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Royalty

God and the Emperor

The Blessed Emperor Charles and the Empress Zita, King & Queen of Hungary, bow their heads at an impromptu field Mass offered during the Emperor’s second heroic attempt to regain his throne from the traitorous regent Admiral Horthy in 1921.

November 29, 2008 7:28 pm | Link | 6 Comments »

An Imperial Birthday

Gerald Warner has a splendid post over on his Daily Telegraph blog on Crown Prince Otto’s ninety-sixth birthday. Heavens! how time flies. It seemed like only yesterday was his ninety-fifth.

My favorite scene that Gerald mentions is this one:

The first sign the [Hungarian Communist] regime was collapsing had come in a cinema in Budapest when a newsreel featuring European parliamentarians, thought innocuous by the censor, suddenly showed Otto, and the whole audience rose and sang the royal anthem.

Bravo, Budapest. And Hoch Habsburg!

November 22, 2008 8:04 pm | Link | 2 Comments »

Monocled Monarch is the King of Fashion

Put Taft on a raft and forget Mr. Vorster: In terms of well-dressed heads of state, the King of Tonga is one of the last of his breed

It’s an easily observable fact that, in terms of public attire, the heads of state of today generally leave much to be desired, yet the newly crowned King of Tonga (seen right) keeps up the sartorial tradition, not only of his ancestors, but of ours. George Tupou V (or Siaosi Taufa’ahau Manumataongo Tuku’aho Tupou V to give his full name) was crowned just a few weeks ago in a splendid ceremony in Nuku’alofa, the capital of “the Friendly Islands”.

Though Tonga is certainly not the only monarchy in the Pacific — Japan, Australia, and New Zealand are the most prominent — it is one of the smallest and certainly one of the most traditional. So traditional, in fact, that it is on the naughty list of the CIA-linked “Freedom House” foundation. Tonga’s crime? That only a minority of the members of Tonga’s parliament, the Fale Alea, are directly elected. Of the 30 members, 9 are elected by a general electorate, 9 are elected by the nobility, 10 are members of the Privy Council, and 2 are governors appointed by the King. Curiously, Freedom House does not treat the United Kingdom the same as Tonga, despite the majority of parliamentarians being either directly appointed by the Crown or elected by hereditary lords — elected MPs consist of less than half of parliament.

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August 17, 2008 8:14 pm | Link | 5 Comments »

Victoria Day – Fête de la Reine

The Official Birthday of the Queen of Canada

ELIZABETH II will have had, in her lifetime, more birthdays than Methuselah. This is because, in addition to the actual date of her birth, April 21, 1926, she has several different days which are designated as the Sovereign’s Official Birthday. In Britain, her birthday (which is the official national day of the United Kingdom) generally falls on the first or second Sunday in June and is the occasion of the ceremony of Trooping the Colour. Australia celebrates her birth on the first Monday in June with a public holiday, except for in Western Australia, where it is usually either the last Monday in September or the first Monday in October. This is the day when the latest members of the Order of Australia are announced. New Zealand also holds the Sovereign’s Birthday on the first Monday of June. Fiji is now a republic but Elizabeth II remains ‘Paramount Chief of Fiji’ and so a Monday in June is declared a holiday each year to commemorate her birth.

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May 19, 2008 6:00 am | Link | 3 Comments »

La principessa, non la senatrice

Isn’t it a shame that the citizens of Rome & Lazio neglected to choose Princess Alessandra Borghese as their senator? Our favorite inhabitant of the Palazzo Borghese is a sound Catholic, is good friends with the Pope, and was seen from afar during our first pilgrimage to Rome; good enough reasons to get my vote. While the UDC won a respectable 36 seats in the population-based Chamber of Deputies (an acceptable loss of 3 seats since the last election), la Principessa was a candidate for the regionally-based Senate, in which the UDC won only 3 seats, a loss of 18 since the 2006 elections.

Another young royal vied for a parliamentary seat in the recent Italian election, but you will have to wait until the next Norumbega for our little overview of the results.

April 24, 2008 9:57 pm | Link | Comments Off on La principessa, non la senatrice

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