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Minor Flacks Over Minor Royals

Posted by: Linda Carbonell on May 11, 2011.

05-11-2011 by Linda S. Carbonell

Prince Andrew, daughters and The Hat, at wedding

After simultaneously beating herself up for her past bad behavior and explaining how depressing it was to be excluded from the Royal Wedding guest list, Sarah Ferguson told Oprah Winfrey today that her elder daughter Princess Beatrice will be putting her infamous Phillip Treacy hat from the wedding on E-Bay to auction off for Unicef and children in crisis. So, any old commoner with enough gilt can own the hat heard ‘round the world.

No, it wasn’t the hat that cost Princess Beatrice and her sister Princess Eugenie their 24/7 bodyguards, it was the need to cut costs for the Royals in an atmosphere of anger and resentment caused by the Cameron government’s decision to do the Republican thing – cut social programs for the poor and working class and cut taxes for the rich at the same time.

The manner in which the Rolls Royce carrying Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, was attacked during street demonstrations over the austerity budget was a shock to the Royals. The separation of royals and government has always protected the Royal family from the vicissitudes of public opinion about elected officials. The Royals have been criticized for what they cost, and have made repeated cuts in their budgets as well as the Queen agreeing years ago to have her personal income from investments and real estate ownership taxed.

The decision to remove the Princesses’ personal body guards infuriated Prince Andrew, who believes his little girls will be in danger without those bodyguards helping to pour their bodies into cars after a night on the town. Adding insult to injury for Andrew, the Queen has announced that the girls will not be spending their lives opening supermarkets and sponsoring charities. They have to get real jobs after they graduate from university. Prince Andrew’s objections were overridden in the worst possible way for a family dispute – he was compared to his older sister. Princess Anne, dubbed “the hardest working Royal” for decades, handles 700 Royal obligations a year and her children have no bodyguards, except at official functions. The children also have no titles. Their father, Mark Phillips, declined a title when he married the Queen’s only daughter, so his children don’t have them, in accordance with a royal decree signed by their great-great-grandfather about royal children. Princess Anne is also notoriously frugal. It’s something that wouldn’t have generated a lot of press criticism in another time – George III’s Queen Charlotte and George V’s Queen Mary of Teck were truly tightfisted ladies – but after Princess Diana, it became somehow unacceptable to wear the same dress twice, even ten years apart. The fact that both Royal Princes – William and Harry – are engaged in real military careers didn’t help Andrew’s cause.

The protection for the two princesses costs the public $817,360 per year.

Pippa Middleton with Prince Phillip

On the other side of the family…..The friends of the Middleton family are about to discover what it costs to know a royal. One does not cozy up to the press. Complaints have been filed with the oversight group for the press about photos that show Princess Kate’s sister Pippa topless sunbathing. Prince William and his father have made it very clear that they will not tolerate the kind of press stalking that drove Princess Diana round the bend and turned her funeral into an attack on the press by her brother. Pippa had been under the radar until she appeared at the wedding in a dress that stopped traffic.

And Mohamed al Fayed, father of the man whose car Diana was in when she

"Innocent Victims" memorial to Diana & Dodi at Harrods

died, has paid for a film that accuses the Royals of assassinating Diana and his only son, Dodi. In the film there is at least one photo of a battered, bleeding Princess Diana in the car after the crash. Fayed has claimed all along that Prince Phillip ordered the assassination to keep his grandsons, and a potential king, from having a Muslim stepfather. He has also claimed that Princess Diana was about to marry Dodi, a charge her close friends have denied in no uncertain terms. Diana was a very savvy lady about her position with the British people. Marrying a playboy of any religious bent would have diminished her image as a saint. Marrying an Egyptian would have destroyed her position among the infamously racially superior Brits. Fayed has fixated on this idea of assassination rather than admit that his son was showing off his ability to “protect” his girlfriend from the press and ordered a man who had been drinking to drive them at breakneck speed through the streets of Paris.

There will undoubtedly be people of a morbid nature who will pay to see this film. Most will not be conspiracy theorists who believe the Royals killed the “Queen of People’s Hearts,” but just ghouls who slow down to drive past a fatal accident.