Word: queens
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Finally, Sawano consistently holds Diana up to the archaic model of "duty and sacrifice" which she claimed that Diana lacked but which Queen Elizabeth and Princess Anne exemplify. Duty to whom? The royal family, entrenched in their notions of duty, have successfully isolated themselves from the British public, to whom their duty ostensibly lies. This fact is as true today it was during World War II. Of course, Queen Elizabeth and Princess Anne do the requisite charities. But do they touch people, both physically and emotionally the way that Diana did? Unlike her royal counterparts, Diana touched people with leprosy...
...since-I-go-to-Harvard-I-must-be-better-than-you condescension which is always obnoxious. She sneers at the princess for being a "giggly high school dropout" and compares Diana to her personal favorites, Japan's Princess Masako '85, who graduated from fair Harvard, and Jordan's Queen Noor who has a pretty Princeton degree in her cache. One does not need an Ivy League diploma to have compassion, nor does having compassion come with being a student of the Ivy League. But then again, Sawano proved the latter condition with her article...
...nightmares of King George III, symbolizing British control over American colonies in the 18th century. Or perhaps we start thinking of the sad genetic malfunctions which run through royal families that are too inbred, a result, ironically, of their hopes to keep their family bloodlines pure. The fact that Queen Victoria passed along her mutated gene for hemophilia to several different European royal families comes up in one biology textbook after another...
Other constitutional monarchs who have not braved crises quite as dramatic as those of the monarchs of Spain and Cambodia, can be successful in their own right by the strength of their personalities. For instance, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, who, aside from being extremely popular for her approachable style, is also admired for her artistic talents and for translating Simone de Beauvoir into Danish under a pseudonym...
...good monarchs are not necessarily good themselves. We rather wish that Prince Rainier's daughter, Princess Stephanie, hadn't gone from one convicted boyfriend to another, finally having two children out of wedlock with her bodyguard, who had another girlfriend pregnant at the same time. We also wish that Queen Margrethe of Denmark's son, Prince Frederik, didn't date lingerie models...