Royal Pain

I'm so confused. I can only half understand things that are going on in my life. Here's what happened: I watched a Lifetime movie about Kate and Wills. As in Middleton and of Wales. Now I can't tell fantasy from reality. Example: last night Mr. V and I started smacking each other--imagine us doing it playfully, if you like--with kitchen utensils over burning cabbage and boiling mustard sauce in our tiny kitchen. "Oh!" I thought. "This is just like that time that Kate smacked the Prince of Wales over the burnt lasagna!". Then it occurred to me that I don't actually know if that happened, I only saw it on a Lifetime movie where some things were from the tabloids and others, I suppose, weren't, and now part of me feels like I might actually know Kate and Wills? But I'm pretty sure I don't.

Other events whose veracity I find cause to doubt: Did Wills really say, "I know, right?" when he and Kate were talking about the Chilean children? Would Harry really impishly refer to himself as "the spare, not the heir"? Did Kate Middleton make a joke about a gnome in her underwear and is her life actually plagiarized from "The Princess Diaries", really? Did I actually spend three hours on a Saturday night watching a Lifetime movie about Kate and Wills? You can see how the line between fantasy and reality has become blurred. William really kissed Kate upon a ski slope; the paparazzi really did take shots of Kate's crotch. How do you go from being the descendant of coal mine workers to the future mother of the crown princess? Seriously, I want to know. But did Will actually almost dive into the lake to win her back? Did they actually call her "Waitie Katie", did the lingere dress really cause Wills to see her as 'more than a friend'? Did I call Kate to console her, crying in the bathtub? Did Mr.V and I actually eat cabbage and mustard for Easter, are we actually that poor? We came back from a walk and our home smelled of Billy Elliot, is this actually our life? These are the questions we may never find answer to.




"I've realized something," I said to my husband, like I was about to tell him the cure to world hunger. "I want to be Kate Middleton."

"We all do," he said. "We all want that." And then, "The British people pay for that lifestyle, you know."

"No," I said. "It can't be so." Immediately I pictured the enormous lush tent on the African savanna where I may or may not have watched William propose to Kate. And the yacht, and the trip to Switzerland, and all the ridiculous hats. So many other things could be done with that money. (I could fly to Paris, for instance.) "I thought it came from back then," I said. I had imagined giant caverns full of gold chains and glittering rubies, like in The Goonies. I could trick the king with a riddle and bring in ten elephants to haul away the gold. The British people allow tax money to support their royal's life of disgusting excess? The Royal family takes their people's earned money and throws lavish weddings and vacations on private islands with it? Really, truly? Actually happening?

It can't be so. It just can't. William says things like "I know, right?", and Kate makes jokes about underwear gnomes to the Queen. This I can swallow. The other thing, I can't. "I would storm that castle," I said. "I would overthrow that throne. Like I did that one time, with the Nazgul."

"Yes," husband said. "That was you."

I am Vesuvius and the events described in this blog may or may not have actually happened.

Post-Edit: I hear that the Of Wales' and the Middletons are paying for the royal wedding out of personal funds. (i.e the money from 'back then', I suppose, and maybe the Middletons chipped in for some Cook's Extra Dry). I wanted to say this because while I feel free to disparage the royals without doing any research on what I'm disparaging them for, I don't want to be responsible for you doing the same.

I most certainly did not learn this information while watching a TLC special speculating on how Kate needs more ambition (I say honey aimed pretty damn high, but whatever) and William, for the first time in his life, may or may not have displeased the Queen. I hope for his sake it wasn't over an underwear gnome joke falling flat; I know how that feels.