Royal Gossip
Dec. 1st, 2010 10:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloAilz tells me the Queen has rewritten the rules on royal precedence so that Princess Anne isn't required to curtsey to her older brother's wife- something she refuses to do. She refused to curtsey to her older brother's first wife too. It's not that she finds curtseying offensive in itself, only curtseying to a "commoner". Apparently the Windsors are at it all the time, bobbing up and down to one another. You'd think, in private, they might drop the charade, but they don't.
There was a sale of the Duchess of Windsors jewels at Sotheby's yesterday. They realised nearly £8 million. The duchess liked her bling. And she liked it blingy. If you saw these items in a pawn shop window you'd go, "My God, who on earth would want to wear that?" But they're good fun- especially the diamond and onyx panther.
My cultural inheritance includes a propensity to bristle at the word "Prussian" but last night's TV biography of Frederick the Great suggested I might want to adjust my programming. Frederick was a great general, an enlightened and liberal statesman, a philosopher and patron of philosophers, a composer of some stature and a musician of genuine accomplishment. Ruling houses are often founded by persons of genius but its enormously rare for a genius to spring from an established bloodline. In fact I can think of only two examples in the history of Western Europe. The other is Alexander the Great.
There was a sale of the Duchess of Windsors jewels at Sotheby's yesterday. They realised nearly £8 million. The duchess liked her bling. And she liked it blingy. If you saw these items in a pawn shop window you'd go, "My God, who on earth would want to wear that?" But they're good fun- especially the diamond and onyx panther.
My cultural inheritance includes a propensity to bristle at the word "Prussian" but last night's TV biography of Frederick the Great suggested I might want to adjust my programming. Frederick was a great general, an enlightened and liberal statesman, a philosopher and patron of philosophers, a composer of some stature and a musician of genuine accomplishment. Ruling houses are often founded by persons of genius but its enormously rare for a genius to spring from an established bloodline. In fact I can think of only two examples in the history of Western Europe. The other is Alexander the Great.
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Date: 2010-12-01 07:48 pm (UTC)