royalty schmoyalty
my mums side of the fambly are some sort of old titled landed gentry, with country estates and houses in the city and all sorts of vested interests in global commerce. My great gran was married as a commercial deal to broker peace between two merchant wings of the family and the wedding was attended by then tsar of Russia Nicholas II. Unfortunately, this all means jack shit, as the great October revolution took just two years to dismantle 400 years of careful interbreeding and peasant usurping. My grandparents fled post communist Russia to Poland, where they battled against the Germans and Russkies during WW2 before moving to the UK as POWs and whingeing about it for the rest of their miserable lives. Grew up thinking that there was blue blood flowing through my veins until I hit 12 or so and the harsh realities of real life kicked in. Last vestiges are a coat of arms hanging in me mums cottage, and the remains of a dinner service with the crest of said tsar as the hallmark on the bottom - my great grans wedding pressie. Loads of it was thrown into the estate lake during civil uprising, but she rescued her fave cups and saucers, and carried them everywhere - including a forced march across Germany and the subsequent escape and flight through occupied Yugoslavia. Its a funny old world really...
(kaptinkurtz, Mon 7 Aug 2006, 10:21, Reply)