Showing posts with label Royal Lifestyle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Royal Lifestyle. Show all posts

ROYAL LIFESTYLE

Royals often have extravagant vacations, extending from the pristine beaches of the West Indies to the scallop powdery mountains of Austria and Switzerland for traditional skiing. They often do this as a breather from their hectic royal engagements. When they are traveling, the monarch and heirs should not be together in the same flight. In 1983, the tension in the court of England was intense when the 22-year-old Princess of Wales, Diana insisted that she would take Prince William on their extended tours to Australia and New Zealand with Prince Charles, the hazard of the two heirs traveling terrified the courtiers, but Diana wrangled, so the Queen agreed, but that was only once. Today, Prince Charles, Prince William and the Queen never share the same transportation facilities when traveling.

When taking tour abroad, royal family members always have one suitcase for mourning dress in case a family member died during a trip. When the heir to the throne is travelling outside the country, he/she has one suitcase for documents of Accession declaration incase the monarch died at home. This was the case in February 1952, when the then Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh were both in Kenya for a holiday. several days after they left, King George VI died in his sleep in Sandringham estate. Princess Elizabeth's private secretary took the documents and swore the new sovereign before them in a private room of the hotel. She was the first monarch after George I who was not at home in the time of her accession.

Royals did not carry cash, or own a credit cards or pay their own bills. Their finances are managed by the head of their household taking from their civil list allotment. Their toddlers usually never joined in the formal dining area during meals but on the nursery with the nannies. They call their snack time as "Tea Break". They told to wear hats in public (for females only).

In England, values and graciousness are often the standard protocol among elites including the way they wear clothes. For gentlemen part of their lifestyle is shooting and are often lived in country estate and they call themselves "Squire". All British Kings were proud to call themselves "Proper Country Squiremen" and aristocrats judged those who don't know the country life as "morons". George VI was a very conscious man who was too pre-occupied with his clothes than on his games mused by his father George V. In 1946 when Prince Philip was still courting Princess Elizabeth, the King was aghast when Philip did not know what plus four is all about. Plus four is a trouser wore on hunting and shooting, it is 4 inches longer than ordinary knickerbockers. In Britain a man without tweeds or plus fours is a man without breeding. Prince Charles when visiting Scotland always wear a full tartan garb because he is the colonel-in-chief of the gordons of scotland. Tartan garb consist of knee highsocks, plaid kilt and leather sporran.

THE ROYAL PROTOCOL

The rigid class system in Britain clearly defines the invisible barrier that separates royalty from ordinary folks. The Royal Protocol is the standard decorum of the court and strictly imposed in the Kingdom. It refers to the proper flow of the activities of the royals including the discipline, formality and lifestyle. This decorum is the basic guide for commoners how to treat royal family members.

There's also an unwritten rules of "order of precedence" for men and women in the realm that traditionally followed. In the hierarchy of royals and nobles, royals come first with the ruling sovereign as the highest order of human being. The commoners including those royal members should give bows and curtsies when facing the monarch and should move slightly backward when the sovereign is approaching. This royal treatment fascinated the young Elizabeth, when the future Queen was 10 years old, according to the book of Kitty Kelly "The Royals", she slipped from her nanny and paraded back and forth at the palace corridor where the scarlet uniformed guard, clicked his heels, present an arm with his rifle and stood ramrod each time she passed.

The royal engagements should be planned 6 months before the actual date, this is carefully organized by the staff called courtiers, they also determined the kind of speech and audience the royal members should uttered or faced. The audience would not raised questions without the consent of the courtiers. The monarch should be addressed properly with "Your Majesty" and the members with HRH style is "Your Highness". Children of the sovereign would have "The" before their names, example: The Princess Anne or The Prince Charles.

In attending church ceremony, the royal family members occupied seats on the right area of the church and would not be mixed by people without any titles or significant positions in the government. In public sport events, they seated in a specially designated area called the "royal box". During ancient times until the early 20th century, divorce and homosexuals are not permitted to join the royal circles or be in the presence of the monarch. This prompted one reporter to say "It is possible for a divorce person to enter the Kingdom of God but not in the Palaces of Great Britain". In 1953, Princess Margaret was forced to renounce her relationship to Group Captain Peter Townsend because he was a divorcee. But in the early 1990 all children of the monarch (except for Prince Edward who just married in 1999) ended their marriages in divorce and the sweeping changes in protocol occured.

The order of precedence for men in the UK: The highest being the Duke of Edinburgh because he is the husband of the monarch, followed by his son Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales then Prince William because he is the future king then the Duke of York then the Earl of Wessex. Important note: the order of precedence is different from the line of succession to the British throne. This is the order of ranking among gentlemen in the realm. HRH with a Prince title should comes first followed by Dukes with HRH status and Earls with HRH style. For women, the Queen is the highest ranking female, followed by the Queen mother( if she's still alive) then the Princess of Wales (if there is). In the case of Camilla Parker Bowles, technically she is the Princess of Wales because she is the wife of Prince Charles, but she choose to be known as Duchess of Cornwall, taken from the secondary title of her husband, Duke of Cornwall. In the order of precedence in Britain, Duchesses come after the Princesses, so Camilla's ranking is below HRH Princess Alexandra, the Honorable Lady Angus Ogilvy (the Queen's cousin). Presently, the Queen is followed by her daughter HRH the Princess Royal then Princess Alexandra, the Duchess of Cornwall then the Countess of Wessex.