Um, "Royalty"

The other day, for no good reason, I was thinking about my visit to the King Tut exhibit at the De Young in San Francisco some time in the mid '70s. I went with "the wife" (Ms. Ché) and her mother, "Gramma." I was very excited to get tickets as it seemed to be sold out. We drove from the Central Valley, at least 2 hours, and parked, I think, on Fulton St. It was whatever the street was behind the museum. And we only had to walk a little way.

Almost as soon as we entered the exhibit, I began to experience an abdominal cramp. Ultimately, I only saw the famous gold funerary mask and a few of the pretty things left in the tomb before I was in such severe pain that I had to leave. I sat on a bench just outside the doors, then lay down on the lawn in front of the museum, groaning. Maybe an hour or so later, Ms. Ché and her mother emerged from the museum and found me outside. I was still in a lot of pain, but slowly managed to get up and hobble back to the car. Thank goodness it was close. We had planned a number of other stops in San Francisco to eat and to shop, but we decided it would be best to drive home instead. I don't remember whether I drove or she did, but more than likely Ms. Ché did while I groaned in the backseat.

I considered this little aborted adventure one of my few brushes with Royalty, in this case the long dead King Tut -- Tutankhamun. I had a book that was published about that time -- still have it somewhere I'm pretty sure -- that detailed the search for and discovery of the tomb and pictured nearly everything that was found in it most thoroughly and in many cases beautifully. I haven't seen anything like it published since. I wasn't able to enjoy or much appreciate the exhibit at the De Young, but the book filled in most of what I missed. The experience wasn't the same, however.

The abdominal pain was nearly gone by the time we got home, and I didn't have another pain like it for many years. I don't remember ever having a pain like it previously, either. So I still ascribe it to the Curse.

Later that year, or perhaps the year previously or the year after, but still in the mid seventies, I remember lining up on a blacktop driveway with about 20 others working where I was in a little town named Solvang in the Santa Ynez Valley awaiting the arrival of Queen Margrethe and Prince Henrik who were touring the area and were planning on spending a few minutes visiting and having lunch with local dignitaries. I don't know how long we waited, joking about tugging our forelocks and whatnot, being lectured on protocol, etc.

Shortly, the motorcade arrived, led by two motorcycle policemen. The Queen and her consort were being driven in what I recall was a white Cadillac 4 door sedan, but it may have been a Mercedes. What it wasn't was a limousine. There were flags of Denmark and the US on the fenders. The car pulled up to the driveway, and the Queen got out. She was wearing a camel colored coat over a blush pink silk dress, though it may have been sky blue. She had a wide brim camel colored hat on at a jaunty angle, wore white gloves, pearls, and simple beige pumps. She carried a matching purse. As she got out of the car, the small crowd cheered, and she waved. The Prince got out of the other side of the car and came around to meet her. He was dressed in a plain suit, gray I think, and he was very handsome in a Scandinavian sort of way. The Queen, for her part, appeared very young and pretty. She waved and waited a moment while a couple of functionaries appeared from somewhere to lead them to the reception line. 

The Queen said "How do you do?" to everyone as she passed by and shook hands with perhaps five or six of those in the line. I don't recall whether I was one of them, though I can recall the feel of a gloved hand on my own. More likely, she shook hands with the missus who was standing next to me. I think she might have attempted a curtsy, but if she did, it was more in jest than not. 

Prince Henrik for his part followed the Queen at several paces behind, said "How do you do" and shook hands with everyone, thanked people for coming, and seemed quite jolly. The Queen stopped and spoke with the half dozen or so dignitaries and then waved to the rest of us and went inside. We didn't see her again.

For an encounter with royalty, this one was very brief, somewhat surprising, and pleasant. I remember we went to have lunch and chatter about it, then went back to work. 

In October, 2021, I revisited that driveway in Solvang. It was cracked and worn and lined with porta-potties and construction materials. It seemed so much smaller, shorter and narrower than I remembered. Had the Danish royal family really walked this path? I guess they must have, as we stood there in a line, tugging our forelocks and being asked/not asked "How do you do?"

Maybe a decade later, Queen Elizabeth paid a call on George Deukmejian, then Governor of California, in Sacramento. I don't recall whether Prince Philip was with her or not. We'd invited her to visit our workplace a few blocks away from the Capitol, but the Palace politely declined. We walked over to the Capitol to see the Queen, and all I recall is a white gloved hand waving a Royal Wave in the backseat of a black Cadillac limousine as it sped by and then the sight of the same gloved hand waving from the balcony of the Capitol behind thick bullet-proof glass. We didn't actually see Herself at all or if we did, it was only the briefest of glimpses.

I think she was wearing a blue dress and hat.

There was a lesson about these monarchs and their manifestations that we could learn from. They present a very carefully, indeed artfully conceived and prepared facade, rather like the stunning gold mask of King Tut, and they may -- or may not -- be pleasant enough when in the presence of the peasantry, but they don't deal with us rabble at all. No, they have People for that. The ones they deal with more or less directly are the "Dignitaries," the Important People, Those In Charge. Or, contrariwise, those with obscene wealth.

No one else except their staff.

It's been this way for as long as there has been royalty, monarchs and such.We the Rabble sometimes get to look on as They pass by, even now and then see them greet the lowly, but they are not really dealing with us at an official or human level. We are at best useful props, but mostly we're not even there.

This sense of "notness" when dealing with the lower orders is commonplace among many categories of the Upper Crust. The rejection of any contact with People Who Don't Matter is not unheard of. But usually it's a matter of separating and isolating oneself as much as possible while being... um, "polite" when contact can't be avoided. Always maintaining one's distance, keeping the lowly at bay.

Though Tut's tomb was raided and looted by Carter and Carnarvon back in the day, there's a kind of democratization in the presentation of the loot to the public. Anyone who could get a ticket could see the exhibits that have traveled much of the world, and the Egyptian Museum in Cairo showed much of the tomb contents for many, many years. 

While he was alive and at his funeral, his person and tomb contents were not for the view of the People. They were a Mystery.

And that is ultimately what all of those who rule us wish to be. Monarchs must have a public presence, but it's a mask. They hide behind the gloved hands and the "How do you do's". What else can they do? What should or could we do about it?

After a while, we might begin to understand how much they loathe us.

Then what?

My mother liked to tell a tale that she was "a direct descendant of Marie Antoinette." I never knew where she got this notion, but when she said it, she adopted a very aristocratic bearing, head high, nose up, chin forward, and spoke in a nasal pitch that was her imitation of posh. No, she wasn't an aristocrat, far from it, though she tried to marry into what she thought were aristocratic families -- well, for America -- and largely failed. But she said her mother's mother was independently wealthy and her mother inherited a fair chunk of money when her mother died. My mother's stepfather, may he rot in hell, then spent it on hairbrained schemes: a motor court and filling station on the Redwood Highway in Willits and then on a very bogus gold mine in Nevada that went belly up when the two "partners" took off with the cash leaving her stepfather to hold the bag, and he just barely escaped going to jail for fraud --- even though he was the main one defrauded. So he lost all the money, his and his wife's inheritance, and moved back to California where he went to work at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, while his wife, my mother's mother, wasted away from untreated stomach cancer -- they were Christian Scientists -- and died in agony a few months later. My mother never forgave her stepfather whom she blamed for her mother's death and for losing her inheritance.'

Much later through Ancestry.com, I learned what may have been part of the source of her claim of Royal descent. My mother's biological father was from a semi-prominent Indiana family that claimed descent from noble Huguenot refugees who settled in Scotland in the 17th century. That was their claim -- passed on to me through a cousin I never knew about who got it from a descendant of my mother's uncle still in Indiana.

I never found a shred of evidence that the story of descent from Huguenot refugees was true, but there was plenty of evidence of rebel Scottish blood coursing through the veins of that family.

Scots and English. Natural enemies united in the United States, raising six sons, maybe not so happily, but surviving and only losing one son to an accidental gunshot wound, and then, of course, losing their black-sheep son -- my mother's father -- to an accident (or maybe not an accident) that cut him in half in a St. Louis railyard when my mother was five years old. 

So it went. My mother was not raised in poverty by any means, but she never had the social status she believed she deserved. She didn't know poverty until she married for the first time. He was a gas station attendant working for her step father -- who always ensured she had "enough" and even gave her a new car in the middle of the Depression. Later her husband became an oil jobber -- selling petroleum products to stations up and down California -- and later still, he claimed to be a vice president for sales at Chevron oil. Was it true? I don't know. But it hardly mattered. He and my mother divorced in 1941, and she struggled for years until she got work at the air base and met my father, scion of what she thought was a rich family in Iowa. Well, that saga will have to wait. 

But this story is already too long. And I'm happy to say the only "royalty" I've found in my ancestry is the possibly bogus story of a Native American "Princess Snowflower" ancestress on my mother's side (she knew nothing of her) and deep in the past, complicated relationships with the Drake family in England. Sir Francis Drake's uncle Sir John was apparently an ancestor, and then there were threads through the British royals through him and his ancestors so deep in the mists of time, Camelot may just reappear in mystery and majesty. 

So it goes....