(Editor's note: You must read closely and read the links to get all the fun.)
In late January, columnist Christopher Buckley wrote one of the most amusing pieces on the most hapless royals inhabiting our planet, the Windsors:
Here We Go Again
A projected timeline of the Prince William and Kate Middleton courtship.
... 2007 looks like being the year of Our Kate. It is perhaps too early to think of her as the new People's Princess, but her elegance, dignity and beauty certainly make her the People's Choice. Kate is what we need. ...
—Sunday Times of London
January 25
Daily Mail runs article, "Kate Was What I Needed", by former schoolmate of Prince William's girlfriend Kate Middleton, recounting "stolen moment of exquisite bliss" when, age 7, he kissed Middleton, then age 6, on her elbow on the playground during recess. "My lips met her skin. Though her elbow was a bit chapped and sort of wrinkly and savoured of wood ships, an electric shock went through me that I shall never forget.
February 13
A new biography of 25 year-old Middleton is published : Kate : The Gathering Storm, focusing mainly on the elbow-kissing incident.
March 2
News of the World pays $50,000 for a photograph of Kate taking out the garbage.
March 3
Daily Mirror pays $100,000 for the garbage, which reveals that Kate likes mint chocolate-chip ice cream and may be out of orange juice.
April 19
Mohamed al-Fayed, father of Dodi, tells Daily Mirror "This woman is playing with fire." and "should get out while she can." Offers use of his private jet to fly her to "safety."...
Funny huh? Then, to compound Buckley's humor, Mohamed al-Fayed has his lawyers go out and do what Buckley predicted he would do, only just one month to the day ahead of Buckley's projection:
Al Fayed's Lawyers Claim Kate Middleton May Suffer Same Fate As Diana
February 20, 2007 9:53 a.m. EST
London, England (BANG) - It was claimed on Monday that Britain's Prince William's girlfriend, Kate Middleton, could face the same tragic fate as his mother, the late Princess Diana.
Lawyers for Mohamed Al Fayed made the shocking statement during the Harrods boss' High Court appeal to overturn the decision to hold the inquest into the deaths of Diana and his son Dodi without a jury. The couple were killed when their Mercedes crashed in a Paris tunnel in 1997, as they sped away from pursuing paparazzi...
This made me think of some of the truly wonderful bits Papa Buckley (that would be William F. to the rest of you) has written about Prince Charles and his lovely rottweiler, the first Queen of England to buried in a 'Y' shaped coffin, Camilla:
February 18, 2003
...But how much of Iraq can the British reading public take? The editors acknowledge that there are other interests, and therefore featured on the front page an article entitled, "Prince Plucks/Up Courage/To Pop the/Question." The prince in question is of course Charles, and one would suppose that the person to whom he is plucking up the courage to pop the question is: Mrs. Parker Bowles. Well, she of course does figure in the Times question, but by no means exclusively. The paper reminds its readers that in l772, the Royal Marriages Act was passed. Its provisions are that the marriage of any "linear descendant of George II" is invalid unless royal consent is first obtained.
This poses a special problem in Buckingham Palace for two reasons. The Queen does not like Mrs. Parker Bowles, and she does not like Prince Charles. One would think that a neat way to accommodate these complementary dislikes would be to wish the two upon each other! But that can't be done without also giving them, as a testamentary wedding present, the Crown. That Her Majesty is not disposed to do....
February 2005:
The talk of the wedding planned by the Prince of Wales and Camilla Parker Bowles seems mostly genial. For a while, royal communicants thought it would not come off; but they were wrong, it seems. After April 8, when the wedding...takes place (it would be provincial to say, after the wedding is "consummated"), the Prince of Wales will get on with his duties, married to Her Royal Highness, the Duchess of Cornwall...
March 29, 2005
...Mr. Thornton acknowledges what everybody knows, namely that Mrs. Parker Bowles lived unhappily with Mr. Parker Bowles even though they met and married only after the royal romance with Charles had begun. That romance is rather like the white cliffs of Dover, standing there resolute, athwart any disruption. It didn’t matter to Charles that Camilla married Parker Bowles. It didn’t matter to Camilla that Charles married Diana. It didn’t matter to the succession that Charles divorced Diana and resumed life with Camilla. You could have packed in the whole of Shakespeare’s royal entanglements in the princely world 1970-2005. Certainly, primacy was not given to the demands of the throne. About all that could be said of the throne was that Charles was determined to mount it, while also mounting Camilla. Nothing like primacy was given to the claims of his religion, notwithstanding that he intends to rule not only England, but also the Church of England.
Needless to say, primacy did not attach to the woman to whom, before the great altar of St. Paul’s Cathedral, he pledged eternal devotion. Pouff! All he wants to do is head up the church at which such vows are made...
The Buckleys are gems among men. I like their form of republicanism and their observance of their faith. Even with the taint of a protestant wife and mother, isn't too shabby either.
(That was just a jooooke...gesh)
Mrs. P
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