NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS, HERE'S THE UPDATED ORDER OF PRECEDENCE

The Queen tells the Duchess of Cambridge to curtsy to the 'blood princesses’

By Richard Eden, The Telegraph

7:30AM BST 24 Jun 2012

   The Duchess of Cambridge may be the future queen, but she has discovered that there are several women in the Royal Family to whom she must show reverence.  Mandrake [1] hears that the Queen has updated the Order of Precedence in the Royal Household to take into account the Duke of Cambridge’s wife. 

   The new rules of Court make it clear that the former Kate Middleton, when she is not accompanied by Prince William, must curtsy to the “blood princesses”, the Princess Royal, Princess Alexandra, and the daughters of the Duke of York, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie.

   When William is with her, Kate does not need to bend the knee to either of them, but she must curtsy to the Prince of Wales, the Duchess of Cornwall, the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh.

   Despite being married to the Queen’s son, the Countess of Wessex will, however, have to curtsy to Kate, even when William is not present. 

 

Edward Ferrero (1859):  Illustrating the three-count curtsy.  From The Art Of Dancing, New York, 1859.

   “Updating the Order of Precedence has been a simple matter of following the precedent set when the Prince of Wales married Camilla Parker Bowles,” a courtier tells me.

   A document is said to have been circulated privately in the Royal Household, clarifying Kate’s status. When the Order was last updated, after Prince Charles’s second marriage, in 2005, the Countess of Wessex was reported to be upset that she now had to curtsy to Camilla. “She didn’t like it one bit,” a senior courtier was quoted as saying.

   The Earl of Wessex’s wife had previously been the second-highest ranking woman in the Royal family because neither of the Queen’s other sons, Charles and Prince Andrew, were married. 

Truly penny dreadful

   The Order of Precedence affects other aspects of royal protocol, such as who arrives first at an event. For example, Camilla was forced to wait in the drizzle outside the Guards Chapel, Windsor, for the arrival of Princess Anne at a memorial service in 2006, because Charles had not accompanied her. A Buckingham Palace spokesman declines to comment.

   However, after Charles remarried, the Queen changed the Order of Precedence “on blood principles” so that neither Princess Anne nor Princess Alexandra, the granddaughter of George V, would have to curtsy to Camilla when her husband was not present.

   Although the etiquette may seem arcane, it is taken very seriously by the Royal family, whose members bow and curtsy to each other in public and in private. A vivid illustration came after the Trooping the Colour ceremony last weekend, when Kate could be seen curtsying to Prince Philip on the balcony of Buckingham Palace. 

Thomas Hillgrove (1863):  Illustrating the four-count curtsy.  From A Complete Practical Guide To The Art Of Dancing, New York, 1863.

   The Order of Precedence affects other aspects of royal protocol, such as who arrives first at an event. For example, Camilla was forced to wait in the drizzle outside the Guards Chapel, Windsor, for the arrival of Princess Anne at a memorial service in 2006, because Charles had not accompanied her. A Buckingham Palace spokesman declines to comment. 

[1]  For those who do not regularly  read The Telegraph, “Mandrake” is a news/gossip column edited by Tim Walker.

   NOTE:  It must be the heat and the phone calls not being returned prompting  this murderous mood and desire to confront discourteously this story about royal curtsies (to whom one must curtsy; when; why) and the updated Royal Household Order of Precedence.

   A curtsey (also spelled curtsy or courtesy), as most people learn in childhood, is a traditional gesture of greeting, in which a girl or woman bends her knees while bowing her head.  It is the female equivalent of male bowing in Western cultures. Miss Manners characterizes its knee bend as deriving from a "traditional gesture of an inferior to a superior." The word "curtsy" is a phonological change from "courtesy" known in linguistics as syncope.

  With Europe failing, China slowing, Americans at daggers with their countrymen, and Hugo Chavez in as incurably a bad mood as I am (only Vladimir Putin seems to be enjoying himself lately), the revised “according to Hoyle” of curtsies (“in public and in private”) seems extraordinarily stupid today.  

  I remind myself, then, that Queen Elizabeth II is probably the only person alive who knows who killed JFK and the secrets of Roswell, so I forgive her a lot and I would like to think that this may be her idea of humor.  But sometimes I wonder whether THIS   might also be.

A lovely young girl curtsying and presenting flowers to Queen Elizabeth II during her 1954 visit to Brisbane, Australia.