http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1340777/Want-daughter-Kate-Middleton-American-dreamed-English-royalty-sets-luxury-princess-camp-girls.html
I looked at the prospectus, for Princess Prep. Absolute tosh. Jerramy Fine is described as a royal expert. Really? She provides a list of princesses who will be discussed - and refers to some as reigning.
Only the sovereign reigns. She refers to the late Diana, Princess of Wales, as Princess Diana of Wales ... did Charles and Diana have a daughter named Diana? Princess Victoria of England? There has never been a princess Victoria of England. This alleged royalty expert is referring to Princess Alexandrina Victoria of Kent who was a Princess of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Or her daughter, HRH The Princess Royal (or Empress Friedrich). or, HRH Princess Victoria of Wales who became HRH The Princess Victoria when her father, George V, succeeded to the throne.
Or click on a photo of someone who is described as Crown Princess Letizia of Spain. Really? There is no such person. The heir to the Spanish throne is the Prince of Asturias, not the Crown Prince, which means his wife is the Princess of Asturias.
Click on another photo -- showing Queen Elizabeth II - and the credit reads Princess Elisabeth. Yup, Elisabeth. This photo was taken after Elizabeth succeeded to the throne.
Has Fine secured copyright clearance for the photos she uses on her site? She does not provide the copyright details! Click on another photo - Mary Poppins - for a night out at the theater. Mary Poppins closed in 2008 in London.
I believe the heroine of Frances Hodgson Burnett's A Little Princess was named Sara Crewe, not Sarah Crewe.
Will Fine be paying royalties to the movie companies for the movies she intends to show? There is a hefty fee for the week in London ($3,995 sans flight), which means the movie audience will be a Paid audience. In other words, Disney and other movie companies might not see the endeavor as fair use!
This sort of tosh gives a bad name to scholarship. Serious biographers are having major problems in getting good books to publishers. Instead, we get nonsense, trite, and piffle. Perfect for parents who have lots of money, and really believe that this sort of trip is good for their darling little girls. A great gift for the Paris Hilton wannabees.
I love Disney, but I also know the difference between fantasy and reality. There is nothing real about Princess Prep ... what a waste of $4000 plus airfare. Save the fantasy for Disney World (which I adore), and don't mix it with the reality of the depth of the panoply of British history. Unlike Giselle or Ariel, real princesses are human and are not perfect. Their lives on perfect. They don't always get to live happily ever after.
Americans do not need to send their daughters to England to learn etiquette. That's something that's learned at home. Charity! The families that can afford to send their daughters to fantasy camps are not always the ones who do charity. Sure, take the family to Britain, rent an apartment, or stay in a charming hotel, and tour - but see history in its own terms, and not through rose-colored glasses.
True charity begins at home. What about taking your children to Sunday school and church? Instruct your children about truly helping others by spending time volunteering at a food bank or homeless shelter.
I suppose this Princess Prep nonsense is for the daughters of the Nanny Diaries crowd!
3 comments:
I read Fine's book about her quest to meet Peter Phillips a few years ago. It was actually pretty funny -- she doesn't come across as vapid as the article might suggest.
Still, anyone who would go to LSE in the hopes of meeting a non-prince, well...
Her camp sounds about 15 or 20 years too late -- conspicuous consumption is so over these days. :-)
I've read her book. It's amusing at times, but she's nowhere near the royalty expert she thinks she is. She makes a lot of amateur mitakes -I believe she referred to the Queen as her royal highness at one point, things like that. I believe it was on one of the last couple of pages where she mentions that Peter isn't a prince afterall. She did get to meet him, though -she gave him her number and he never called. On her site there's a painting of "Princess Victoria of England". The painting is the Princess Royal, but I think she thinks it's "the young Victoria" i.e. the Queen. Even though she offers a free meet-up in New York so parents can meet her, I can't imagine sending my young daughter on a plane alone to a foreign country to spend waaaay too much on a week in London.
I had the unfortunate pleasure of reading Ms. Fine's book, Someday My Prince Will Come, a year ago. The book took me less then four hours to read... four hours wasted.
Not only is she a terrible writer, but her antics (past and present) are quite embarrassing to say the least.
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