripp. Instead of Princess, make her Blair Rodham Clinton, and watch her ambition play out that way. The Tripp story Serena never could have accomplished, and Blair was born for. You wouldn't even have to have this yucky weird aging-up thing where the teenagers are getting married and having babies, if you did that: Political go-hards start this young. That's Nate's current deal, in fact. And that is the Blair we know. That's the Blair we know, raised by Eleanor and Harold.