It is a different world for poor Harry Windsor. He cut himself off from the trappings of royalty with surgical precision. Now he is staring up from a prone position in the self-centred world of Hollywood. No honours, no special branch protection and no money. In California, there is a name for men who live off their wife or an allowance from their granny or their late mother’s estate.
Maybe Harry should not have left Vancouver Island so precipitously. Come to think of it, he could have timed it better when ditching the titles and allowances, over in ol’ blighty. I expect that Canadians might have found something for him eventually. Hollywood is only an answer for his wife. In tinsel town every third person on the street will gladly respond to being called ‘your highness.’
It seems an appropriate topic today, as we celebrate the birthday of Harry’s Great, Great, Great, Great Grandmother Victoria. That woman who suppressed the Brits for so many years is blamed for many failings today. I am sure we can now include Brexit. She did few favours for Canada—having been the one to choose Ottawa for the nation’s capital. And the city has changed very little over the ensuing 150 years.
If Harry had been in Canada today, he would probably have been surprised that it is one of those bank holidays—a Brit tradition. Though with the pandemic, there are no Victoria Day fireworks. Such festivities might have attracted crowds.
Harry, himself, probably attracts crowds of his own. It reminds me of women in Ottawa who are quite open in their quest to add another cabinet minister to the collection of notches on their bedpost. While maybe a little too deep into the fortified wines in a Vienna heuriger (wine bar) one time with an old friend who was a titled Brit and he explained it to me. “My dear chap,” he said to me, as he waved to the various ladies there, “They all want to fuck a British Lord.” I guess the competition would be much stiffer for a prince—defrocked, or not.
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Copyright 2020 © Peter Lowry
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