These days, there really is so much drama within a certain class of British society. The grandest dukes, earls, lords, viscounts and noblewomen are extremely pissy right now because King Charles did not invite many of them to his coronation. Keep in mind, I have no skin in this game – I just enjoy watching fancy, entitled aristocrats’ worlds collapse because they weren’t invited to the biggest royal event in seventy years. But even I wonder if Charles should have made these titled toffs a bigger priority for the guest list. Especially when it comes to Lady Pamela Hicks, daughter of Lord Mountbatten, who was Charles’s mentor and de facto godfather/surrogate father. Pamela Hicks was one of QEII’s bridesmaids. Pamela Hicks and her daughter India Hicks are big-time royalists and long-time defenders of Charles. Pamela has spent years saying all kinds of nasty things about Princess Diana. India has made a point of lavishing Princess Kate with praise. And none of that was enough.
Lady Pamela Hicks will not be among the 2,000 guests in Westminster Abbey for King Charles’ coronation. Queen Elizabeth’s bridesmaid and lady-in-waiting turned 94 on Wednesday, and her daughter India Hicks shared her take on the scaled-down guest list for the May 6 crowning ceremony in an Instagram birthday tribute.
India, 55, said they received a message from one of King Charles’ private secretaries, explaining that “this coronation was to be very different to the Queen’s. 8,000 guests would be whittled down to 1,000 alleviating the burden on the state.”
“The King was sending his great love and apologies, he was offending many family and friends with the reduced list,” wrote India, who is a goddaughter of King Charles and served as a bridesmaid at his wedding to Princess Diana in 1981. “My mother was not offended at all. ‘How very, very sensible’ she said. Invitations based on meritocracy not aristocracy. ‘I am going to follow with great interest the events of this new reign,’ ” India continued in the caption.
“Today my mother turns 94 years old, she must be one of the few remaining people with such a memory intact, about to live through a third coronation,” the designer, writer and entrepreneur wrote. “Happy Birthday to my darling Mum.”
[From People]
I’m including the Instagram post below. I looked it up to see if I could tell whether India was seething on her mother’s behalf. I can’t tell, but I’ve always had some difficulty reading between British lines and trying to figure out their obscure class-code. If you told me that India included a few signifiers for her deep displeasure, I would believe you. Is one of them “One of the King’s personal secretaires was passing on a message from the King”? Meaning, India is pointing out that Charles sent one of his many toadies to do his work instead of calling one of his parents’ oldest friends, the daughter of his mentor? Is this also code? “My mother was not offended at all.” It reads as… carefully worded.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CrN9T__rc_1/
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Instagram.
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