A student asked the First Lady why she likes to exercise:
"I wanna be a 90 year old lady that's really fly." https://t.co/MfK4KAMTC3
— The First Lady (@FLOTUS) April 20, 2016
Because of the above, I’m honoring a request from beloved commentor SiubhanDuinne:
I know you may not (probably do not) (almost certainly do not) share my lifelong fascination with Queen Elizabeth II (I’ve been following her since I was 5 years old and she, as Princess Elizabeth, married her handsome young Prince Philip in 1947), but April 21, is her 90th birthday. Whatever one’s views of the British monarchy, this is a matter for some celebration, yes?
There are several new “Queen at 90” photos making the rounds, but one of the sweetest may be this one. It shows the Queen surrounded by her two youngest grandchildren, and all five great-grandchildren. Check out the adorable little girl solemnly holding her great-granny’s handbag :-)
Best wishes for all the tough old broads, from one who aspires to earn that honorable title.
Elizabelle
Speaking of Princes, Charles may have slightly mixed feelings about this.
Do not begrudge the Queen a day, but really … she is a force of nature, and seems to be of very sound mind. Love the pic.
aimai
Well, the Queen is a tough old broad. And Ilove the moment when her royal toughness and Michelle met and, in the end, fell in love with each other. But the royal family qua family has always given me the willies. Kind of a “flowers in the attic” kind of British weirdness. They were really cruel to Diana and there is just no looking at that carefully posed portrait and not wondering just how warped those kids lives will be.
Elizabelle
Realized it was QE2’s bday today, but her attaining 90, and Prince leaving us before 60, kind of took the sparkle off.
Will say, QE2 has seen a lot, and learned a lot, over a long life. And I do wish William’s first child had been a daughter. Since they finally changed that stupid succession rule. But Elizabeth will be the last British reigning queen of our lifetimes.
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
@aimai:
Imagine growing up in an environment where your every movement is followed by dozens of photographers, where you never know if you have friends or just cling-ons, where there is never any one material thing you cannot have, where the expectations and requirements of you and your family are surreal and in many cases inexplicable. It would be impossible to be normal. But yeah, they are warped.
BillinGlendaleCA
Mai.naem.mobile
@aimai: I’ve never bought the Diana the Saint meme. I think she was way better with PR than the natural born royals.I’m not excusing Charles screwing around on her. I think she was kind of naive when she married him,partly due to her youth, but quickly grew smart and savvy with the press. My sisters were living in the UK during the marriage and death and they say the same things I do.
Mike E
@aimai: Heh, Charlie grabbed the tiger by the tail, there
TaMara (HFG)
I want to live long enough to throw out the first baseball just because I’m so dang old. 105 yr old throws out ball.
redshirt
@TaMara (HFG): She needs to work on her delivery. ;)
Barbara
@Schlemazel (parmesan rancor): I don’t know who each of these kids is, but it’s worth repeating that Princess Anne refused to allow her children to be given royal titles, and they live as commoners — wealthy, no doubt, but not royal. Not all of these kids are going to be followed around, much depends on how they are raised.
Mnemosyne
@aimai:
FWIW, William seems to have turned out pretty well, and Harry is coming along with a few slip-ups. Charles and Camilla really stuck poor Diana into a no-win situation.
I also love the toddler carefully holding great-grandmummy’s purse.
Major Major Major Major
I love the story about the Queen taking King Abdullah for a spin in the ‘ol Rover.
SiubhanDuinne
@Elizabelle:
Quite right that Prince’s shocking and sudden death “took the sparkle off,” and I briefly pondered suggesting that AL might just want to skip the post about the Queen’s birthday altogether, but thought better of it. Life does go on, and a long, and mostly good, life is worth celebrating.
@aimai:
I think most of those kids will be no more nor less warped than any upper-class kids anywhere. Elizabeth was famously an absent mother, and Philip seems to have been rather bullying. Charles and Andrew both seem to have big entitlement and petulance issues. But the others seem to be pretty solidly grounded, and expectations are very different for this youngest generation, most of whom aren’t even technically “Royal.” But mostly, I’m just enjoying the fact that there’s a cool 90th birthday celebration going on for a woman I’ve followed for a very long time.
Mai.naem.mobile
The guy in the royal family who gives me the creeps is Prince Phillip. He just gives off an authoritarian abusive whiff. I wouldn’t be surprised if Charles and Andrew were beaten as teenagers. Phillip comes across as a Trump supporter kind of person.
smintheus
The one room in the royal palace that’s clean and tidy.
gelfling545
@Mai.naem.mobile: Diana was young, lively and pretty in a family that was notably not any of those things so she caught the public’s imagination. She seemed a perfectly nice person but I think the public projected a depth on her that did not actually exist. Who know? She might have grown ito her image had she lived.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne: The kid has a funny story about William(heh, good name). When she was stationed over in the UK(it was a joint RAF/USAF base), William visited the base she was at and wanted to buy a camera at the PX. He didn’t have his military ID and couldn’t buy the camera.
BillinGlendaleCA
@SiubhanDuinne:
The Queen’s official birthday and official celebrations are in June(the weather this time of year sucks in the UK, and she’s the Queen and can celebrate her B-day when she damn well pleases).
JCJ
@TaMara (HFG):
I read a joke the other day about someone 100 years old throwing out the first pitch at a pre-season game for the Cubs. Basically the painful joke was that even for a person 100 years old the Cubs had not won the World Series during their lifetime.
Bitter Scribe
Wouldn’t it be a kick in the pants if she outlived poor Charles?
Cat48
Obama is having Lunch with the Queen tomorrow, and having dinner with Prince William and his wife, per BBC.
Mnemosyne
@TaMara (HFG):
Copycats! The Dodgers had Ruthie Thompson do that last year.
I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Ruthie and can verify that she is a pistol. She is still very tech-savvy (she worked in the camera department at Disney in the 1950s) and helps all of the other seniors at the Motion Picture Home set up their iPads and iPhones.
JCJ
@redshirt:
Now this is a first pitch
ETA: link fail
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVeo6QMcbW4
SiubhanDuinne
@Barbara:
Three of the kids — the three little girls wearing adorable cardigans — are Princess Anne’s grandchildren. The little Mia Tindall holding the Queen’s purse is Zara’s daughter, and the other two are Peter Phillips’ daughters. The older girl and boy on the Queen’s right are actually her grandchildren, children of Prince Edward. And I expect you recognize Prince George, direct heir to the throne, in the dark sweater and short pants. The Queen is holding her youngest great-grandchild, Princess Charlotte, on her lap.
(Yes, it’s slightly embarrassing that I know all this stuff, but there it is.)
hellslittlestangel
Never was a big fan of the monarchy, but I can’t help hoping she lives long enough to attend Johnny Rotten’s funeral.
rikyrah
I love this pic too
PurpleGirl
Happy Birthday to Queen Elizabeth II. She has lived through some momentous times and played her role well. No comment on the royal family and its exclusive culture.
ETA: It is a sweet picture of the Queen and the grandbabies.
SiubhanDuinne
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Yes, I know :-)
I like the idea of having two birthdays. Double the cake, double the presents.
Mnemosyne
@BillinGlendaleCA:
AFAIK, William is still a search and rescue pilot when he’s not doing his PR duties for the UK. I’m assuming that helps keep him from getting too snooty.
VOR
@Major Major Major Major: I love that story too. Here, let me show you how women can drive.
Patricia Kayden
@Bitter Scribe: For Poor Charles, I guess. Not for anyone else.
Not really into the Royals anymore although I, like millions of other people, watched Lady Di wed Prince Charles way back when. Happy B’Day to the Queen, who is looking as fabulous as ever.
And I’m sure FLOTUS will be a fly 90-year old because she’s pretty fly now.
SiubhanDuinne
@smintheus:
For how long, one wonders, with all those toddlers?
SFAW
@Bitter Scribe:
Well, we could get SiubhanDuinne, Mob Enforcer, on the job, if you catch my drift. (And if you’re still accepting contracts, of course, Siubhan my dear.)
Heliopause
Yes, we should pause to celebrate the many brave Americans who fought, suffered, and died to expel these worthless agglomerations of tissue from our continent. Let’s also celebrate the authors of our Constitution, who made it a bedrock principle (Article I, Section 9, Clause 8) that worthless inheritors of meaningless titles had no place in our polity.
Trollhattan
Am trying to envision Annie leaving the ego at Heathrow on tackling this assignment. She did a cracking job, regardless. Heard Prince Charles with this reading from Henry V on BBC World Service last night, and thought it was quite moving. Afterward they interviewed the Shakespeare scholar who helped him select the passage, and boy howdy, was he nervous.
Neither pro nor anti-monarchist, but happy birthday Elizabeth! (Do you suppose she still sneaks out to drive her little MG?)
HRA
Thank you for this post AL. It’s a far off memory of being born and growing up under the Queen’s rule. I always admired her and her sister, Margaret.
Really?
I loved her in “Naked Gun”
SFAW
@SiubhanDuinne:
Somebody has to, why not you?
ETA: Although, I have to confess being a little mystified (assuming I’m not more iggerant than usual): your nym seems Irish to me — if that’s the case, what’s a nice Irish girl like you doing learning about some high-falutin’ English royalty?
Mnemosyne
@Patricia Kayden:
I was surprised at how interested I am in William and Harry. It’s like they’re distant cousins I only see on Facebook, but I’m always interested to see how much they’ve grown. I was 12 when their parents got married.
SiubhanDuinne
@Cat48:
Supposedly, Harry will also be at the dinner at Kensington Palace with William and Catherine.
Is Michelle traveling with the President on this trip, do you know?
p.a.
@hellslittlestangel:
Ha! Anger is an Energy
PJ
For all of the Hillary supporters: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/magazine/how-hillary-clinton-became-a-hawk.html?smid=tw-nytmag&smtyp=cur&hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
The article describes her disagreement with Obama’s cautious approach to military adventures and shows her swayed by the generals advocating perpetual war, like Ret. General Jack Keane, booster of the military industrial complex, who is described as
This is a guy who
Re her push for more troops for a longer stay in Afghanistan, this is the money quote:
FSM help us.
Mnemosyne
@Heliopause:
Actually, upon some research, we discovered that you actually can *inherit* a noble title and remain an American citizen, which is why New York-born actor Christopher Guest is also Baron Haden-Guest. What you can’t do is be granted a new title by a foreign power, and IIRC if you want to be naturalized, you have to give up any existing titles.
BillinGlendaleCA
@SiubhanDuinne: My wife does that too. She has her official B-day(when her father got around to registering her birth, 7 months after the fact) and the day she was actually born(same day as Micheal Jackson). We celebrate her real B-day, it’s also 5 days from her daughter’s so it makes a nice double celebration.
BillinGlendaleCA
@SFAW:
I’m sure she is, as long as there’s no stairs involved.
Mnemosyne
@PJ:
Wait, are you telling me the New York Times hates Hillary Clinton? Who knew? I mean, other than people who have not been in a coma for the past 25 years.
Sorry, but after Travelgate, Whitewater, Wen Ho Lee, Benghazi, and Emailgate, I’m going to wait for something that’s sourced from someplace else before I get my panties in a twist.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Trollhattan: That is a masterful picture and really shows off the genius of Annie Liebovitz.
Cheers,
Scott.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne: USuncut might be a better source at this point than the Grey Lady regarding HRC.
JPL
@PJ: Yet, she is better than the other side.
cermet
The queen, like all self entitled low life, ass wipes can eat shit and die.
PJ
@Mnemosyne: The Times endorsed Hillary. (And this article seems to have been intended as a pro-Hillary piece.)
goblue72
@PJ: Totally unsurprising. Its not like its a surprise that Clinton is warhawk – she’s butted heads with Obama in the past on this. We are so going to miss Obama at the helm of foreign policy – he the first President we’ve had in a long long time who tried to reign in the military-industrial complex and who gave the DC foreign policy establishment a well-deserved fat middle finger.
But I am sure whenever Clinton gets us involved in some wholly unnecessary foreign intervention, that the hippies will be punched and plenty of the centrists at BJ will be right there punching.
SiubhanDuinne
@SFAW:
Scottish Gaelic, a (somewhat loose) translation of my pre-marriage name :-)
I do, in fact, have some Irish roots, but it’s Scotland that has always called to me. And England.
Sloane Ranger
@Mai.naem.mobile: Diana had issues before she married due to her parents divorce and both she and Charles were victims of their Grandmothers machinations. Lady Fermoy, Diana’s Grandmother was Lady in Waiting and best friend of the Queen Mother. They did everything possible to throw Charles and Diana together.
Also Diana had a nasty streak. I live near Althorpe and an estate worker told me that after the funeral of their father Diana and her siblings threw their step-mothers belonnings out of her bedroom window even before the mourners had left after the “wake”.
SiubhanDuinne
@SFAW:
No job is off the table.
@BillinGlendaleCA:
You got that right! I’m still being very cautious on stairs, and even at curbs. But that shouldn’t interfere with my mob-enforcing skills.
humboldtblue
@Major Major Major Major: And she doesn’t even have a driver’s license!
@SiubhanDuinne: Why be embarrassed? One thing I look forward to watching each year is the Trooping of the Color on the Queen’s official birthday in June and I watch it on you tube every single year. Hell, I also watch the Edinburgh Tattoo each year as well.. I can tell you a good bit about every military unit that takes place, I can break down the ceremony for you as we watch and I can fill you with odd details about the monarchy and the British military as well.
We may be Yanks but the British Monarchy has played a profound role in modern Western history and as a subject of study is always fascinating.
Plus the only woman who ever looked this good in royal blue was my mother.
humboldtblue
Great now I’m in moderation.
Tom Levenson
My brush w. lèse majesté came when I attended a wedding in which a cousin was marrying one of Prince Charles’s god-children. I learned that the palace refers to Charles as “the P.O.W.” in written communications…which seems brutally on point — and at the reception I turned around as one of the gazillion kids zooming around the ballroom (of the Ritz on Picadilly) crashed into me. I reached down to pick up the offending mite and realized it was Harry. (I’ve got a good Charles story from that wedding, but I’ll save it.)
Closest I ever got to Her Majesty was seeing her drive by at the Royal Agricultural Show just the other side of a fence. Her entries — truly nasty little Jersey bulls — did well, as I recall, but that was a long time ago.
Mnemosyne
@PJ:
In 2004, the New York Times endorsed John Kerry while suppressing stories about domestic surveillance that made George W Bush look bad until after the election in the name of “fairness.”
If the NYT quoted “an anonymous source close to Hillary” as saying the sky is blue, I would strongly recommend running outside to double-check for yourself.
SiubhanDuinne
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
I read someplace that little Mia picked up the purse on her own — it wasn’t planned at all. Annie Leibovitz just rolled with it, and the Queen ended up liking it and approving it as an official photo.
Queen Victoria probably would have insisted on a re-shoot.
Irony Abounds
@Mnemosyne: Good lord, you can’t blame Hillary’s hawkishness on the New York Times. Did the New York Times push her button to vote yes on the Iraq War authorization? Did the New York Times force her to push Obama to go as far as possible in Libya? Was the New York Times behind her to call for a No Fly Zone in Syria and more involvement in Syria in general? Clinton’s hawkishness is very troubling and evidence of her lack of judgement in general. One can only hope she picks a Secretary of State and a Secretary of Defense who are smart and influential enough to dissuade her from following her (very often wrongheaded) gut instincts on involvement in foreign conflicts.
Also, too, I want to add that I could give a rat’s ass about the Queen of England and her birthday. No offense intended for English BJers, but I find royalty in general repugnant.
Elizabelle
@Tom Levenson: The POW. Laughing.
Thread needs more corgis, too. Just saying.
PJ
@Mnemosyne: If they had secretly wanted to undermine her chances, they would have run it before the NY primary.
LAO
Cheers to the toughest broad, I’ve known and loved, my maternal grandmother who passed away several years ago at the age of 98. On her last day on earth, she woke up, dressed for the country club, played cards with the “girls” for 4 hours, then went out for a late lunch. She returned home, had a stroke and passed 6 hours later. She lived in her own home (with a little help) till the day she died. She fully recovered from a broken hip at the age of 86 and without her help, my mother could never have attended law school with three kids aged 6 to 11. SHE WAS AWESOME. I miss her. I’ll never be fly — but I’d like to one day earn the title of “broad”.
hellslittlestangel
@p.a.: Thanks for the link. That track was followed by some newer PIL cuts. I hadn’t known they’d released two albums in recent years — and they’re really good!
AliceBlue
@Mnemosyne:
Many years ago, I read “The Story of the Trapp Family Singers” (written by Maria herself, of Sound of Music fame). When they became citizens, they had to renounce the titles of Baron and Baroness and they also dropped the “von” from their surname. I don’t know if that was required or by choice.
Mnemosyne
@SiubhanDuinne:
It may improve them — after all, who’s going to expect you to be the one coming to enforce things?
I am now picturing you as Helen Mirren in “Red.” I haven’t seen it, but I’ve heard she and John Malkovich are the best parts.
humboldtblue
@Trollhattan: Nope, no MG. She’s been driving a Land Rover for the past decade.
SiubhanDuinne
@Tom Levenson:
I’ve only seen the Queen once. After she (along with President Eisenhower and Prime Minister Diefenbaker — “the three Germans”) opened the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959, she and Prince Philip sailed in the royal yacht Britannia down the Seaway and through the Great Lakes to Chicago. I went downtown with friends to watch the flotilla and arrival from the top of the Prudential Building (at the time, the tallest building in Chicago) and then zipped down to Michigan Avenue to see the motorcade. I got a good look at her, and caught the famous “royal wave.” She was probably not more than three or four feet from us.
I went to England a couple of weeks later and hoped to see her again, but she had gone into seclusion because she was pregnant with Andrew (who wasn’t even born until the following January). It was a very different time: the Queen simply didn’t appear in maternity clothes and undertook no public engagements as long as her pregnancy showed.
Mnemosyne
@PJ:
Good god, they don’t want that socialist Sanders as president! They want Trump to defeat her in the general election, and they’re going to do everything in their power to make that happen. Judy Miller was not an accident.
Brachiator
@aimai:
Well, the photo by Annie Annie Leibovitz is highly stylized, ’cause that’s how Annie does it, but supposedly it is “the woman who is celebrated, rather than the sovereign.” And the kid picking up the purpose was supposedly not staged.
I agree about the cruelty to Diana, but it is interesting to see both William and Harry fight back, even to the point of William raising his kids more in Diana’s style than the formal, hands off and tradition laden style that Charles would prefer. And William and Harry make a point of referring to their mother, keeping her memory alive, and including the types of charities she favored in their official duties.
humboldtblue
@Trollhattan: They seemed to hit it off
SiubhanDuinne
@Elizabelle:
Corgis (and dorgies) on your FB.
The Lodger
@Really?: She was pretty good in Minions, too.
Trollhattan
@humboldtblue:
Dang, still working a clutch and rowing the shifter–way to go, lady!
Here she is, not quite mowing down a family while driving a Jag.
Mnemosyne
Speaking of Helen Mirren, everyone here has seen The Queen, right? It’s a very compassionate view of a woman who was raised in one kind of media fishbowl and is having trouble adapting to the new media fishbowl that she finds herself in after Diana dies.
Miss Bianca
@LAO: Oh, so sorry to hear it! Great tribute to a tough broad!
Shana
@SiubhanDuinne: Wait, Elizabeth walks around the house (palace, I know, and it’s really big, but still) with her purse?
Trollhattan
@humboldtblue:
Oh, that’s a hoot. “Less dressy, what do you think this is?” Thanks for the link!
Miss Bianca
@SiubhanDuinne: that’s what your minions are for, right? “Stairs? – all right, Guido – you take this one.”
LAO
@Miss Bianca: thank you. She had a great life and a good death. We should all be so lucky!
Trollhattan
@Shana:
Probably like my MIL and needs to have her Werther’s and bingo money at all times.
SiubhanDuinne
@Shana:
I expect it’s so much a part of her at this point that she would feel downright naked without it nearby.
ETA: Or what Trollhattan said.
bystander
Anybody posted Hillary/Bernie Bad Lip Reading? I actually LOLd.
Major Major Major Major
@Miss Bianca: I know there’s some (medical one presumes) context I’m missing/forgetting, but now I’m imagining SD as a Dalek.
SiubhanDuinne
@LAO:
Wow, what a cool-sounding old lady! How lucky you were to know her!
SiubhanDuinne
@Major Major Major Major:
LOL ?
LAO
@Heliopause: A couple of months ago, on a whim, I had a drink at the Fraunces Tavern and visited the museum as well. NY used to celebrate “Evacuation Day”, the day the British were officially kicked out of New York (November 25, 1783). That holiday was subsumed by Thanksgiving. I kind of want to bring it back.
Miss Bianca
@Major Major Major Major: Our beloved SD, Mob Enforcer, took a tumble on the stairs t’other day.
LAO
@SiubhanDuinne: I will never forgot the day my mom called a family meeting to tell us she decided to go to law school. My grandmother was gobsmacked, when she recovered, she asked “How was (my father) ever going to get a hot meal?” To which my mom responded, ” are you under the impression, he gets one now?” But she stepped up like a trooper, driving us to after school activities, staying with us if we were sick, anything we needed.
ETA: hoping you’re feeling better.
debbie
I love that the little ones dress like their great-granny.
Brachiator
@Trollhattan:
Ha! But I think that the Royals famously never carry money with them. They never have to pay. The Queen probably has a Lady in Waiting to handle the Bingo, as required.
PurpleGirl
@Mnemosyne: Good comment on the movie. I’ve seen once in a theater and maybe once on TV.
ETA: The Queen carries her eyeglasses in the purse and sometimes also a lipstick.
Robert Sneddon
One thing to remember is that even at 90 Liz still has the Day Jobbe to get done, the job she’s done every day for the past sixty years and more. There’s a red box of State papers to go through, discussions about the nation and its situation in the world, meetings with people — she meets her Prime Minister once a week for consultations and it’s a wise PM that listens to someone who’s been doing this for so long.
The key role she holds in the British constitution is to be there while democracy changes the government under her, peacefully time after time. That is not an insignificant role.
Mnemosyne
@LAO:
I’m assuming they had a display about you-know-who and the damn fool that shot him attending a party there a week before their duel and acting totally normal.
@Brachiator:
IIRC, that was one of Diana’s things — she would have her boys go into McDonalds and pay with cash money so they knew what it was like. I think Charles kept up quite a bit of that even after she died, because he knew she was right.
Brachiator
@PurpleGirl:
Also James Bond’s phone number. From the Olympics. For a Royal Booty Call.
LAO
@Mnemosyne: It was, to my recollection, Hamilton free. I feel terrible telling you that btw.
MaryRC
@Barbara: Anne didn’t refuse to give her children royal titles, though. She had no say in the matter; the grandchildren through the male line get to call themselves Prince and Princess, but not through the female line. Supposedly the Queen did offer Anne’s first husband a peerage (not a royal title) that his son would one day inherit, but the husband turned it down. It’s possible that Anne was the impetus behind his refusal, who knows.
Mnemosyne
@LAO:
It’s on their website, so you probably just didn’t notice. I was wondering if they had played it up for the tourist trade.
evap
@Mnemosyne: Even better, I saw Helen Miren playing the Queen in The Audience on Broadway last year. The most money I ever paid for theater tickets ($200 each) but worth it.
LAO
@Mnemosyne: I will admit, as an actual New Yorker, I may have been more focused on the drinking part then the history part. ?
Mnemosyne
@MaryRC:
IIRC, legally in that family everyone except the Queen herself (and maybe Charles) was born a commoner. That’s why she gave William the official title of Duke of Cambridge shortly before his wedding — he gets to be called “Prince” to his face, but legally he was not a peer until then. England’s laws are quite different than in most of the rest of Europe.
That’s also why you hardly ever see William’s wife referred to as “Princess” — legally, she’s a duchess (and even that’s only by marriage). When/if William ascends to the throne, they will probably do a whole ceremony to make her Queen Consort.
Mnemosyne
@MaryRC:
Okay, Wikipedia is giving me a slight correction — the children of the Prince of Wales’s eldest son are officially princes and princesses thanks to letters patent from George V and QEII. Harry’s children will not be, because he’s the second son. And Kate still isn’t a princess and won’t be until William is Prince of Wales.
MaryRC
@Mnemosyne: I didn’t know that. I do remember reading somewhere that when Charles and Anne were born before the Queen’s father George VI died, some sort of law or proclamation had to be passed before they could be called Prince Charles and Princess Anne, because at the time they were grandchildren in the female line — even though their mom was the heir to the throne. It’s all very complicated.
SiubhanDuinne
@evap:
I didn’t see The Audience live, but I’ve seen it three times in the cinema during a live transmission from London and two encores. And some TV person, can’t remember now who it was, had a nice long interview with her when it was playing in NYC, and that had several clips from the play. I’m still hoping it’ll be released on DVD. Mirren is just uncannily believable as the Queen.
Robert Sneddon
@MaryRC: The British Constitution has a lot of “make it up as we go along” stuff besides the hard and fast rules which have historically restricted the Monarchy. Many of those rules have been changed, not by legislation but by Orders and other instruments, so the line of succession now includes females as well as males under primogeniture (not something that will come into play soon as the next three suckers in direct line for the throne are Charlie, Wills and George).
Anne was awarded the title Princess Royal back in 1987, as the Queen’s first-born female child.
schrodinger's cat
I wonder how many ill gotten gains from India and the rest of the Empire this little old lady has.
SFAW
@SiubhanDuinne:
OK, thanks for ‘splaining to me.
@SiubhanDuinne:
Or, you could pull a Tommy Udo on that Chuck Windsor guy. Have to get him in a wheelchair first, but stuff like that sometimes “just happens.” You may need to work on your maniacal laugh first, however.
ETA: And now I understand (thanks to Miss Bianca) the “stairs” comment. Sorry to hear about your travails, I hope you’re OK.
J R in WV
@schrodinger’s cat:
Millions and millions of pounds, plus the rubies and diamonds in the state jewelry, plus the estates, the yacht, the palaces, and as much of England they care to have.
I’m pretty anti-monarchist… it’s OK when you get a real human with ethics and morality, but that is not guaranteed by the process. And if you don’t get enough of that, you get the Belgian Congo, etc.
The Raj was pretty harsh, but nothing compared to the Belgian and German colonies in Africa.
schrodinger's cat
@J R in WV: True that. The British were better colonial masters than most, but that’s not saying much.
sinnedbackwards
@SiubhanDuinne: We caught her once at Pizza Hut in Paris, KY, as her car whisked by on the way to Stoner Creek (no joke) farm south of Paris.
We always joked she bred her horses more successfully than her children.
She visited the Bluegrass every other year for a long time. Horses were her passion. She was great friends with Will Farish, who became Shrub’s ambassador.
They were almost all private visits that did not make the news, unless you lived in the Bluegrass.
Xenos
I am not the biggest fan of Annie Leibovitz, but this is an outstanding portrait, worthy of comparison to Velasquez. The use of a very soft natural light as the primary light source is hard to pull off, and I love the composition with the mirrors being off-axis yet giving a sense of profound depth to the picture. And how long does it take to get all the kids posed correctly, while keeping everybody poised? It is really impressive.
Robert Sneddon
@J R in WV: Pretty much everything Liz “owns” is entailed, it’s Royal property which she can’t simply turn into cash and spend like there’s no tomorrow. It’s a bit like President Obama’s ownership of the White House or national parks in the US, not a real thing. She isn’t even the richest noble in the UK, not by a long shot — the Duke of Buckingham owns a lot of the land in the London area, charging ground rents and that brings in a lot of cash every year. Rough estimates of her personal wealth including family properties such as Balmoral run to about £100 million or so, a good chunk of change but nothing in the Bill Gates league.