Just for you, talesin!
There's something about Mary
Prince Fred and Our Princess Mary have shown the Windsors a thing or two - a genuine smile just for starters. Leo Schofield muses. So enthusiastic, so overwhelming, so uncritical has been the reception accorded Prince Fred and Princess Mary that if a referendum were to be held this week there?s a fair chance that Australians would vote for instant affiliation with Denmark. How much sweeter and approachable they seem in comparison with our official royals. She?s pretty, he?s cute, they appear so relaxed and so easygoing, and they give every outward sign of being quite besotted with each other. Better still, they have mastered an art that seems to have eluded the Windsors, from the top dog down: they know how to smile. Not the painful, constipated, pinched supercilious horizontal movement of the mouth that HM summons up occasionally when she?s not bored out of her brain but a proper warm, friendly smile even if it doesn?t come naturally it looks as though it does.Only one of the British royals ever managed to appear so comfortable and relaxed with the public and look where she ended up. One was reminded of that sad princess when watching the former Ms Donaldson in action, as I did last Friday, when she visited a cancer research institute in Sydney. No road closures, no police outriders, no fuss. Her car with a Danish flag in front slid to the kerb, Mary bounced out, slim and sleek in silk pants and white top, her hair a tad red in the bright sunlight, and acknowledged the crowd, a crowd not quite as big as the ones that greeted the young British queen on her first visit half a century ago but mixed, multi-culti and happy. ?Mary, Mary,? they called, willing her to turn and wave. She chatted to kiddies, accepted their small bouquets, looked alert and interested and clearly enjoyed herself. Either that or she deserved an Academy Award for her acting.
All this adulation, this sweetness and light has been a real boon for the tabloids and the women?s magazines. Mary is the new Di. The nation is in thrall to her.
But has this new manifestation of Mariolatory (as Protestants used to describe the Catholic obsession with an earlier Mary) gone too far? One might be tempted to think so, given the gushing of Tony Abbott at last week?s lunch for the Mental Health Foundation of Australia at which the Mad Monk told guests the former Ms Donaldson?s marriage to Denmark?s crown prince was a ?gift to the people of Australia?. Hello.
?I want to thank Princess Mary for reminding a sceptical world of the magic that can be involved in the monarchy,? the federal health minister gushed in a doomed tilt at a speech in the Menzies manner, reminiscent of that famous fawning spiel delivered after dinner on the sixth floor of David Jones in Sydney back in February 1954. ?A constitutional monarchy,? burbled the minister, ?is a marvellously stable system of government and the Crown can be a symbol of stability and continuity in a difficult and constantly changing world. Thank you for what you have done for us and, for our part, I hope we will remember you are not a goddess but a beautiful and incredibly accomplished human being and a great Australian.? Pass the sick bag.
Royals are fine in their place and the Scandiwegian royals are a nicer lot than their British counterparts. Queen Sylvie of Sweden cycles around Stockholm, Mary?s mother-in-law designs for the ballet. They?re normal people with a great sense of their roles as ambassadors for their small countries. They neither maintain nor encourage large parasitic courts. They have no pretensions to being anything other than figureheads, which may be why they are so beloved of their subjects. So it?s a good thing that Mary Donaldson married one of their number rather than a dysfunctional Windsor.
In 1988, the Australian Wool Board sponsored a fashion extravaganza at the Sydney Opera House. The Prince of Wales and his consort attended. She was all animation and excitement but he clearly found the whole thing a colossal yawn and nodded off. Poor unhappy mismatched buggers. He?s with us again, trundling around the country doing his particular new age thing, discreetly pushing his Duchy biscuits and gaining next to zero attention from the media. One might almost suspect that as the haughty Brits only sent a lesser princeling to the nuptials in Copenhagen last May that the jolly young Danish royals are getting their own back by scheduling their visit to coincide with his, thus denying him the oxygen of publicity and a chance to show he?s human after all.
The former real estate agent with the kilt-wearing dad and her tattooed boyfriend are demonstrating that royals can be relaxed, have fun and still be classy and command respect. They can chat with Andrew Denton on Enough Rope, discuss with journalists intimate details of their first meeting. Mary is on record as saying she put her hand down Fred?s shirt to check if he had any chest hair (she doesn?t like it) and found he didn?t. Bingo. Imagine Camilla ?fessing up to that.
Quoted from "The Bulletin" magazine