I have gotten a lot – and I mean a LOT – of flak because I bring my pillow everywhere I travel. For the past 15 years (give or take), if it involves staying somewhere overnight, I bring my Tempur-Pedic pillow with me. It makes my bag 4 or 5 pounds heavier but y’all, it’s COMFORTABLE! So it’s been ALL over the United States, plus Canada, England, Japan, Australia, Cuba, Germany, Austria, and a bunch of other places. Say what you want, but I’ve had “a good night’s sleep” everywhere I bring it, and I have no regrets. So there!
Besides, my bringing a pillow with me is NOTHING in comparison to what Prince Charles (a.k.a. His Royal Highness The Prince Charles Philip Arthur George, Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall, Duke of Rothesay, Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Chester, Earl of Carrick, Earl of Merioneth, Baron of Renfrew, Baron Greenwich, Lord of the Isles, Prince and Great Steward of Scotland, KG, KT, GCB, OM, AK, QSO, CC, PC, ADC) brings when he travels. OK, yeah, he’s a prince and I’m “only” a baroness (No lie! I really am!). But still…
Author Tina Brown, whose book, The Palace Papers, (<– I don’t get anything if you click on the link, or even if you buy it) was just released the other day. She’s apparently written “tell-all” books about The Royals in the past. In this one, she picks up where her last book ended, right after Princess Diana’s untimely death. From Amazon.com:
Brown takes readers on a tour de force journey through the scandals, love affairs, power plays, and betrayals that have buffeted the monarchy over the last twenty-five years. We see the Queen’s stoic resolve after the passing of Princess Margaret, the Queen Mother, and Prince Philip, her partner for seven decades, and how she triumphs in her Jubilee years even as family troubles rage around her. Brown explores Prince Charles’s determination to make Camilla Parker Bowles his wife, the tension between William and Harry on “different paths,” the ascendance of Kate Middleton, the downfall of Prince Andrew, and Harry and Meghan’s stunning decision to step back as senior royals. Despite the fragile monarchy’s best efforts, “never again” seems fast approaching.
Tina Brown has been observing and chronicling the British monarchy for three decades, and her sweeping account is full of powerful revelations, newly reported details, and searing insight gleaned from remarkable access to royal insiders. Stylish, witty, and erudite, The Palace Papers will irrevocably change how the world perceives and understands the royal family.
The book apparently includes a bunch of info about what Prince Charles brings (well, has brought) when he travels. Not surprisingly, it’s bunches of stuff. Less surprisingly, it’s stuff that the vast, VAST majority of us don’t bring. It would all be overseen by the Prince’s former aide, Michael Fawcett, and would usually include:
- The Prince’s orthopedic bed (his whole frickin’ BED! And people call ME names because I bring a pillow?!?!?!)
- His special lavatory seat (I guess a prince needs to have a comfy tush when he’s on the throne)
- Kleenex Velvet toilet paper (that’s a U.K. brand; they don’t sell it in the U.S. In fact, according to New York Magazine’s the Strategist, they don’t even sell it in the U.K. anymore – it was discontinued in the 1990s, which was the year Kleenex got licensed out to SCA Hygiene Products. “However,” the Strategist continues, “Velvet toilet tissue, which exists under its own brand, Essity, one half of the SCA Group, is available and purchasable on Amazon U.K. with shipping to the U.S. (for approximately $63 — if you want to wipe like the royals, be prepared to spend like one). Although it’s not the exact lavatory tissue Charles traveled with, we imagine it has the same ‘naplike velvet.’” So there ya go. Here’s a commercial for Kleenex Velvet from 1998.
- Two landscapes of the Scottish Highlands (I guess so he doesn’t get homesick???), which Fawcett would ensure would be hung in whatever bedroom the Prince would sleep in, in place of the possessions of his host (did you catch that? “I don’t care if you have an original Rembrandt hanging there. We’re taking it down so the Prince can wake to his 2 fave pics of Inverness and Fort William”).
- The Prince’s teddy bear from when he was a child, in a plastic bag.
Prince Charles would also tell his host what he wanted to eat for meals before he arrived (even his own mother doesn’t go that far – Queen Elizabeth eats whatever she’s served).
According to Brown, Charles apparently would sometimes arrive at a dinner with his personal protection officer with him. The protection officer would have a premixed martini all ready. It would be handed over to a butler who then served it to the Prince, “in his own glass.”
As one does.
In a documentary called Serving the Royals: Inside the Firm, it was also revealed (by Princess Diana’s former butler) that, “His pyjamas are pressed every morning, his shoelaces are pressed flat with an iron, the bath plug has to be in a certain position, and the water temperature has to be just tepid. He has his valets squeeze one inch of toothpaste onto his toothbrush every morning.”
OK, OK, I get it – he’s part of the Royal Family and his level of “special” goes way beyond anything you or I will ever know…not even if you’re Concierge Key ;-). But WOW…he brings his own frickin’ BED? That one still gets me.
Oh, and approximate costs on these little jaunts? According to Hello! Magazine, about £5.3 million per year (at least as of the last full year of normal travel, circa 2019 or so), all paid for by the taxpayers of the U.K. Because Charles wants a cushy tushy. 😉
And yes, for those of you who are thinking it, I will say it out loud for you – “This is SUCH a ‘Sharon post'” LOLOL!
Feature Photo (cropped): Dan Marsh / Wikimedia
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1 comment
I was over the whole concept of the monarchy, ages ago…….