When Mary met Freddie
1st November, 2007
|
Time for a Mary update. She's been to Transylvania, weathered another summer holiday with the in-laws and now faces the prospect of a new sister-in-law who looks a lot like her but happens to be French and therefore sounds sexier in the dark.
Mary's time as Crown Princess of Denmark is looking less like a fairytale and more like an obstacle course. The recap: Mary of Bondi Junction goes out on a bender during the Olympics (largely regarded as the best party yet thrown in Sydney). She ends up at a bar largely regarded at the time as one of Sydney's more respectable places to pull, and pulls the Crown Prince of Europe's oldest monarchy, largely regarded at the time as a loveable rogue. First thing any of us hear about it, this unknown Australian is sitting on the back of a yacht racing around Copenhagen Harbour. Mary, not so long ago, was settling in as part of the furniture in Denmark. She'd even cut her hair a bit shorter, according lots of people the chance to speculate on whether she thought that going matronly would help her credibility. Give the woman a break. She probably cut her hair because she was about to turn 35, was raised hearing no-one over the age of 24 should have tresses past the shoulder, was juggling a toddler and just showed up in the stylist's chair one morning and said "cut it". Plus, she was pregnant. And with the greatest of respect to all the pregnant and dangerous women I know (including my wife), that can make one a little bonkers. When Mary married Fred (Frederik André Henrik Christian, Prince of Denmark), his little brother Joachim was married to the terribly beautiful, smart, classy, popular Princess Alexandra. She'd grown up in Hong Kong, knew her way around the cutlery, spoke Danish in no time, delivered two dear little poppet princes and was the ranking glamorous royal female in the eyes of the Danish public, even if Mary technically outranked her. Long story shortened, Joachim and Alexandra divorced in 2005. They share custody of the kids; she retained her huge popularity to such an extent that even when she remarried in March this year she was still to be known as "Her Excellency". Her departure, however, did give Mary the chance to be top dog for a while. Mary also reaped the benefits of being a novelty on the royal scene. But now comes Marie Cavallier, Joachim's new fiancée. She's a French brunette who's managed to handle her new royal connections and her new stepkids (a potential nightmare for any marriage) with equal aplomb. French Marie looks so very much like Our Mary that some newspaper people have to double-check certain pictures to make sure the pair have not been incorrectly captioned. (Not me, though. I'm smart enough to have worked out that Marie has a yappy little white dog while Mary has a border collie, which is a real dog. Google "Marie" immediately if you can't recall her and click on the "images" option.) It would be inexcusably rude to speculate on what influences might have led two royal princes of such an ancient and venerable house to marry matching sheilas, but please feel free to do so in your own time. Mary, if she cares about such things as image and popularity, is about to embark on the ride of her life. In the battle for hearts and minds, she has a couple of advantages: her kids. Marie is new, dangerous and exciting. She faces the challenge of creating the first blended royal family in Denmark in more than a century. But Mary, I think, can take her. There's a lot of good fighting spirit in anyone who went to an Australian state school. |
