I find some of these criticisms of Diane of Wuerttemberg a bit unfair. As Herzogin von Wuerttemberg and Prinzessin von Frankreich she is twice royal, first by marriage to Duke Carl, and probably more importantly, as the daughter of the last acknowledged French pretender. One of my most treasured life experiences was to have been a guest -- all by myself -- at their palace in Altshausen. (I had recieved a German knighthood the year before.) I had been instructed about all the protocol in advance of the visit. (If you saw the film "The Queen" --"it's Mamm as in ham and not. . ." --- that sort of thing.) And so after the initial formalities and my knees were beginning to stop knocking. she put me at ease immediately. She is a brilliant conversationalist. I was told to keep my camara in my pocket. But after the initial champagne and as she showed me the palace a flashbulb would periodically go off. Obviously she considered me important enough to know that I might like to have a photographic record of all this. But except for the last photo in which she and I stood side by side, with me ever so slightly behind her (protocol, you know) all the other shots are of me alone. At one point when we were conversing, I said that in my country we had fought a revolution in 1776 to get rid of all things royal, and that even in spite of my knighthood, I was a simple commoner. Her response to me was, "Edel ist, der edel macht." On my living room wall the two largest pictures are
of the knighthood ceremony (the local German paper, quite a distance from Altshausen had two captions before the write-up: "Jetzt kommt der Ritterschlag. [my real name] in Edelstand erhoben."] And next to that picture the photograph of me
and Diane, Herzogen von Wuerttemberg, Prinzessin von Frankreich. She is an ackowledged artist, and as far as I am concerned a princess in every way.