Word: princesses
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...Princess in Misery The notebook item "Princess Diaries" [June 21] said that Japan's Crown Princess Masako is "utterly miserable," possibly because she is not allowed to take advantage of her career experience. When Masako married Crown Prince Naruhito, I was so happy. I admired him for having waited for Masako for six years. It must have been true love. The imperial marriage was a good model for Japanese young people. I wish the Imperial Household Agency [the ultra-traditional overseer of the activities of Japan's royal family] would change, so that the Harvard-educated princess, who worked...
...crown prince, however, has stepped away from tradition and towards modernity: rather than choose another plain virginal princess from an inbred royal family—as his father did when he chose the regal Sofia of Greece, who has produced some ugly, slightly deranged princesses—Felipe elected a modern woman, divorced, in her thirties and with a firm head on her shoulders (she was a successful journalist before assuming her current role as Princesa de Asturias...
...Naruhito indirectly blamed the Imperial Household Agency, the royal family's ultra-traditional official minders, for "negating her career and character." Last week the prince issued a written "clarification" in which he effectively apologized for his comments, but the furor has focused Japan's attention on its unhappy princess, a Harvard-educated former diplomat whose fairy-tale life has become a nightmare. "She is really just a doll in a doll case now," says Toshiya Matsuzaki, a magazine reporter who covers the royal family. "She cannot take advantage of her career experience or do what she wants. The palace...
...Such strains, along with what some Japanese media see as pressure to produce a male heir to the throne from those in the household agency who see that as her only real function, seem to have pushed the princess to the breaking point. After suffering a bout of stress-induced shingles this winter, Masako has lived in virtual seclusion. It's widely assumed that Naruhito and Masako would prefer to live like many modern European monarchs: basically as regular citizens but with nicer houses, cool crowns and invitations to all the best parties. And opinion polls indicate that most Japanese...
Died. Frances Shand Kydd, 68, who had an often turbulent relationship with her daughter Princess Diana; after a long illness; on Seil Island, Scotland. Herself the daughter of a baron and the Queen's lady-in-waiting, she had three girls and a boy during a 15-year marriage to Edward John Spencer. When the couple divorced in 1969, the future princess, then 8, stayed with her father, and later described her childhood as "very unhappy and unstable...