The Unofficial British Royal Family Pages

Monday 31 January 2005

A Pageant of Queens

As revelations of royal women resorting to Botox injections become commonplace and speculation over their rumored �nips and tucks� begins to reach even mainstream press, it�s almost comforting to learn that even the famously lovely ancient Egyptian Queen Nefertiti � whose name roughly translates to "the beautiful one is come" � resorted to an early form of facelift to improve or maintain her looks. But if anything ties modern royal women striving for eternal physical beauty, such as Sarah, Duchess of York, Princess Michael of Kent and Queen Silvia of Sweden, together with famous royal women of the past � aside from their royal titles, of course � it�s the desire to be, or at least look, young and beautiful.  

In fact, the direct correlation between beauty and royal women, namely princesses and queens, is not only timeless, but deeply rooted in our collective psyche, just as it has been for thousands of years. You don�t have to think very long or hard over history to find evidence of how this idea has been so permanently cemented in our minds. Turn to classical history and literature and you immediately encounter Helen of Troy, wife of the king of Sparta and the woman whose face �launched a thousand ships.� Or, if the classics aren�t your style, pick up any book of fairy tales and you�re sure to find at least a few stories where the heroine is a beautiful princess. Naturally, there are never any ugly princesses and even the evil queens are beautiful � although they are usually worried about rapidly approaching age and the subsequent deterioration of their looks. 

Legendary, and perhaps exaggerated, accounts of classical beauty and fanciful ideals of the stereotypical lovely and gentle fairy tale princess aside, there is little doubt that the queens and princesses of both modern and historical times have always been held to a higher standard than �normal� women. After all, before there were models and movie stars, there were royal women and, just as today, they were expected to play the part.  

A wonderful anecdote of the expectations of queenly beauty is given in My Blue Notebooks, the diary of the 19^th century French courtesan Liane de Pougy, who later became Princess Georges Ghika. Known for her exquisite beauty and terminal elegance, Liane tells how, in 1892 or 1893, French dramatist Henri Meilhac asked her to attend a performance at the Op�ra-Comique in Paris and emphatically insisted that she wear her �tiara, masses of jewels, a low-cut dress� [and] white cloak with the gold embroidery and the ermine lining.� He also told her she �must have an entourage� and that she �must arrive before the curtain goes up.� For her troubles, he gave Liane 2000 francs and promised her the left stage box, but failed to provide an explanation for her dramatic appearance and entrance.  

Liane did as she was asked and made a grand entrance to her box at the opera promptly 15 minutes before the curtain rose, dressed to the nines and accompanied by two equally elegant and well-dressed ladies. Much to her surprise, every person in the packed opera house rose to their feet and turned to look at her. The orchestra suddenly �broke into patriotic music,� causing Liane and her entourage to rise to their feet and prompting the audience to break into spontaneous applause. The celebrated courtesan went gracefully along with the strange situation, assuming that the display was simply a �homage to my youth and beauty.� Within moments, Meilhac entered Liane�s box and, hysterical with laughter, explained what had just happened� �We�re expecting the Queen of Sweden � in the box opposite � they thought you were her, it�s too killing for words.� Liane looked across to the other box and saw: �a lanky, sad-looking woman, rather badly dressed, surrounded by quite an entourage. Her entrance had been ruined, no one noticed it. It was me� to whom the crowd had paid homage � and the orchestra too, because it was the Swedish national anthem that they had played.� Meilhac summed up the situation best when he said later, �Homage to beauty! Vox populi, vox dei [trans: The voice of the people is the voice of God]! How beautiful is our Liane! That is how people expect a queen to look, and she has proved it.� 

While the incident was clearly a set-up, it does demonstrate that the public expects at least to be sparkled and awed by the splendid attire and accoutrements of royal women, if not by their dazzling beauty. One modern queen who knew this all too well was Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother. When her husband, George VI, unexpectedly came to the British throne in 1936, the new monarchs were faced with a dilemma. With the Abdication Crisis still fresh on the public�s mind and war in Europe expected at any moment, the monarchy was in desperate need of an infusion of respect, romance and magic. With an acute sense of imagery, the Queen elected herself, at least in part, as the medium of projecting what was lacking. Not traditionally beautiful, she chose to play up her best features � her luminous skin, bright eyes and, yes, even her tendency toward matronliness, thanks to the magical dress designs of Norman Hartnell. All of these elements, combined with the liberal use of the many fabulous royal jewels at her disposal, helped the Queen invent for herself the popular image of a romantic fairy queen that is famously exemplified in the series of portraits taken by Cecil Beaton in 1939.* Even the stunning Liane de Pougy would have had a difficult time outdoing Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother in those photos.  

In this sense, the concept of queenly beauty is not simply reflective of the characteristics of a certain royal woman�s face or body, but of her overall image and presentation. This is certainly true in the case of Josephine Bonaparte who is remembered as much for her refined beauty as for being the great love and consort of French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. While many of the contemporary portraits of Josephine certainly exemplify her fine features and apparent gentility, they do not necessarily reflect her as she really was, especially by the time she was fully vested in the public eye. For one thing, there was the little matter of her teeth. Having been raised on a sugar plantation in Martinique, Josephine had early on been exposed to too much sugar and not enough dental hygiene. In short, her teeth were blackened from decay and her gums were swollen from irritation. Granted, dental health was not the priority it is today, so the expectations would not have been as high, but Josephine herself made it a point to conceal her teeth whenever and however possible. Her teeth aside, while most contemporary accounts of Josephine before she was married to Napoleon credit her with being merely pretty, they frequently point to her �sweet personality� as her best feature.  

These days, a reference to a woman having anything remotely similar to �a good personality� has become something of "dating-speak" for �she�s not very pretty, but she�s awfully nice.� In reality, the combination in a woman of a charming or magnetic personality and even moderate good looks often makes her appear far more attractive than a woman who is considered outright beautiful. For some legendary royal women, including Josephine, the legacy of their beauty is perhaps more directly a reference to this unique combination than to dramatically good looks.  

Cleopatra is an excellent example of this phenomenon. Popularly perceived to be a beautiful seductress � and always portrayed as such � modern archeological finds have indicated that she was far from looking the way she was portrayed by Elizabeth Taylor in the prime of her life. An article in the January 2002 issue of Harper�s Bazaar succinctly described Cleopatra as she was portrayed in contemporary images as �an ordinary-looking woman, short, with bad teeth and a bony nose.� And yet, a 2004 list of the top 100 most beautiful women of all time, as compiled by Evian, listed Cleopatra at number 86 � above Rita Hayworth, among others. Now I know Rita Hayworth didn�t have bad teeth and a bony nose.  

So why do we still perceive Cleopatra as beautiful? Although I believe the complete answer is far more complicated, I personally boil it down to the basic idea that it is not only far easier to believe that a beautiful Queen Cleopatra seduced two great men and attempted to defeat the Roman Empire, but also much more romantic. That we can�t seem to fully attribute her conquests of men and land to exceptional intelligence, acute political acumen and exceptional self-promotion � all of which should be incredibly attractive to any personally secure and politically powerful man � is almost embarrassingly indicative of our concept that queenly virtue is largely, if not fully, comprised of her superficial image. It�s for this reason, in my opinion, that people want to believe that Josephine and Cleopatra were unsurpassingly beautiful, just as it�s why many people still insist that the Duchess of Windsor wasn�t attractive enough to �catch a king,� so must have used little known sexual techniques and domination to trap him. 

At the end of the day, it�s the truly smart women who have grasped this concept. Among the best royal women in history are the ones who realized that it�s not enough to be just beautiful or just smart, and it certainly doesn�t do to be unprepossessing. When you boil it all down, few royal women have been as acutely aware of this as Queen Elizabeth I of England. Her prowess in this regard was remarkable and requires little introduction to anyone who is even remotely familiar with royal or political history. Though hardly beautiful and with her sex an obvious disadvantage, she managed to create a powerful image of herself as a magnificent and iconic figure who met every expectation of a woman and queen (despite being the �Virgin Queen�) and fulfilled expertly the role of a man and king. Elizabeth�s example is even more profound when compared to her half-sister, Queen Mary I of England, who, with neither the looks nor the understanding of the importance of image, failed miserably as queen. Perhaps Oscar Wilde was right when he wrote in The Picture of Dorian Gray that beauty �has its divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it.�  

But while the overall �beauty� factor � which is perhaps more accurately an issue of image � seems to have made or broken a great many royal women, we are still left with the age-old �Chicken and Egg� question of which came first � a preponderance of beautiful royal women or the expectation that royal women should be beautiful? Given the dearth of contemporary images and descriptions � not to mention the sometimes questionable accuracy of both � of distantly historical royal women, it�s almost impossible to qualify their beauty. In the odd instance where we have anything approaching tangible evidence, it is usually incredibly limited or vague. For instance, while there seems to be a plethora of contemporary accounts of the celebrated beauty of Eleanor of Aquitaine, wife of two kings, there is a definite lack of any accurate contemporary depiction of her, or even a detailed description of important physical features like eye color. 

Even if we did have access to such intelligence, we would still be all too apt to base our opinions on modern standards of beauty. After all, it�s a mistake made all too often with the portraits and photographs that are available to us. A biographer can write all day of the beauty and elegance of a queen who lived 400 years ago, but one look at a painting of the same queen can easily convince modern sensibilities of the opposite. And everyone knows that pictures can be incredibly deceiving. Few people will disagree that Britain�s Queen Alexandra, consort of Edward VII, was a beautiful woman in both her youth and middle age � a fact exemplified by both contemporary accounts and images. Even fewer people would fail to be amazed at how incredibly youthful she looks in photos taken of her in middle age. But even a cursory look at an un-retouched photo of the Queen in her late 50s � such as one included in Leslie Field�s book The Queen�s Jewels � is enough to convince anyone that the laws of gravity did indeed apply to Alexandra.  

Which brings me to my final point, although I haven�t quite decided whether it�s a notch on the side of the �chicken� or of the �egg.� In either case, the story of queenly beauty would not be complete without the recognition that royal women have traditionally had far more chances than the average woman of actually being beautiful. And I don�t necessarily mean genetics, as we�re all aware of the historical dark side of genetics � or, more precisely, genetic inbreeding � on royalty. What I�m referring to has more to do with accessibility. Like today, when the money that is so frequently the privilege of royal women allows the modern princess or queen to afford plastic surgery, royal women of the past also had access to the best science and technology had to offer. Cleopatra, it is said, took advantage of the bounty of the Dead Sea for the cosmetic benefits of the salt and mud. We know now that Queen Nefertiti had an early facelift, but we already believed that she used cosmetics and various other beauty treatments. Such treatments and applications would have been predominantly used by, if not only available to, royal women. 

Money and privilege also brought royal women the luxuries and comforts that could keep them not only far healthier and, thus, better looking than their subjects, but also more elegantly coiffed and attired. And, at the end of the day, a beautiful woman whose features have grown haggard from disease, hard work and difficult living conditions, and who is wearing filthy rags and hasn�t bathed in six months is likely to pale in comparison to a plain looking woman whose face is youthful and unmarred by scars or age, and who wears a dress of the finest cloth accented by beautiful jewels. Just like the picture of a 58-year-old-woman with access to photo retouching is going to look far better than that of a woman without it. Of course, I realize that there were plenty of exceptions to these simplistic examples, but there always are with general rules.  

With all of this in mind, it perhaps comes as little surprise that so many of the historical royal women we know of today were renowned for their beauty and elegance, and those we have forgotten weren�t. Accordingly, it�s really no coincidence that modern royal women are trying desperately to keep up that tradition, so they, too, will be remembered as �beauty queens.�

Until next week, 

- Tori Van Orden Mart�nez 

* Some of the Cecil Beaton photos of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother can be found on the National Portrait Gallery web site via the following links:

http://www.npg.org.uk/live/search/portrait.asp?LinkID=mp01453&rNo=49&role=sit
http://www.npg.org.uk/live/search/portrait.asp?LinkID=mp01453&rNo=48&role=sit
http://www.npg.org.uk/live/search/portrait.asp?LinkID=mp01453&rNo=47&role=sit
http://www.npg.org.uk/live/search/portrait.asp?LinkID=mp01453&rNo=46&role=sit

Speaking of queenly beauty, I highly recommend the recent column of my fellow columnist, Pandora�s Box, entitled, �Venus� and the Kings in Her Life � an account of the genuinely beautiful Princess Fawzia of Egypt, complete with photos. You can find it at http://www.etoile.co.uk/Columns/PandorasBox/050125.html.