People who get about bump into kings and queens here and there. A problem (in my limited experience) is that the subject royalty is really most interesting on, in brief encounters, is—royalty. If you have five minutes with the king, you are not really interested in his views on the Common Market or even on Star Wars, but you wonder about such things as, How many times in the course of a year does your majesty have to talk about the weather? During my own encounter with Princess Di (at the Reagan White House, with John Travolta), for all her reputation for informality, I took the precaution, in seeking an inanimate subject of common interest, to speak to her about jet lag (she had crossed the Atlantic that day). I gave her my son’s prescription. On hearing it she choked up with wonderfully expressive disgust and drifted off, perhaps to talk about the weather.
My friend Bruce, working at the computer, spoke his sorrow over the news. “It’s like Cinderella in reverse.” The point is nicely made. Cinderella began poor and lonely in shabby dress, was touched by the magic wand, and fell into the royal ball, the prince enchanted by her youth and beauty. At midnight she would flash back to indigence and the torment of her stepmother and stepsisters, but the princely levitation took over, and she lived happily ever after.
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