I don’t know what the problems is with Camilla. She looks like many women her age, and like many British women, period. She dresses neatly, is polite, probably uses the right fork. She’s married to her best friend, and she gets along with his children. Can’t we just back off on her? QE2 shows no signs of slowing down…
Forget Mrs Big-Ears. The real question here is why Vicky missed out on Æþelræd Unræd’s real booboo, the St. Brice’s Day massacre of 1002. Also it’s a bit of a stretch for her to call him an ancestor.
Aethelred , unlike Camilla Parker-Bowles, was actually liked by his people and unlike the Prince Charles’ wife, governed England, whereas Parker-Bowles will never be Queen. Remember the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and the abdication.I believe succession will pass to William and Kate.
Although he’s called “the Unready”, his actual monicker, “Unræd”, actually means “ill-advised”. Real historians who prefer accuracy over folk etymology attribute the poor quality of Æþelræd’s reign to the poor quality of advice he got from his Witenagemot.It’s ironic, to be certain, since the name “Æþelræd” means “noble counsel”, the opposite of his epithet.
Nope. She met Charles first and was dating him. Then the family apparently posted him overseas to break them up. She didn’t wait and got married to another guy. He then married Diana, and he and Camilla got back together while they were both still married to other people. There wasn’t anything really keeping them apart aside from his family thinking she wasn’t “suitable.”
Not saying Diana was a saint, but look at the examples of appropriate behavior she was being presented with. If Charles had been a mensch to his family and Camilla hadn’t married the next boy who presented himself, the marriage with Diana never would have happened in the first place.
See, this is why I think royals-watching gets a bit obsessive and a little creepy. We don’t really know these people. We just know the gossip about them. Yet, we take sides and make all sorts of judgements about them based on what amounts to tittle-tattle.
Charles and Camilla were in their early 20s when they met and made the mistakes that led to their separation and his marrying a more “proper” (read: teenage) bride. When he married Diana, she was 21 and she wasn’t even the youngest girl he considered. He first met her when she was 17; he’d previously considered a girl who was 15. And he was 33 at his wedding.
Now, 13 years isn’t that much time, depending on what stage of life you’re at, but there is no question Diana was chosen for her bloodline and her unworldliness, and that Charles was a lot more aware of what he was doing than she was. To then turn around and accuse her of showing poor judgement so that we can excuse the even-more-questionable judgement of her husband and his second wife by saying they were too young at the time, when they were actually a few years older than she was, strikes me as bizarre. I’m willing to give Charles and Camilla a pass for being intimidated by older relatives when they were still practically kids, but that just makes what they did to Diana even worse. And it’s a little creepy how much you can google on these three in five minutes or less.
Of course, ultimately, it doesn’t matter to me or to any of those who obsessively read this stuff as some sort of real-life fairy tale with clear-cut good and bad. It’s easy to point fingers when you have no emotional involvement. Myself, I think it’s not my place to decide whether or not Charles and Camilla should get to enjoy their old age together. But I don’t think it’s necessary or appropriate for total strangers to blacken the name of Diana or anyone else they’ve never met, just to feel okay with a messy domestic situation that isn’t any of their business, either.
BE THIS GUY over 12 years ago
Camila isn’t a monarch, yet.
margueritem over 12 years ago
SNERK!
el8 over 12 years ago
and she still looks like a horse!
slug_queen over 12 years ago
I don’t know what the problems is with Camilla. She looks like many women her age, and like many British women, period. She dresses neatly, is polite, probably uses the right fork. She’s married to her best friend, and she gets along with his children. Can’t we just back off on her? QE2 shows no signs of slowing down…
Coyoty Premium Member over 12 years ago
Ethelred sounds like the inspiration for Blackadder.
Richard Howland-Bolton Premium Member over 12 years ago
Forget Mrs Big-Ears. The real question here is why Vicky missed out on Æþelræd Unræd’s real booboo, the St. Brice’s Day massacre of 1002. Also it’s a bit of a stretch for her to call him an ancestor.
Linguist over 12 years ago
Aethelred , unlike Camilla Parker-Bowles, was actually liked by his people and unlike the Prince Charles’ wife, governed England, whereas Parker-Bowles will never be Queen. Remember the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and the abdication.I believe succession will pass to William and Kate.
vwdualnomand over 12 years ago
isn’t the current british monarchs descended from the germans?
Domhan over 12 years ago
I absolutely love the Queen Vicky strips that give us a history lesson…with a punch line. Keep ‘em comin’!
peachyanddanny over 12 years ago
Bill Murray cleaned up the font.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPxiXGr9nFM
runar over 12 years ago
Although he’s called “the Unready”, his actual monicker, “Unræd”, actually means “ill-advised”. Real historians who prefer accuracy over folk etymology attribute the poor quality of Æþelræd’s reign to the poor quality of advice he got from his Witenagemot.It’s ironic, to be certain, since the name “Æþelræd” means “noble counsel”, the opposite of his epithet.
thesnowleopard Premium Member over 12 years ago
Nope. She met Charles first and was dating him. Then the family apparently posted him overseas to break them up. She didn’t wait and got married to another guy. He then married Diana, and he and Camilla got back together while they were both still married to other people. There wasn’t anything really keeping them apart aside from his family thinking she wasn’t “suitable.”
Not saying Diana was a saint, but look at the examples of appropriate behavior she was being presented with. If Charles had been a mensch to his family and Camilla hadn’t married the next boy who presented himself, the marriage with Diana never would have happened in the first place.
thesnowleopard Premium Member over 12 years ago
@Whitecamry
See, this is why I think royals-watching gets a bit obsessive and a little creepy. We don’t really know these people. We just know the gossip about them. Yet, we take sides and make all sorts of judgements about them based on what amounts to tittle-tattle.
Charles and Camilla were in their early 20s when they met and made the mistakes that led to their separation and his marrying a more “proper” (read: teenage) bride. When he married Diana, she was 21 and she wasn’t even the youngest girl he considered. He first met her when she was 17; he’d previously considered a girl who was 15. And he was 33 at his wedding.
Now, 13 years isn’t that much time, depending on what stage of life you’re at, but there is no question Diana was chosen for her bloodline and her unworldliness, and that Charles was a lot more aware of what he was doing than she was. To then turn around and accuse her of showing poor judgement so that we can excuse the even-more-questionable judgement of her husband and his second wife by saying they were too young at the time, when they were actually a few years older than she was, strikes me as bizarre. I’m willing to give Charles and Camilla a pass for being intimidated by older relatives when they were still practically kids, but that just makes what they did to Diana even worse. And it’s a little creepy how much you can google on these three in five minutes or less.
Of course, ultimately, it doesn’t matter to me or to any of those who obsessively read this stuff as some sort of real-life fairy tale with clear-cut good and bad. It’s easy to point fingers when you have no emotional involvement. Myself, I think it’s not my place to decide whether or not Charles and Camilla should get to enjoy their old age together. But I don’t think it’s necessary or appropriate for total strangers to blacken the name of Diana or anyone else they’ve never met, just to feel okay with a messy domestic situation that isn’t any of their business, either.