So You Wanna Be a Queen

THE KILLOUGH CHRONICLES

by James Killough

Now that I’ve got myself going on the subject of Tina Brown, I wouldn’t be the first to notice that her favorite circulation booster while editor-in-chief at Vanity Fair, Princess Diana, was also the inspiration for Tina’s hair bob, which she still sports.  While I don’t doubt that it is the best hairstyle to frame Tina’s face, it can still be seen as an homage that is slightly stalker-ish, in a Single White Female sort of way.

A portrait of the once future queen by Testino for Vanity Fair. She might not have been stable, but at least the kids are all right.

Last week, the comments section of Brown’s The Daily Beast was all aflutter in response to the news that girls can ascend the British throne ahead of their brothers.  Historian Robert Andrews, whose author picture looks like a byline from an Op Ed column in The Daily Telegraph from the early 60s, wrote the most delirious article that begins with how the monarchy is illogical and ends with how grateful we should be this change in the succession wasn’t in place at the turn of the last century because otherwise the psychotic fascist Kaiser Wilhelm II would have inherited the British throne via his mother, the Empress Vicky of Germany, Queen Victoria’s eldest daughter.  Thankfully, the article went no further, or Andrews might have lauded the fact women didn’t have the vote at that point, either, or World War I might have gone to the Germans, or some such drivel.