The Unofficial British Royal Family Pages

Sunday 13 May 2007

Royal Happenings

This month�s column is more blog-like than usual. I haven�t been writing much lately and lots of stuff has happened.

The big news first: William and Kate broke up. While it seems like they still love each other, she never made much effort to do anything after college other than marking time until he proposed. Once he became more involved with his military career, he may not have liked the idea that she was waiting around for him. Young military men with wives and girlfriends at home have always partied when off duty, but with cell phone cameras everywhere and tabloids happy to run the photos, William couldn�t get away with it. The stories that he was going out and flirting may have forced him to cut Kate free rather than look like a cad. Meanwhile, the royal family liked Kate so much that she was becoming accepted as his partner, and William knew that he would be expected to marry her, perhaps sooner than he wished. Maybe they will eventually get back together; maybe not. But the maturity and grace that both of them showed suggests that they will be fine regardless.

An addition to my last column: I did not realize when I wrote it that there is another member of the royal family who will soon be deployed to Iraq. He is Alexander, Earl of Ulster, heir to the Duke of Gloucester. He and his wife, Dr. Claire Booth, recently became parents with the birth of their son, Xan, Lord Culloden. Xan is the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester�s first grandchild, not counting their daughter Lady Davina�s stepson. The Gloucesters live in Kensington Palace, so Alexander and Harry grew up together, although Alexander is ten years older.

The Queen�s visit: As a resident of the Washington area, I was particularly interested in the Queen�s recent visit, though I didn�t have time to make an effort to see her, and there were few events open to the public anyway. The Queen was the same as always, except that her clothes seemed brighter than usual. The first lady was thrilled and the president seemed rather amused by the whole thing. It�s marvelous that the Queen was the guest of honor at both the 350^th and the 400^th anniversary celebrations of the Jamestown colony. And the Queen finally got to attend the Kentucky Derby.

The View: And speaking of the visit, the May 8^th episode of the American talk show �The View� was very entertaining. The Duchess of York was the guest co-host, while co-host Elizabeth Hasselbeck had been a guest at the state dinner for the Queen the previous evening. Elizabeth was understandably very excited, but it was just ludicrous that she was so thrilled to have very briefly met the ex-mother-in-law of someone else at the table! In a later discussion about boarding school, the Duchess joked that perhaps the reason why she hadn�t been invited to the dinner was that she had insisted on not sending her daughters to boarding school until they were 13 (which still horrified Rosie O�Donnell). Also, Fergie said �Any other tips?� when Elizabeth suggested that she should use the song �Fergielicious� as her ring tone, which I thought was a bit haughty under the circumstances. The Duchess promoted her new teas and candles from Slatkin & Co. (a high-end scented candle company), and gave gift sets to the audience. Her profit will go to the Sarah Ferguson Foundation, which supports childrens� charities internationally. Moissanite jewelry is available in support of the foundation at www.sarahsjewelry.com.

Portraits: The (American) National Portrait Gallery in Washington currently has an exhibit called �Great Britons� of portraits from the (British) National Portrait Gallery. Go see it, if Washington is more convenient for you than London, or look up the whole collection at www.npg.org.uk. I was pleased to see that the two portraits I bought refrigerator magnets of at the NPG in London � the �Chandos� portrait of Shakespeare and a portrait of Richard III � are facing each other in the Washington exhibit. Next to the portrait of Richard III is a portrait of Henry VIII as a young man. I think they don�t hang together in London, and I was struck by the great resemblance between the portraits. Of course, Henry VIII was Richard III�s nephew, so that shouldn�t be too surprising. Both portraits are by unknown artists (Richard III�s portrait is a late 16^th-century copy of a contemporary portrait), and I wonder if it was the same unknown artist. They were probably painted only about thirty-five years apart, so the same artist or workshop could have painted both. Both monarchs are shown in the same head-and-shoulders pose, and both wear hats and chains of office. Most notably, in both portraits their left hands are playing with rings on their right pinkie fingers. Because the beginning of the Tudor dynasty is traditionally used to mark the end of the Middle Ages in English history, the continuities between the reigns of Richard III and Henry VIII (who had Henry VII in between them, of course) are often difficult to recognize.

BBC Radio Player: That brings me to the last thing I�d like to mention. I�ve been listening to The Daughter of Time, the classic book by Josephine Tey in defense of Richard III, online from BBC radio. The book takes the portrait of Richard III mentioned above as its starting point in its argument that Richard was morally superior to his Tudor successors, which is why it struck me as ironic that the portrait of Henry VIII looks so much like it. A great deal of BBC radio programming is available in an online archive for a week (sometimes more) after broadcast. My favorite station is BBC7, which runs classic mysteries, literature, and humor. Go to www.bbc.co.uk/radio and click on �BBC radio player,� or use the station pages to find programs you would enjoy.

- Margaret Weatherford

Previous columns can be found in the archive