The Queen is not dead. Long live the Prince of Wales.

When Queen Victoria died at 81 in 1901, her eldest son, the 59-year-old Prince of Wales, became King Edward VII.

Fast forward 80 years. (It occurs to me that the phrase "fast forward" has disappeared from today's world along with "radio dial" and "telephone cord".)

In 1981, when Diana Spencer, future mother of the Duke of Cambridge and the Duke of Sussex, became engaged to Prince Charles Philip Arthur George of the House of Mountbatten-Windsor, the current Prince of Wales, she left her ancestral home in Althorpe and moved into Clarence House, I think it was, in London to prepare for her forthcoming marriage and new role as Princess of Wales.

The person who was assigned to be her mentor, to teach her how to become part of the royal family, to show her the ropes as it were, was the person who, as far as Prince Charles's bedchamber goes, was both her predecessor and her successor, none other than Camilla Parker-Bowles.

Here are a couple of true historical snippets:

1. Camilla's great grandmother, Alice Frederica Edmonstone Keppel, was a longtime mistress of Charles's great-great-great-grandfather, the aforementioned King Edward VII. You can look it up.

2. Andrew Parker-Bowles, Camilla's husband, was an equerry to the Queen. On the wedding day of Charles and Diana, he wore a bright red uniform and a golden helmet amd rode horseback alongside their wedding carriage.

Camilla bore two children to Andrew, a son, Tom Parker-Bowles, and a daughter, Laura Parker-Bowles Lopes.

Since Camilla was cut out of the same cloth as her great-grandmother, Princess Diana once remarked in a filmed interview that "There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded."

As we all know, Diana died in a horrific automobile crash in Paris in 1997. Camilla, whose marriage to Andrew Parker-Bowles ended in 1995, continued on with Charles as before. Speaking of historical snippets, there is a recording of a telephone conversation between Charles and Camilla in which he stated his wish to be her tampon. They married on April 9, 2005. Camilla did not become the Princess of Wales, however. She became the Duchess of Cornwall instead.

Charles is now 71, and is still the Prince of Wales, the oldest one ever. His mother, Queen Elizabeth II, is now 94. She may outlive her own mother, who lived to the ripe old age of 101. Here is a photograph of the blended families with all of the step-siblings on Camilla's and Charles's wedding day in 2005:

If Charles, who is getting on up there and could die at any moment (as could Joe Biden or Donald Trump or you or I), outlives his mother he will become king and the world will remember him as Charles III or Philip I or Arthur I (or perhaps II?) or George VII. If she outlives him, however, then the first child of Charles and Diana, Prince William Arthur Philip Louis, the Duke of Cambridge (or as he is more popularly known, Kate Middleton's husband) would become king.

There is precedent for what I am saying. Before Edward VIII became king he was known as Prince David, and before George VI became king he was known as Prince Albert.

If you became the next British monarch instead of Charles or William, which of your names would you use? I could choose to become either Robert I or Henry IX. I would choose Robert.

Fun fact of the day

I'm sure many of you out there already know this, especially those of you from the British Commonwealth of Nations (kylie and Sue, I'm talking to you, and made a little rhyme besides), and most especially those of you ensconced in the United Kingdom itself, but I didn't know until today that Catherine of Aragon (pictured above), first wife of Henry VIII whom he divorced in order to marry Anne Boleyn, whom he eventually beheaded (Anne, not Catherine), was the daughter of none other than Ferdinand and Isabella, yes, that Ferdinand and Isabella, benefactors of one Cristoforo Columbo, Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, to be exact.

Catherine was betrothed at age 3 to the Prince of Wales, Henry's older brother Arthur, whom she eventually married but it was a short-lived marriage as Arthur died five months later. A few years later Catherine married Henry and became Queen Consort, the exact position in which Camilla Parker-Bowles Windsor-Mountbatten, Duchess of Cornwall, may find herself one day in the not-too-distant future, unless her husband Charles Philip Arthur George, Prince of Wales, should pre-decease his mother, the current reigning monarch, Elizabeth II, in which case she (Camilla, not Elizabeth) will not become Queen Consort but merely the Queen Stepmother, if they let her be Queen at all, which is doubtful.

The preceding paragraphs contain two of my longest sentences ever, but it simply cannot be helped. Well, it can, but what I have written, I have written. I am not in a mood to revise this morning.

It occurs to me that Camilla is more like Wallis Warfield Simpson, Duchess of Windsor, than Catherine of Aragon, being a divorcee and not a widow.

I love all things English except Yorkshire Pudding, whom I merely tolerate, and Mick Jagger. (I’m just pulling Yorkshire Pudding’s leg here; actually I rather like him. Why else would I have included a poem by him over there in the sidebar?)

A fun fact each day keeps the undertaker away.

If you encountered a file called “Carriage with horses” wouldn’t you expect to see...

this?

or this?

or perhaps even this?

When I encountered a file called “Carriage with horses” I didn’t see any of those. I saw this:

(Used in accordance with CC-BY-SA-2.0)

One has to look very closely to find the ear and neck of one black member of subspecies Equus ferus caballus. One. Singular. Horse, not horses. The only thing plural in that photograph are members of the royal family, and I for one thought it was rather rude to refer to the Queen, the Prince of Wales, and the Duchess of Cornwall (whose chapeau brings to mind the late Queen Mother) in that way. Even allowing for the late Joan Rivers’s unkind impression of the Princess Royal, “Carriage with horses” is a definite misnomer.

If you don’t believe that such a file exists, click here.

After examining that photograph in detail, however, I concluded that there must not be a bare head in all of England. Makers of hats and helmets will never go hungry in the U.K.

Edith Head must be turning over in her grave, or a lookback at the royal wedding

Now that the big event is history, check out this Royal Wedding Fashion Report Card (19 photos in all) put together by the folks at Yahoo.

Included are the good (Kate Middleton, Pippa Middleton, Tara Palmer-Tomkinson), the bad (Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie), the bland (Duchess of Cornwall), and the downright ugly (HRH Princess Anne, who, in my opinion, looked like a charwoman gussied up for a day at the racetrack).

The peacocks were out in full regalia as well. The British are always top-notch at pomp and circumstance, but among the men this much spit, polish, brass, and military froufrou has not been seen in one location since the Battle of Trafalgar.

This has been another non-controversial post by rhymeswithplague.

We few, we happy few.

The nuptial day of the new Duke and Duchess of Cambridge is apparently an even happier occasion than we thought. Either that or the groom’s family arrived already sloshed.

In what is surely a stroke of journalistic brilliance, at the exact moment when the next Prince of Wales was saying, “I, William Arthur Philip Louis, take thee, Catherine Elizabeth,” and the eyes and attention of the entire civilized world were fixed on the happy couple, our roving reporter today turned and pointed his camera at another part of Westminster Abbey and managed to capture the reaction of his grandmother, father, and stepmother.

The late Queen Victoria, however, the great-great-great-great-grandmother of the groom, in an attempt to maintain a modicum of royal decorum, issued a statement from beyond the grave through her publicist, saying, “We are not amused.” This is hardly surprising, as she died in 1901 and thus is unable to grasp fully the complexities and nuances of maintaining the monarchy in the twenty-first century.

Sharp-eyed viewers will note that although Her Majesty and the Prince of Wales sat upon exquisite Royal Blue Portable Wicker Thrones created especially for the occasion by Thrones ’R’ Us, the Duchess of Cornwall was relegated to a Royal Aluminum Lawn Chair. The Duke of Edinburgh, typically, was nowhere in sight. Perhaps he slipped away to find more bubbly.