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.

ANGRY (BUDDHIST) BIRDS

“We are what we think.  All that we are arises with our thoughts.  With our thoughts we make the world.  Speak or act with an impure mind and trouble will follow you as the wheel follows the ox that draws the cart.”  - from The Dhammapada (trans. Thomas Byrom).



  My sky has lately been crowded by angry Buddhist birds, blocking out the sun.  Has anyone else noticed them?

       I’d like to say that I’ve been “working on” resolving my own anger for years, but it would be more correct to say that my anger has been working on me.  I use it in my line of work (frankly, it’s an indispensible component of lawyering), but I know it diminishes me because when I’m angry I’m one-dimensional, merely a tool, someone's means to an end.

 

   
      I’m not a Buddhist, although I used to carry a copy of Thomas Byrom’s translation of the Dhammapada (Sayings of the Buddha) with me everywhere and I found its words and thoughts inspiring and helpful.  Their quiet strength also fit well into and supplemented my Quaker beliefs, which have been my focus (to the extent I have any) for a long time. 


      Years ago, before we became members of our Quaker Meeting and were merely “attenders,” I remember a funny moment during post-Meeting for Worship announcements when one member said that we had received a letter from another church group who asked if they might come and observe us one Sunday because they were experiencing discord at their church and they knew that peaceful Quakers “had it all together.”  We weren’t exactly the most harmonious bunch at that point, but still it was a good group of mature people with some self-knowledge who basically liked each other and were mostly there for the same reasons.  The laughter that greeted that missive bubbled up slowly and was wonderful to share.  So was (and still is) the New Yorker-style cartoon posted in the Meeting’s fellowship room that says: “I am a Quaker.  In an emergency, Please be silent.”

      The most important use I made of the Dhammapada happened a little over ten years ago during a business trip that, at the time I departed New York for Los Angeles, I strongly suspected would result in the company division I worked for being closed down.  Based on events that were completely outside of my control, I knew that this was inevitable, but I also knew that they would find a way to make the ending as unpleasant as possible.  

   I wasn’t disappointed on that score when the call finally came saying that a meeting had been scheduled in my boss’s office for 10 am the following morning, with no agenda being specified.  I read from the Dhammapada (and probably also from the Bible; sections of the Sermon on the Mount come to mind) before the meeting and reminded myself not to allow myself to become angry no matter what was said, because when you’re angry you’re only angry – you can’t really think, react and plan with any craft or precision and you become totally disabled.  

    
   My boss was a stunningly beautiful, intelligent and well-spoken Amerasian woman with a nice smile and excellent fashion sense who was completely out of her depth in her industry and executive position.  Fortunately for her (for a while at least), she had been promoted to run an enterprise that was “too big to fail” in its sector, which produced the illusion that her listing ship was in better shape than it was.  

         

     

     
   Her office once belonged to a former boss of mine who decorated it in Italian Stallion Moderne, but it was now transformed into a sort of contempo L.A. Buddhist shrine (this lady had now become, as a result of marriage and trendiness, an early vocal exponent of “Judaism-Buddhism” or “Jew-Bu,” as I’ve seen it referred to on Facebook), complete with bonsai plantings, cream-colored ornamental screens, flowing water sounds and bookshelves filled with art books and novels.  (I really wanted to ask her whether she found much time for novel-reading at work, but stifled the urge.)  

 

      The end came quickly and was as ugly as I thought it would be.  As the axe descended, I was reminded of the Monty Python skit about the architect who could only design abattoirs and was always thinking in terms of rotating blades, sluices and drainage. But I didn’t get angry and that was helpful at the time.  (Later, I must admit, I became quite angry at times about the events, which was as disabling as it always is.)   Yet as awful as things were for me, when it was over I realized that I was wounded but still living, diminished but not finished.  Meanwhile back in the bonsai aviary, my angry Buddhist bird was undoubtedly flapping and pecking away, cruelly stripping flesh from the next victim’s carcass.

  

  Now, this was a lone bird.  Years passed before the sky darkened, as it has now, with actual flocks of them.  These covens seem locked in the collective belief that the path to heaven (clearly they assume one exists) is that which is paved with good intentions only, and that all manner of destructive behavior, violent acts and cruel speech can be spiritually remediated by tacking a Buddhist coda to carnage’s end.  


      As Homey the Clown used to put it so well, “I don’t Think so.”

NOTE:  For anyone who has had the patience and kindness to read this far, this excerpt (link) from Thitch Nhat Hahn’s Being Peace might interest you.