Happy Holidays!!

I'd like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Please note that I will be away until January 3rd and I will not be updating my blogs during that time. In the interim, my archives are chock full of interesting, funny, and informative articles, like this one.

Also, there will be no Royal Report on December 30th. The show will resume on January 6th, 2008 (2008, can you believe it?).

The topic will be: Why do the royals complain about their lot in life? Should they complain or is it just another day at the office for them?

Thanks for visiting.

© Marilyn Braun 2007

The Royal Report for Sunday December 23rd, 2007 - Should Kate Middleton be picking up after Prince William?

Upcoming Royal Report - Should Kate be picking up after Prince William?

A recent news story shows photos of Kate picking up pheasants for William. But should she be picking up after him?

Tune in to The Royal Report on Sunday December 23rd.

This show will be broadcast at a special time - 11:00AM PST (2:00PM EST)


© Marilyn Braun 2007

Royal Children Trivia

In honor of the birth of a son to The Earl and Countess of Wessex, some royal trivia.

Did you know...

• Peter and Zara Philips are the Queen's only untitled grandchildren.

• Peter Philips was the first royal baby to be born a commoner in more than 500 years.

• Peter Philips is the first grandson of a British sovereign to be born in a hospital.

• Prince William is the first direct heir to the throne to be born in a hospital.

• Princess Beatrice's date of birth 8/8/88 is considered to be extremely lucky in the Chinese calendar.

• Except for Princess Anne, the Princess Royal , all of the Queen's children have been born at Buckingham Palace. Princess Anne was born at Clarence House.

• Princess Eugenie of York, daughter of Prince Andrew, Duke of York, was the first royal baby to have a public christening. This occured during morning service at St. Mary Magalene, Sandringham, in December 1990.

• In 1960, Prince Andrew was the first royal baby born to a reigning British sovereign since 1857.

• The Duke of Edinburgh and the Queen are both great-great-grandchildren of Queen Victoria.

• Princess Margaret was the first royal baby, so close in the line of succession, to be born in Scotland since Charles I in 1600.

• Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, was born on a dining room table.

© Marilyn Braun 2007

Related articles

Royal Christenings
Royal Baby Names
Royal Baby Boom
Royal Births

The Royal Report for Sunday December 16th, 2007 - Royal Collectibles

Upcoming Royal Report - Sunday December 16, 2007

Join me for tonight's Royal Report 5:00PM PST (8:00PM EST).

The topic will be Royal Collectibles. What do you collect? Why do you collect?

A Royal Gratitude Meme

I've been tagged in a few blog memes over the last few years but I almost never participate. Why? Because usually the topic of the meme is not relevant to my blog's subject. I don't really think that people want to visit my blog to read about the "10 least known things about me." So I don't detour because my royal blogs are exclusively about royalty and a meme just isn't part of that.

But in this case, I'm going to make an exception.

I belong to a writing community called Absolute Write and currently I am participating in a comment chain; 14 blogs - 7 days to comment on each of them. It's fun, interesting and it can start some interesting discussions, not to mention discovering new blogs. One particular blog called The Writer's Round-About has a post called A Gratitude Meme where she shows gratitude towards various people. I'd like to do the same.

For my husband Karl. While he may not always understand my interest in royalty or my show, he realizes that these things are important to me and asks about my writing, encourages me to enjoy it, and takes care of the kids when I'm doing my show, The Royal Report.

To all the other royal blog owners out there. Each of your blogs brings a different perspective to a subject we share a passionate interest in. It's good to know I'm not alone.

To Cinderella, owner of the World of Royalty website, World of Royalty Blog, Royal News blog, World of Royalty Network and for contributing to the success of The Kate Middleton Report. You gave me the idea to create Marilyn's Royal Blog, you were the first person to comment on it and you have been extremely supportive of it and the rest of my royal projects. I can't thank you enough for that.

To the people who comment on this blog, particularly Claudius. Your comments are wonderful and I look forward to them.

To all of the people who visit from around the world, I appreciate your visit. And I hope that you will return and find this blog a good resource for your interest in royalty. Feel free to say Hi every once in a while.

To June who emails questions and keeps me on my toes with challenging ones.

To all of the people who have given me positive feedback about my blogs and my show. It's very encouraging to know that people are reading, enjoy what I write, and enjoy my show.

And last but not least, to the British Royal family who continue to provide me with material. Keep up the..err..great work!

© Marilyn Braun 2007

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Like royal books? Visit Marilyn's Royal Bookstore!
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The Royal Report for Sunday December 9, 2007 - Is Kate Middleton qualified to marry into the royal family?

Upcoming Royal Report - Sunday December 9th

Join me for the next Royal Report on Sunday December 9th 5:00PM PST (8:00PM EST).

The topic will be: Is Kate Middleton qualified to marry into the royal family? Is it no longer enough to be beautiful and wear stylish clothes?

Can Prince Charles handle becoming King?

Periodically you will see a variation of this question in media articles, usually when there's no news to report. However, by asking this question I'm not trying to follow the crowd.

I hope that the Queen will live a long time because I'm not sure that Prince Charles is up to the task. Let me clarify this. The Queen sets a good example of staying above the fray when it comes to political issues and controversial topics. Prince Charles on the other hand, does not. According to his official site, he actually sees his role as being able to highlight today's issues, bringing them to the forefront.

'And being Prince of Wales produces more freedom now, and being King would be a little bit more suffocating. And because I know the character I would think that the top job, as I call it, would bring enormous limitations to him, and I don't know whether he could adapt to that. ' Diana, Princess of Wales Panorama Interview

Note that when Diana said, in her much quoted Panorama interview, she hit the nail on the head. Many saw this as evidence that Charles should not become king. But it was true then as it is true now. Will Charles be able to reign in his tendency to wade in to the fray? Remain strictly neutral with political matters, as the sovereigns role clearly demands and requires?

In his time as Prince of Wales, Charles has spearheaded many initiatives and been a catalyst for change. On the other hand, he has also caused a ruckus with his comments. A rather notable example of this is his speech criticizing architectural changes to historical buildings. Can you imagine the queen doing this?

His father Prince Philip is no stranger to saying controversial things. Maybe Prince Charles is more like his father than he realizes. But unlike his father, he was born to become king. His role, like his father, is undefined. In a sense, it's what you make of it. As consort to the Queen, Prince Philip has a certain freedom in his actions. Where what he says or does ultimately has no bearing on the future of the nation. Prince Charles as monarch, taking a stand, could be seen to confer an unfair advantage on the issue he takes the side of. While it is nothing new to hear political figures do this during elections to win votes, Charles is not running for office or trying to gain popularity. He has a captive audience; albeit one whose loyalty seems to diminish each year.

After all of these years could we accept a monarch's change of style? Does limiting his natural outspoken tendencies adhere to a tradition that is antiquated? Most monarchs have followed the traditional script. The last monarch to want change was King Edward VIII when during a visit to depressed Coal mining villages in Wales he said, "something must be done." While possibly feeling for the cause he stopped short of doing anything. Had he not abdicated it's interesting to ponder just how he might have changed things. Would the monarchy be different from what we know it today?

Will Prince Charles go with the traditional script as those before him? Does he have a choice?

Time will tell.

© Marilyn Braun 2007

Maybe breaking into song wasn't such a good idea?

On my internet talk show, The Royal Report, I'm constantly looking for ways to make the show better. I have no illusions that it will become as popular as some of the featured shows on the nowlive site, but I can dream.

This past broadcast, December 2nd, listener mail, I thought I would answer someone's question in song. While the idea entertained me up until I did it, I'm not entirely sure it was such a good idea. Seeing the 9 people who have so far listened to the show makes me cringe. Don't get me wrong, I love it when people listen to my shows but in this case maybe I went too far with it. Or so I think.

I'm going to let you in on a little secret - while the song may not have shown me to my best advantage, and as I said on the show, I'm not a classically trained lounge lizard singer, I do know how to sing.



So maybe it's not that I sang, but the quality of it in this instance. After all, who knows, maybe a record executive of a major label will listen to this and pass on it because they don't like the lounge lizard style. What a missed opportunity!

Prior to doing the show I did not practice the song. I thought I would just go where the song took me. And it took me nowhere. Now not only do I have no record contract, but I have no end to the feeling that I just made a fool of myself. Of course it's all in the name of entertainment. The cardinal sin of any podcast, or any form of entertainment, is being boring. I have a problem with taking the subject of royalty seriously at times. So it's natural for me to look at it humourously - as I mentioned in another post, doing so is in my veins. And that's what The Royal Report is about; being entertaining. Even if I do sometimes make a fool of myself in the process.

© Marilyn Braun 2007

Love takes a long time written by Roger Knox ©

The Royal Report for Sunday December 2, 2007 - Listener Mail

© Marilyn Braun 2007

Upcoming Royal Report - Listener Mail

The next Royal Report will be on Sunday December 2nd, 2007.
5:00PM PST (8:00PM EST)

The Royal Report for Sunday November 25, 2007 - Has Kate Middleton become a royal doormat?

Upcoming Royal Report - Has Kate Middleton become a royal doormat?

Listen to the next Royal Report on Sunday November 25th, 2007 5:00PM PST (8:00PM EST).

The topic will be: Has Kate Middleton become a royal doormat?

www.nowlive.com/marilynbraun

Has Prince Albert made accountants sexy?

Until a year ago, I'd always thought of Prince Albert of Monaco as rather boring. Sandwiched between his tabloid worthy, multi-married sisters, Princess Caroline and Princess Stephanie, he seemed to be a contrast. Whereas they were wild, "Albie" as his mother nicknamed him, seemed laid back and calm. You could almost compare him to his mother, the late Princess Grace, in temperment. But without his mother or sister's glamour, he was just a balding, middle-aged man in a suit, appearing no different than the balding, middle-aged, workaholic accountant in your neighborhood.

Not that Prince Albert didn't have his share of rumours and tabloid interest. He's been linked with Claudia Schiffer, and labelled a playboy. The bigger rumour seems to be his sexuality. After many years of playing the field, one would have thought that he would have settled down. It's only in the last two years that he's come out of the shadow of his sisters. His succession in April 2005 made him headline news, sandwiched as it was between the more newsworthy death of Pope John Paul II and Charles and Camilla's wedding. But it wasn't until a few months after that event that he came into his own right with the news that he was acknowledging a child he had fathered out of wedlock, Alexandre Coste.

Were this some other dynamic public figure, it may have come as no surprise.For mild mannered, accountant-like Albert, it was different and his decision to step up to the plate was rather unique in an age where public figures try to keep controversial aspects of their lives private. Prince Albert is no ordinary public figure but a ruler, with not one illegitimate child to his name but two, Jazmin Grace Grimaldi. Now that he has a steady girlfriend, Charlene Wittstock, rumours of his sexuality have been replaced by marriage rumours. And despite having two illegitimate children, his image seems to have improved instead of diminished.

At least in my case it has. I'll never look at the accountant next door in the same way again.

© Marilyn Braun 2007

Royal Review - The Grace Kelly years, Princess of Monaco

This may or may not be a good quality to have. I have a habit of buying things sight unseen or unheard. For example, if a new album comes out by Seal or Robbie Williams, I will buy it before I've even heard a note. The same with books. Well, some books anyway...If a book comes out, say on Prince Charles, I won't immediately order it. However if the book is about Diana, the Queen, or in this case Grace Kelly, I will automatically buy it. I'm rarely if ever disappointed, so maybe this isn't such a bad quality after all.

One disadvantage to being in Canada is that royal exhibits rarely come here. Sure we had the exhibit of Diana's dresses in 1998 and the Diana: a celebration exhibit came in 2004, but I had to originally travel to Althorp to see it. I missed out on the Queen's 80th birthday and the Royal wedding exhibits at Buckingham Palace. While it isn't the same as seeing them in person, luckily I have two books to compensate for that. This time I'm missing out on the Grace Kelly exhibit in Monaco. September 14, 2007 marked the 25th anniversary of her death and this exhibit pays homage to her. At least I have a book to console me for being on the wrong continent.

The Grace Kelly Years, Princess of Monaco is a unique book in that, unlike many exhibit books, it's comprehensive. One frustrating thing that I've found from exhibit books is that they usually offer only part of the display - mainly the highlights - thus leaving me wanting more. The same cannot be said of this book. If after 304 pages you haven't learned something new about her, read it again.

Authorized by the royal family with items from the palace archives, this book doesn't offer sensational details of her life. It presents her in context of her life as Grace Kelly, the girl from Philadelphia, to movie star to Princess of Monaco. The objects on display are charming: her scrapbook containing items from significant moments of her youth - gum wrappers, matchbook covers, napkins, and movie tickets. These mementos reveal a sentimental side obscured by the 'ice-queen' descriptions during her acting career.

This book is a love letter to her memory by the only people who are truly authorized to do so - her children. In life she was a private person, so there's a sense of generosity in allowing us a glimpse of previously unseen family snapshots, letters, love notes, stills from family movies, and jewels, including her engagement ring. Less private, but no less interesting are advertisements from her modelling days, the dresses she wore when she won her Oscar, and at her civil wedding ceremony.

Interestingly, at her wedding in 1956 there were no royal heads of state in attendance. When she died, representatives from royal houses came in numbers to pay tribute to a woman who was more than just a beautiful woman, but someone who had surpassed it and become a much loved and respected figure on the world stage. Like Grace Kelly: A Life in Pictures this book gives us a glimpse of a remarkable woman who 25 years after her death, still continues to fascinate.

Click here to order this book

© Marilyn Braun 2007

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Like royal books? Visit Marilyn's Royal Bookstore!
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Royal Wedding Trivia

In honor of the Diamond wedding anniversary of The Queen and Prince Philip on November 20th. Some royal wedding trivia.

• The Queen is the first British monarch to celebrate a Diamond wedding anniversary

• This was the first and only time in British history that an heir presumptive to the throne had been married.

• The Queen was the 10th member of the Royal family to be married in Westminster Abbey.

• An identical copy of her wedding bouquet was made and presented to The Queen on her Golden wedding anniversary in 1997.

• The two Royal kneelers, used during the wedding service, were covered in rose pink silk. They were made from orange boxes, due to war time austerity, and date stamped 1946.

• Trumpet fanfares were introduced for the first time at a Royal wedding in the Abbey.

• The Duke of Edinburgh is only one of a few consorts to reigning female Queens in British history

© Marilyn Braun 2007

Original trivia source: Official site of the British Monarchy

Related articles:

Royal Weddings
Royal Wedding Dresses
Royal Engagement Rings

Upcoming Royal Report - Sunday November 18th, 2007

The next Royal Report will be on Sunday November 18th.

5:00PM PST (8:00PM EST)

The topic will be Royal Scandals - Does it make the royal family more interesting?

You can listen to the podcast here.

Question: Untitled royal children

Cynthia writes...

Would love your take on royals who don't grant their children the same privilege - such as Princess Anne's children.

Thanks for your email. I've always felt that it was somewhat unfair to children of royalty to deny them what I would regard as their birthright. But as Princess Anne's children are in the female line, they were..never entitled to a royal title in the first place. She is said to have even rejected an offer from the Queen for her children to have noble titles. So Princess Anne's son was actually the first grandchild of a British sovereign to have no title whatsoever; from birth he was known as plain Master Peter Philips. Princess Anne's children are, incidently, the Queen's only untitled grandchildren.

Royal titles pass through the male line but there are restrictions on this. Because of Letters Patent issued on December 11, 1917 when King George V:

" restricted the style "His (or Her) Royal Highness" and the titular dignity of "Prince (or Princess) of Great Britain and Ireland" to the children of the Sovereign, the children of the sons of the Sovereign, and the eldest living son of the eldest living son of a Prince of Wales.

There is an exception to this. As I've mentioned, royal titles do not go through the female line; unless there are special circumstances. One such rare instance applied to the Queen when she was Princess Elizabeth. In November 1948 she was expecting Prince Charles and it was discovered that her children would not automatically become HRH Prince/Princess upon their births as they would be grandchildren in the female line. Therefore his Grandfather King George VI issued letters patent on October 22, 1948 so that all children of Princess Elizabeth would have royal titles.

A more recent example and one that has divided royal watchers is the daughter of Prince Edward, The Earl of Wessex - Lady Louise Windsor. She is the grandaughter of a sovereign in the male line, therefore she is entitled to be called HRH Princess Louise of Wessex. However, at the time of his marriage, the Earl decided that any children born to him would not have HRH Prince/Princess titles. They would have titles as the son/daughter of an Earl - Viscount/Lady. Interesting to note that although this was decided, Letters Patent have never been issued to change this, therefore she could in effect, choose to be known by her rightful title at any point in the future. I understand why it was done, I can respect the decision to try to give their daughter a normal life, but by doing this she is denied her birthright. There were some reports that Prince Andrew's daughters Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie would lose their royal titles and become Lady Beatrice and Lady Eugenie Windsor instead. Whether this is true or not, Prince Andrew decided that because they are male line grandchildren and entitled to royal status, it would be unfair to take their titles away from them.

While the relevance of titles in todays world seems to be reducing - meaning that being known as HRH Prince/Princess, especially if you're not the direct heir, is somewhat meaningless. But with a shortage of royal princesses, and princes for that matter, I don't see why having one more, in this case Louise, should matter. In effect the royal family would be reducing their royal titles to nothing, which I think is somewhat sad because it places the burden completely on Prince William and Prince Harry. What happens if they don't marry? Or die before having children? Hopefully we'll never have to find out.

© Marilyn Braun 2007

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Like royal books? Visit Marilyn's Royal Bookstore!
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