Royalty

No not me, but the rest of my family. Really. While I come from a family of American immigrants (like many of us New Yorkers), Mr. Ken Doll's mother's family can trace their family tree back to Charlemagne and King Clovis. As if this weren't enough, it turns out Ken Doll and the Princes of Wales, aka Princes Harry and Wills are 19th cousins or something like that from a common ancestor in the 13th century (Sir Nicholas Poyntz). My husband and daughters are related to Princess Diana. (They may also be related to the Queen, but that hasn't been determined yet. Pity). Is this very relevant to our life? Not really, but the genealogy books are cool. I like the stories about the ancestors living in Louisiana and East Texas in the 19th and 20th century, and the double first cousins (after 3 brothers, married 3 sisters - just think of the family dynamics).

However, my two daughters, take all this to mean that they are, in fact, princesses. Six and eight year olds who believe they are princesses can be a little overbearing. You are not surprised. They like to tell people that they are royalty. Just like Disney, right? The only answer appears to be to instruct them in the expectations of royal behavior: politeness, humility, noblesse oblige (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noblesse_oblige_) etc. Maybe they could get a tutorial from their cousins.

I hope that as they get older they will grow to appreciate the wealth of information contained in the painstaking genealogy of both the long ago ancestors in England, as well as the stories of ancestors only 100 years ago, which include some VERY strong women worth knowing about. Maybe not princesses, but maybe even better.