Royal Ruminations

Well Prince William of the United Kingdom is getting married. And from what’s available in the news, Princess-and-Queen-to-be Kate is a looker, and better still seems to be stable and sane.

A telling indicator of this is, she hasn’t made a public fuss about her image on a commemorative medallion which is, to say the least, grossly unflattering. Diana would have thrown a hissy fit.

One interesting thing came out recently, Kate is what they call, “of Jewish descent.” That is to say, she’s Jewish on her mother’s side (“The half that makes me all Jewish” as one lady I knew once put it) but wasn’t raised in the faith.

That can’t be anything but good for future generations of Windsors. Class they’ve got. A sense of duty they’ve got. But brains have never been their strong suit.

Back when I was studying physical anthropology I once said in class we should all be grateful to Prince Charles for his contribution to the nature versus nurture debate about intelligence, and the effect of increased spending on education.

Consider, HRH Charles Windsor has without doubt been given the most expensive education of any human being in history. He’s had the highest-level personal tutors in any given subject. (A friend of my father’s who had one of the more extensive private microscope collections in the UK taught him how to use them.) He’s had capital ships of the Royal Navy and multi-engine military aircraft as educational toys. He’s had extensive foreign travel.

And all of it has made him no more than a reasonably well-educated intellectual lightweight. If intelligence was totally the result of nurture, he should be the greatest genius alive. (This observation was not appreciated in the social sciences set.)

But perhaps I do His Highness wrong. Since earliest childhood he’s been under the kind of scrutiny that notes and records for posterity every embarrassing deed and utterance.

I remember when the press quoted him as saying (rather smugly I thought,) “Oh I don’t know where they get the idea I’m so successful with women.”

What I thought was, “You jug-eared, weak-chinned… if you weren’t HRH The Prince of Wales and rich as Croesus do you think all these babes you squire around would give you a second look?”

Then there was his pronouncement, “American English is awful. They turn nouns into verbs and coin all sorts of words which should not be.”

My reaction was, “Oh, you mean like Shakespeare did all the time?”

But it can’t have been easy growing up under the kind of scrutiny that notes and records for posterity every potentially embarrassing deed and utterance.

My impression is the UK press has not been kind or even fair to HRH. Years back he came under quite a lot of criticism for being stuffy, aloof, and reserved. As compared to the warm and approachable Diana.

Then Charles gave an interview in which he let his hair down and talked about the burdens of duty. They savaged him. Particularly cruel was a cartoon of him bawling his eyes out, labeled, “The Prince of Wails.”

It speaks well of Charles that as it became evident that Diana brought a cuckoos egg into the royal nest, he has never acted as if Prince Harry were anything but his natural son.

Years before the story broke on this side of the pond we were told by our son’s English godmother Prince Harry was most likely Guards Captain James Hewitt’s son.

I thought it was an interesting rumor, till I saw news photos of Harry and Hewitt in profile compared side-by-side which erased all doubt. Harry is Hewitt’s son.

“Leave it to Diana to find the one cad in the guards,” was how Judith Hatton put it.

The royal family could very easily have sent Harry into harms way in Iraq or Afghanistan and created a royal hero/martyr. Instead they have chosen dignity and duty, and ignored the circumstances of his birth.

Still, they must be relieved that William is finally getting married and will presumably soon after provide The Firm with a legitimate royal heir.

And it seems that the pair is being allowed unprecedented latitude to make their own decisions as to how the wedding is going to go. This augers well for their future life in the royal spotlight.

I note, for example, that the Obamas are not on the guest list. Now this could be a message from the UK – payback for the gift snubs. Or it could be that the royal-acting presidential pair are not being invited because it’s plain they do not know how to behave in polite society.

Either way, good for the Brits. And it’s ironic that if the press lightens up on the couple more than they did William’s father, it may be the legacy of the good press Diana created.