Word: queenly
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When the time comes for British government leaders to recommend the next honors list to Queen Elizabeth II, they might consider bestowing titles of some sort on Mia Farrow and Woody Allen. After all, the noisy bust-up of the American film stars' 12-year relationship served the British monarchy handsomely by shoving off the front pages of frenzy-feeding tabloids the photographs of a topless Duchess of York, a.k.a. Fergie, cavorting poolside with her American boyfriend in the presence of her two royal daughters at a rented St.-Tropez villa...
...monarchy faces no immediate danger. Despite the misadventures of her children and in-laws, Queen Elizabeth is widely revered by her subjects. Few, no matter how republican in sympathies, are talking seriously about tossing Her Majesty out after 40 dedicated years on the throne. Enoch Powell, a former Conservative Party Cabinet minister and an authority on constitutional matters, argues that passing blips like the Fergie photographs cannot hurt the enduring power of the crown because Britain "is not governed by something called the royal family. It is governed by the single person of the sovereign...
Such defenses are technically correct, but they ignore an anomaly that has been introduced into British public life by none other than the House of Windsor itself. As reigning Kings lost their real power, they had to find other reasons for the monarchy's existence. Queen Victoria, who ascended the throne in 1837, settled on an answer that has come back to haunt her descendants. Along with Albert, her beloved prince consort, she buttressed her sovereignty with the admonition that the royal family would set by example the moral tone for the nation and the empire. Collective good conduct became...
...later as Edward VII -- a remarkable womanizer and rakehell by the standards of any era. But George V and George VI, Elizabeth's father, who assumed the crown after Edward VIII's abdication, were devoted family men who publicly upheld their roles as Defender of the Faith. The present Queen, in the 45th year of her marriage to Prince Philip, has never personally attracted a breath of scandal...
Woody and Mia. No last names, please, for the king and queen of Manhattan's glitterati. For a decade they were the wax-doll couple atop a cake at the wedding of popular art and social responsibility. He made, and she starred in, movies that played like fantasies of their partnership. Offscreen, their liaison produced the portrait of an ideal postmodern family. Unmarried, they lived apart yet loved together. While nurturing a rainbow coalition of privileged American kids and children salvaged from the Third World, Mom and Dad lived the city's most public private lives. Tout New York...