his page collects various comments about royalty, English and otherwise, from daily updates.  Usually when motivated by some news item or other. I'm not a big fan of the practice, as you'll see.

More recent updates are added on top.

November 7, 2002

Last night I caught a BBC show about the Royal Jewels, and the obscene amount of diamonds, rubies, pearls, sapphires, etc they've got socked away, built up over centuries.  Some funny stories, lots of close ups of obscenely over-decorated crowns and tiaras, and never a whisper of where these royals (British, Indian, Russian) got the money for their opulence in the first place.

The program could not have been more fawning over the royals or their loot, with never a word about the blood, sweat, and toil of the peasants that was so greedily sucked up in excessive taxes to get the money to purchase such baubles.  Or how they simply claimed the best of their country's product for their own use.  One bit was about the Russian revolution, where the Bolsheviks threw off the royalty and took control of their own country.  The program mentioned how so many minor nobles were forced to flee the revolution with only their jewels saved to sustain them, as if that were some horrible fate.  God forbid I'm raised in total luxury, drowned in gold and diamonds, never work a day in my life, and then one day when the oppressed peasants rise up and throw off the reign of my uncle the Czar I have to flee from one monarchy (Russia), travel in luxury through a bunch of other monarchies in Europe, and then finally arrive in England, where the queen provides me with a house and servants in exchange for a few of my smaller jewels.  Such a hard life!

Best line was about Prince Charles giving Diana some emerald and diamond bracelet and necklace worth about ten year's salary to a real person.  Part of it was an antique item Charles had been given by his mother.  The show's female narrator said, in her very British voice, "Alas, as he knew so little about his wife, Charles did not know Diana did not care for emeralds."

Oh dear lord, that poor woman!  Born rich, best education, pampered schoolgirl, married into royalty, and given priceless jewels, but not her favorite kind!  She also found the $1,000,000 tiaras she had to wear at times heavy, and said they gave her a headache.  Such trials and tribulations. It's no wonder she had to cheat on her husband with her riding instructor and leave her husband to sleep with oily despots before her eventual screaming death in a limo crash.  Join me in weeping tears of blood.

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