"... look good in clothes, and produce heirs who will stay thin, say little and look good in clothes. (Prince Philip was said to have approved of Diana’s entry into the family because she would '
breed in some height.') When something threatens the reputation of a more senior, male Windsor, the women have another essential role: human shield. Has King Edward VIII abdicated and run off to France to be with Wallis Simpson? Let’s be sure to
blame the American divorcée. Has Prince Charles taken a mistress? Blame his mom for not letting her son marry his true love; blame his wife for not keeping him faithful — oh, and
call the mistress ugly. Has Prince Harry declined to perform his family duties and decamped for sunny California? Let’s blame his '
narcissistic' wife for ensorcelling him!"
Writes Jennifer Weiner, in
"How the Windsor Women Became Human Shields" (NYT).
It had seemed, until recently, that "Catherine might become the rule-proving exception, the single privileged Windsor wife allowed to float above the fray." But then something popped in her abdomen.
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62 comments:
I think the solution is to stop buying tabloids and/or caring about this antiquated tradition they call the Royal Family.
Why does anyone care about the royal family of a faded empire? I was in France and Princess Di was in the news. A Frenchwoman told me, “At least we were smart enough to kill our royals.”
"The women have historically served as a combination of brood mares and mannequins. Their job is to stay thin, say little..."
"... look good in clothes, and produce heirs who will stay thin, say little and look good in clothes.
Ahh...the good old days.
Here lies, wrapt up in forty thousand towels,
The only proof that Caroline had bowels.
Alexander Pope, of Caroline of Ansbach, wife of George II
...ensorcelling him...
"She turned me into a newt!"
Here's a novel idea: Don't view a family through the warped prism of a NYTimes columnist.
Henry VIII needed several, because of girth.
Ah yes, the French. They were "smart enough to kill our royals," and then stupid enough to crown an Emperor and Empress.
If you want to believe the aphorism that "behind every great man is a great woman," you have to accept the downside.
The victim narrative just doesn't fit the facts. The family was run by a woman for 70 years (and by Victoria for another 70), so right out of the gate the mannequin insult fails. Edward VIII has been denounced as a fool in his own right ever since he became King. Charles has been hated and mocked all his life, while Diana was universally adored. People hung on her every word and deed. Meghan has agency of her own, and let's just say that she and Harry are perfect for each other.
Keep women, girls, mistresses, understudies, and friends, affordable, available, reusable, and taxable, and the womb banks open to service couplets and infertile couples.
"When something threatens the reputation of a more senior, male Windsor, the women have another essential role: human shield."
My suspicions are confirmed. THEY'RE DEMOCRATS. Nothing is ever their fault. Always, always, always blame someone else.
My mother was very in tune with Royalty. Her grand parents were English. She graduated from High School and went through Nursing college, and severed as an Army Nurse during WWII in Europe.
This is only to identify some of the threads that led to her intense interest. She spent a whole week glued to TV the week of Princess Diane Wedding. An aberration I could not wrap my head around. This was not my mother, celebrity never piqued any interest in her.
Queen Elizabeth is a HUGE deal when it happened. Has there ever been such a world wide event caused by one person, the way Elizabeth ascending to the Crown created?
This is all to say, trying to explain Royalty to today's Americans, is as senseless as trying to teach your pet Calculus.
So having some journalist, pushing their version of Palace Intrigue leaves me cold. 1st, I know enough to understand I know nothing of Royalty. 2cnd, Media types have proven themselves worse the worthless as a source of information and fact.
With all that, it is a bit clunky to sneer at the Royals speaking of Breeding, in some off putting way, when the writer has no concept of how the Monarchy/Aristocracy functions and why. The Monarchy ultimately functions only with a willing populace. So appearances are important.
This is all very detailed and ingrained over thousands of years of history. By contrast The USA is yet to reach an age of 250 years.
And if the XXs were to be brood mares producing good stock, then Elizabeth didn't quite do the job with Chucky and Andrew. And Diana gave the world Harry.
I must agree. Conditions for the royal women are absolutely appalling. Something must be done.
Granted, they don't have jagged scars on their bellies from selling kidneys to keep their kids, but seeing the gapping sockets that once held their souls, well...that's a buzz kill for sure, if you're a royal watcher.
This petty, nasty piece reinforces my picture of the NYT, petty, nasty lefties looking to pull themselves up by pulling others down.
I don't care a thing about the royal family except as a matter of curiosity, but Queen Elisabeth did her job, whatever it was, for decades. She certainly doesn't fit the stereotype portrayed in the excerpt here.
"brood mares and mannequins"
After more than half a century wth Liz II in charge? And Vic before that?
Royal families, no matter where they fall in the powerful to figurehead range, are a big deal and they always have been. There are a lot of perks with being royalty, but there are a lot of responsibilities. This is not only a woman thing. Men have to do all sorts of unpleasant actions to protect the family. Is this fair? By normal standards it often is not fair, but royal families are not normal things.
Royal families that are not willing to be ruthless to protect themselves typically end up as former royal families.
I guess they serve a useful purpose. They're a family you can care about without ever having to get involved with. (Feigning indifference or hostility is also a way of caring.) This is so much less labor intensive than one's own family. ... Here in America we only have the Kardashians. Their scandals are more transparent and lurid, but for that very reason their scandals are less interesting than those of the Royal Family.. Plus, it must be said that although the Kardashians are better looking than the Royal Family, they don't look as good in woolen goods.
How many drought-stricken farmers debts could be paid and their children saved with the cost of a single designer dress that will be worn one time for one forgettable gala?
Who's Catherine? Do they mean Kate? (It literally took me until I started typing this to realize that's probably who Catherine is as I've never heard her referred to as anything other than Kate before.)
My reaction here is, so what? We're talking about royalty and nothing surrounding the protocol of how the royals act and interact has any relevance to virtually anybody else. So why are they shoe-horning sexual politics even into this realm, as though there are larger lessons?
Of course the people who marry into the royal family are expected to fulfill certain needs of the family--provide heirs, introduce good genes, strengthen relationships. And since most of the royals are male, most of the spouses are going to be female. So what?
The real point of this piece, if any, is that it appeared at all. The NYT still feels the need to spin tales of female woe and victimization at the hands of a cruel patriarchy. Obvious facts that undermine the thesis--Victoria, Elizabeth--don't stand in the way. Message: it doesn't matter what women achieve, what power they have, what facts refute the old feminist stereotypes--we'll keep trotting out the tales as we damn well please, the better to solidfy our power.
That's not quite the usual meaning of "human shield", but I suppose it still fits the metaphor.
I think the term the author was looking for is "scapegoat".
Wow, after over 60 years of matriarchal rule; NYT reporters still hold a grudge over events decades old.
Some time back I read a bio of John Jay Rockefeller. He was said to be the richest man who ever lived. On one of this estates, he had his own private golf course. Eat your heart out Donald Trump. Then I read about Nicholas II. He had a private hunting estate that was bigger than the isle of Manhattan. He had several others, but that was the big one. Back then, besides the perks and privileges, royal families had wealth beyond what some grubby bourgie like John Jay Rockefeller or Donald Trump could even imagine. And for all that, they didn't have such happy lives.....The other day there was a discussion about how all children grew up to live unhappy lives. There's something to that point of view.
They use diversity as a foil, but that leaves them open to get hoisted by their own Fani.
What a pointless story, but then, that's the bread & butter for the NYT. All this thin palaver, and not a single mention of the current drama with Prince William, and the absence of Kate from the scene until just a day or two ago. Rumors of infidelity of the most sordid kind, right up their alley! You'd think the NYT could at least be current.
I miss the Queen - she was a class act from top to bottom.
Passing on this NYT material, but I would not trust any comments by Jennifer Weiner regarding weight. I do not know what her other qualification may be for assessing British royalty.
I'd say "We should let Jennifer Weiner work through her feelings over the fact that her dreams of being a princess will never be realized," if I was snarky, which I'm not.
I am directly descended from William the Conqueror. I selected my brood mare for strength, intelligence, stature and beauty.
If a proper poll could be taken, I wonder which sex has done the majority of the ‘woman-blaming’ claimed in this article.
Oh, and in reference to ‘brood mares’, which is the method in which all royal lines are maintained, let’s make the men do it from now on since the current thinking is that men now have this capability.
Have you noticed President Biden’s female shields? The ones shooing reporters away when he does something embarrassing? They’re very impolite. Reporters never address them. I’m assuming they have secret service status. The optics would be very different if males were doing the shooing away. It would look like they were controlling him or that the President was in physical danger.
Kate is a perfect ten by those rules. I suspect William is jealous as hell of her . She better watch her back.
Why do the ginger and his mate still get to be lumped in with the rest of the royals? Is it good for whatever grift they're running from the states?
You have wealth and social status you can get a hot wife. Despite feminism nature perseveres...
Kate looks like she's made out of glass.
The Royals got into the news because the Mother's Day picture sent out by Kensington Palace of The Princess of Wales and her kids had been digitally altered. What I noticed about the picture was that every person in it was smiling the same kind of smile at the same time. The smiles were perfect smiles, wide, happy, friendly, engaging smiles. I called it The Stopford Royals Do Mother's Day. Whoever heard of a family picture where everyone looks at the camera and smiles their best mile? How many of us who know a bit about photo editing have "assisted" a family photo to be all (and more) that it can be? I've added missing people and replaced grimacing children with their better selves. The strange thing about the Royals on Mother's Day kerfuffle is that the fuss is over some minor details while the perfect smiles are just accepted as some thing Royals can do. But if you look back at other family pictures they have normal variation.
Normal Royals
https://ar.vogue.me/image_provider/?w=750&h=&zc=1&q=90&cc=ffffff&src=https://en.vogue.me/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/kate-middleton-pic.jpg
The Stopford Royals
https://imagez.tmz.com/image/27/4by3/2024/03/10/2770ace7b83d40c883749643bdd65f53_md.png
Alleged Photoshopping
https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BB1jG6CL.img?w=1908&h=1146&m=4&q=80
And what I wonder is whether the Stopford Royals were produced with AI. You can replace a rainy day with a sunny day in a photo using a Luminar 4, an old photoeditor I have. Maybe you can import everyone's best smile with newer AI based editors. Why not? Moreover, why not make everyone, not just the women, thin and well dressed? Why not have the Royal carriage drawn by 24 perfectly matched white horses? Why not have Harry and Meghan pictured performing those tiresome royal duties without the bother of performing those tiresome royal duties. And all the pictured peasants pictured applauding? Virtual Royalty in virtual reality - what could be better? Except saving tax dollars by getting rid of the Realies and going completely virtual royal. Live webcams showing their "lives."
We could solve DEI problems the same way.
And we could have a better civil war by doing it virtually so that, while apparently fighting as theory requires, we wouldn't be wounded, raped or starving; we would all be happy going to barbecues, baseball and the lake.
Far from shields, Diana and Markle did their best to trash the RF. Fergie mostly made herself look bad.
Private golf courses were not just a Rockefeller thing as several of the magnates of the early 20th century. Some of these courses were very regarded as they were laid out by the most eminent golf course architects of the time. Most of them are no longer existing but a few found life as public courses.
Other than that what is there to be said about this article other than, as is often the case, it tells far more about the writer's agenda than it does about her purported subject. Envy is not an attractive attribute.
ensorcelling !
“It had seemed, until recently, that "Catherine might become the rule-proving exception, the single privileged Windsor wife allowed to float above the fray." But then something popped in her abdomen.”
You mean like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVZUVeMtYXc
The Inbreds
Hmm. Not even "Sale. Time is running out on our best offer: $1 a week for your first year." compels breaking the paywall. Based on Althouse's extract, subject is spouses of Windsor males not "Windsor Women" proper.
Perhaps "The Misused Wives of Windsor" would be a more appropriate title.
I'll take my shot at Camilla Parker Bowles. She's no Helen of Troy (but that just matches her with about 90% of British womankind as they age). She's more of a Medusa--she managed to make a Prince of the Realm wish to be converted into one of her tampons. You can't get more witchy than that. OTOH Charles is, was, and always will be sort of a doofus.
And if William has become sort of a roaming prince--well I blame Charles for that as well. Apple doesn't fall far from the tree after all.
The devil's greatest trick is to convince people he doesn't exist.
Almost as great a trick has been for the royal family to convince the gullible that they rule over a "democracy"
Yeah, Brits. Have your parliament pass a law that the king doesn't "assent" to.
See how far your democracy takes you then.
John Henry
Why does anyone care about the royal family of a faded empire? I was in France and Princess Di was in the news. A Frenchwoman told me, “At least we were smart enough to kill our royals.”
They've got another Charles, all they need is another Cromwell. Less violent, of course. Encourage him to retire rather than remove his head.
Mrs. Simpson did them a favor by removing their Nazi-friendly king from power.
Markle is the ultimate grifter, and Harry proved his inbred low-IQ by marrying her.
I never understood Charles' fascination with Camilla but everyone has a type, so I can't criticize him.
But Diana was very fuckable back in the day, and watching 'The Crown,' if it is even remotely accurate, seemed to want to make the marriage work.
Kate is an enigma. A very beautiful woman and seemingly smart. The fact that William seems to have a plain-Jane side piece suggests that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree...
'You have wealth and social status you can get a hot wife. Despite feminism nature perseveres...'
I live in a relatively wealthy area. The middle-aged second wives of the rich guys who live around here are not hard to look at.
Thank God for Lululemon : )
And if William has become sort of a roaming prince--well I blame Charles for that as well.
Diana was the slutty one. She had several lovers on her string concurrently in the 80s and hooked up with Dodi Fayed to make Dr. Khan jealous (and test the waters for a Muslim marriage). She took her young sons on trips with Hewitt. She also instigated the recording and release of the tampon phone call by claiming she needed evidence against Charles to a high-ranking intell. man. GCHQ was so embarrassed, they released her "Squidgy" call to a boyfriend to even things out.
"Why does anyone care about the royal family of a faded empire?"
It's AWFLs who have fantasies about being duchesses and princesses. And their beta simps who dream of being Duke of Chicago.
The British Royals ought to be cast out by their "subjects" and the Royals' wealth confiscated and applied to the needs of the people...who pay the Royals' excessive salaries.
"The devil's greatest trick is to convince people he doesn't exist."
We can see proof of that here in the US! "HE" is seen to be exist, of course, tiresomely so, but he is not seen by his faithful in his true aspect.
"Diana was the slutty one."
"Slutty?" How about independent and sorrowfully wised to the fraud of the Royals, and not content to be merely his husband's brood mare, and otherwise as a mannequin.
Elizabeth and Philip were only third cousins, and George V and wife Mary second cousins once removed, so they haven't been tewwibly inbred since first cousins Victoria and Albert.
And then there’s the story of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, wife of King George VI, consequently Queen of England and also mother of Queen Elizabeth II. She may have been a combination brood mare and mannequin, but Adolph Hitler did not call her “the most dangerous woman in Europe” for no reason.
If these women who married in to the British royal family also wanted the serenity of anonymity they choose poorly. The life of luxury and privilege is balanced with certain obligations. Too onerous? Then stay out - heat, kitchen, assemble quote at your own leisure.
Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip were on our ship (USS Ranger CV-61) in 1983. I was part in of the guide and escort staff (I forget what they called it). They were gracious and nice as heck.
Maybe Kate ate Jennifer Weiner.
That would bust a gut.
Wait. Stay thin? Who? Queen Elizabeth? Her mother? Queen Victoria? Princess Anne is athletic yet hardly thin. Dutchess Sarah has knockers and booty. Ditto her daughters. Everyone wanted Princess Diana to put on a few pounds. Meghan Markle is pretty average-sized. Princess Margaret had a two-seater gin-gut.
Projection from a fat, intellectually lazy columnist who has actually blamed her weight problems on anti-semitism.
“Royal families, no matter where they fall in the powerful to figurehead range, are a big deal and they always have been. There are a lot of perks with being royalty, but there are a lot of responsibilities. This is not only a woman thing. Men have to do all sorts of unpleasant actions to protect the family. Is this fair? By normal standards it often is not fair, but royal families are not normal things.”
The Brits have long had a split system, with both a Head of State and a Head of Government. We combine the two. I have long wondered if we would be doing better if we had adopted their split system. But then look at Green worshipping King Chuckles, and figure that we are better off, maybe even with the dementia impaired FJB in the WH. Back on the other side of the Pond, the rule is that you need to work to get paid. That’s where Harry and Meghan ran aground. Anne, roughly my age, has long been known as a workhorse, spending long days, every week, representing the crown, touring the GB, and even the Commonwealth, cutting ribbons, and the like. Kate appears to have taken her duties in this regard very seriously, and more 5han pulled her weight. Throw in an hier, spare, and even a daughter, and not surprising 5hat she is well loved.
"How many drought-stricken farmers debts could be paid and their children saved with the cost of a single designer dress that will be worn one time for one forgettable gala?"
Whoa, Bob Boyd -- your usual comments here make you seem far too wise to fall for this kind of silly Scrooge McDuck economics.
Kate has cancer and is starting chemotherapy, she announced today in a video. She didn't say what kind of cancer. I see the New York Times has closed comments on Weiner's column.
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