As Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s fall from grace continues to generate fresh mini-scandals, it seems extraordinary to think that etiquette once demanded non-royals should scrape and curtsy to him.
Several insiders have said that Andrew insisted upon the formality. The writer Harry Mount has told how a woman he knows was even made to repeat her curtsy to Andrew after not executing it with sufficient expertise and “loathed him ever since”. Another story doing the rounds tells how Andrew used to visit an Australian PR expert, Emma Gibbs, in the room she rented in Chelsea, insisting that the house’s owner curtsy in her own home every time he popped round to see his friend.
I like to think I would have sensed his pomposity and refused, but for most of us it depends on the circumstances and the people around you. My father-in-law was Deputy Lieutenant of Berwickshire, and a stickler for tradition, and would have been mortified by anyone he knew not following the correct code of behaviour, however undeserving the recipient.
But I did once make a small stand against dropping a bob to a minor royal, who brought out my inner renegade. It was back in the early 1990s and my then boyfriend was friendly with the historian Anne Somerset, so we were asked to spend the weekend at Badminton House, her family home. En route, my boyfriend told me Princess Michael of Kent was coming to lunch, and that she was the sort of person who expected a curtsy.
Some deep-rooted “Maid of Kent” essence in me just knew bending the knee would be an impossibility. It seemed absurd that any grown-up should sink down just because another woman’s second husband happened to be a minor royal. In the event, I scurried round the table to avoid any introduction – and didn’t mention that I’d happily curtsied to Brian Sewell two weeks previously (it just felt right).
Afterwards my boyfriend pointed out the Duke of Beaufort, Anne Somerset’s father, was far more blue-blooded than any royal, as he was directly descended from John of Gaunt, so I should really have swooped down for him. Which I would have done; David Somerset was famously handsome and charming (Woodrow Wyatt dubbed him “the great woman slayer”), and that certainly deserves respect.
Thirty years later, I find it’s utterly uncontroversial to say that there’s barely a royal whose presence would induce a bob, or bow. In fact, you can get a small drinks party going by asking fellow guests who they actually would salute in this manner. For me, the answer is blindingly obvious: King Charles III and his consort out of respect for hours of tedium shaking hands, having banal conversations and saving us from the prospect of President Blair; and Princess Anne for her exemplary sense of service and thrift in resurrecting old outfits.
My jury’s out on William and Kate. I like them, but they’re younger than me and cultivate a distinct “down with the people” informality, so it seems a bit odd to suddenly go all Debrett’s on them.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.telegraph.co.uk ’
