Messages

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The Windsors / Re: King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson (Duke and Duchess of Windsor)

« on: September 02, 2011, 05:40:25 AM »

The Guardian's review of W.E.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/sep/01/w-e-madonna-wallis-simpson-review

Here's the opening paragragh:

Whatever the crimes committed by Wallis Simpson – marrying a king, sparking a constitutional crisis, fraternising with Nazis – it's doubtful that she deserves the treatment meted out to her in W.E., Madonna's jaw-dropping take on "the 20th-century's greatest royal love story". The woman is defiled, humiliated, made to look like a joke. The fact that W.E. comes couched in the guise of a fawning, servile snow-job only makes the punishment feel all the more cruel.


The scene with Wallis dancing with Masai warriors to the Sex Pistol's "Pretty Vacant" didn't impress either. Putting to one side the appallingly naff and self-referencing cultural judgment of inventing and filming such a spectacle, I wonder if Maj knew (or cared) that by the time this song came out (July 1977) Wallis was suffering badly with Alzheimer's and was very frail. She also had had several falls (but not sure when) around that time, one which broke her hip. That kind of disregard is just of the reasons I think this POS won't even get to be one of the so-bad-its-good camp classics (like Mommie Dearest).

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The Windsors / Re: Wedding of HRH Prince William and Miss Catherine Middleton april 29th

« on: May 11, 2011, 01:02:02 AM »

And from another who wasn't there (from this morning's Guardian Online)

"I really love the feeling that sort of Diana and I both weren't there," said Sarah Ferguson in a television interview with Oprah Winfrey.

In the interview, to be broadcast in the US today (11/05), she said that it was "so difficult" for her to cope with not being invited that she spent 29 April in Thailand.

Of her former husband, she said: "He was saying, 'It's okay. Just remember we had such a good day. Our wedding was so perfect'.

From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/may/10/oprah-winfrey-sarah-ferguson

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The Windsors / Re: Prince Albert Victor 'Eddy' Part 2

« on: May 03, 2011, 05:03:07 PM »

Grace - it is not impossible that Eddy died from syphilis. Its then unpredictable course means it could remain dormant in infected organs for many years or - much less likely but still possibly - do the opposite: with the bacterium reaching the meninges or myocardium causing acute infection and death either directly or along with the many possible opportunistic infections that would not necessarily have been serious in an entirely healthy individual.

Anyway, FWIW based upon the same contemporary medical situation means I am sure he died from pneumonia caused by influenza (of the early 1890s pandemic). A young man, living and moving in crowded surroundings (barracks for eg) and encountering many people and therefore sources of infection (socialising in the weeks following the engagement) - he was alas a good candidate to get infected; he was not in the most robust of health; was not given the best of contemporary medical or nursing care (Laking was a smooth-talking "spa" type, basically) and nor in the best surroundings: his room was little bigger than a cupboard, the weather was clammily sub-zero requiring constant open fires in his room for warmth and hence less fresh air and IIRC the Duke of Teck eventually discovered a gas leak had been going on all this time - none of which helps in acute respiratory illness at all.

Poor Eddy.

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The Windsors / Re: Prince Albert Victor 'Eddy' Part 2

« on: May 03, 2011, 04:32:03 PM »

I think this is unlikely. Albert Victor was 28 (just) when he died, and untreated syphilis typically takes 20 years plus to kill. Typically, the victim has a minor illness at the time he contracts it, then recovers for a number of years while the disease is in its dormant phase. Then it flares up again, producing florid mental symptoms, various physical manifestations and finally what used to be called General Paralysis of the Insane (GPI).


 Treponema Pallidum has had quite an eventful history. One thing that is certain is that the disease it produces has become less virulent over time. When first described in Europe at the end of the 15th century, its victims were subject to a horrifying acute disease that was invariably fatal within a matter of months. Although it had settled into its well-known "3 stages" by the end of the 19th century, it was still then entirely possible that it could prove fatal within a few years: it is not correct to assume that all syphilis at the end of the 19th century resembled the current descriptions. Available medical resources demonstrate how the bacteria and resultant course of illness has shifted in response to antibiotic treatment (and see also its 1970s re-emergence and its effect as a concurrent infection in those who are also HIV+). Remember too that syphilis was known as the Great Imitator, as symptoms affecting the heart and circulation, the bones and brain were - in the days before cat scans and blood workups and penicillin and anti-psychotics - not easy to ascribe or diagnose.

This is not to say that Eddy died of - or even had - syphilis although given the risk of congenital infection, it would have made good sense for a hereditary monarchy to get rid of him before he produced a saddle nosed, snaggle-toothed, tabes-limping heir! But given its then prevalence and his amorous habits, it would not be a shock if he indeed did contract it. But whatever his habits and health, it must be stressed that the usual course of the disease as seen and described now doesn't automatically apply to the 1890s.

Anyone interested in this subject (and who ain't?) night find it worth looking over the theory that Fletcher Christian's mutiny madness was in large part because of his neuro-syphilis (the Tahiti strain back then was infamously virulent and it pretty much could go from chancre to brain-fester in months).

Or that Kaiser Frederick III's laryngeal cancer wasn't cancer after all (which would explain both McKenzie's not diagnosing cancer and Virchow not detecting abnormal cells) and thus McKenzie had to do the impossible - defend himself whilst not revealing the saintly Emperor's naughty secret. Syphilis was well-known to cause laryngeal ulceration and during Frederick's infamous dalliance with a courtesan in Egypt in the 1860's it was rumoured that he did contract it.

Or that Queen Alexandra's famous limp had nothing to with the arthritic after-effects of rheumatic fever but was syphiliptic tabes dorsalis affecting her heel (a very common sequelae then). What ever it was, Alexandra's long illness of 1866/7 resulted in a sickly baby (Louise) who grew into a feeble woman - as were the two daughters born afterwards. (Although I think that if porphyria was symptomatic anywhere in the RF in the late Victorian era then it was with Maud and Victoria Wales as both were plagued by illness and Maud with mobility problems - ones that could also have been caused by the Great Imitator! ) Anyway, RF affects the heart and in serious cases (which QA's would have been, given that she was bedridden for months) rendered the afflicted the life of a semi-invalid ever after - just that there didn't seem to be any of the RF cardiac after-effects.

And given the rollcall of afflcied continental monarchs and royals, it would be strange indeed if the not-as-uxorious-as-they'd-have-us-oiks-believe British RF always escaped entirely

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The Myth and Legends of Survivors / Re: Anna Anderson and DNA

« on: May 03, 2011, 01:24:52 PM »

I can give an excellent example of how the erroneous idea that someone has exclusive knowledge that only the real person could know gets purveyed and believed - and to an astonishing extent.

During the late 1970s, the north of England cities of Leeds, Bradford, Manchester and others were terrorised by a murderer known as the Yorkshire Ripper (now known to be one Peter Sutcliffe). The police were under great pressure to capture this POS who seemed as if he was taunting them with increasingly blatant crimes. He murdered women by striking them from behind and then stabbing them. At first his victims were mostly prostitutes - the police believed that they were his sole target and did not warn other women they were in danger until the Ripper began killing outside of redlight areas. In truth, from the getgo, the Ripper's targets were any woman - and hookers were commonly victims because it was not difficult to get them to quiet dark areas...

Alas the police made many serious errors. One of these was to ignore survivor's testimonies, including that they described their attacker as having a 'local' accent. A Yorkshire accent is distinctive (think of TV shows like All Creatures Great and Small, Last of the Summer Wine, Heartbeat, for example). It is unmistakeable.

In 1978 and the following year the police received two letters and a cassette tape, both of which they believed were from the killer and which were publicised in an unprecedented national campaign. Everyone over the age of, say, 7 alive then in the UK would remember them being played and displayed. The voice on the tape had a strong North-East "Geordie" accent - as the Newcastle accent is known as (although experts pinpointed it a bit further south, to a Wearside mining town).  So convinced were the police of the authenticity of the tape being the killer that they instructed that suspects could be eliminated if "they did not have a Geordie accent."

Why were they so sure this was the killer? Because he mentioned a murder in Preston in 1975 which the cops had begun to think might be attributed to the Ripper but they believed that this link had never been made public. Based on this (and a couple of other snippets which were nothing but basic coincidences) they shifted their entire focus onto identifying the man on the tape, being sure he was the killer.

He wasn't. Sutcliffe - a local from Bradford - was arrested in January 1981 and later convicted.

In 2006, "Wearside Jack", the hoaxer, was finally identified and charge. An alcoholic loser, he'd made the letters and tape for a prank. He was jailed for 7 years.

The "possible link with Preston 75" that the police were so sure had never been made public turns out to have been speculation voiced by a senior police officer which was duly published in the regional Yorkshire Post in March 1977 and then, after the latest murder, written up in the national Daily Mirror newspaper the following month.

An enquiry was conducted after Sutcliffe's conviction to probe the police's handling of the investigation. It was highly critical - and indeed, makes uncomfortable reading. Many coppers doing the groundwork - as well as all the experts - were at the time horrified that their seniors insisted upon using the tape and letters as proof that suspects could be eliminated based upon those characteristics. Sutcliffe was interviuews 9 TIMES by the police before being arrested with a known prostitute in his car for having false number plates....

So this just illustrates why those claims that "no-one but the real Grand Duchess could know x,y,z..." were BS all along.

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The Windsors / Re: Queen Mary- part 4

« on: February 17, 2011, 02:17:52 PM »

I could be very wrong here but I always thought that the big numbers re QM's WWII Badminton was to do with the amount of luggage she took. I guess it wasn't quite up to the scale of self-indulgence set by QV who always took her bed and writing desk along with her on trips to France and Switzerland but even so, I seem to recall reading somewhere that QM arrived at Badminton with an outstandingly comprehensive quantity of personal items.

Of course, the dozens of truckloads could have just been bringing along the stuff that she'd "acquired" from hosts and visits enroute

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Alexandra Feodorovna / Re: Re: Alexandra and her Health Part 2

« on: March 10, 2009, 06:10:13 PM »

Alix's remains were a few pulpy smashed remnants of skeleton fragments in the pit of a forest.
Nothing was left which could have yielded any remnants of testable substance.
her mitochondrial DNA was eventually extracted with much difficulty - but that doesn't mean the pulp left from the centifuge will throw up traces of her barbiturate and morphine habits too...it is not chemiically possible.

All we have is the diaries and records.  They show that Alix was a pill-popper of severe proportions.

The fragments of her corpse yield nothing. Even her cause of death had to be satisified by eyewitnes testimony before her skull was positively idenified.

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Alexandra Feodorovna / Re: Re: Alexandra and her Health Part 2

« on: March 10, 2009, 05:59:31 PM »

What tests Helen?
What tests were made upon the exhumed and identified remains of the Tsarina?
What substances did they test for and what were the results?
-Just because no tests showed any results for drugs doesn't mean any tests were in fact ever done!

- After 80 years, nothing of her fleshly remains were left to test for tissue and if any tissue were by chance left, no drugs trace would survive anyway.

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The Windsors / Re: Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York Pt II

« on: March 10, 2009, 05:50:59 PM »

Didn't Sarah-90s do some coffee-table book of desperational flubber that was eventually called 'Queen Victoria's Travels' ? Wherein she and her soon-to-be prosecuted handyman prinked their way about the Rosenau and that..?

Moral Of This Post Is:
 don't ask, kids...
 don't look...
.just forget you ever heard the name

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Alexandra Feodorovna / Re: Re: Alexandra and her Health Part 2

« on: March 05, 2009, 06:48:48 PM »

So Alix "tested negative for porphyria" ?!

There absolutely were no tests whatsoever for this illness when she was alive. Indeed, porphyria (an inherent disorder of metabolism) itself had not even been identified when Alix died in 1917.

The historical porphyria theories for all these royals - whether George III or Princess Charlotte of Prussia - have ALL been made posthumously. The only exception is that of Prince William of Gloucester who was diagnosed in 1969. This was upon examination based upon his symptoms and the suggestive family history. It was 1969 - same year as the study by the Macalpines of George III - although the RAF Dr who first diagnosed William already knew that it was in the family as it is almost certain that the old 1st Duke Of Gloucester - Prince Henry son of George V  - had the illness.
 

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Alexandra Feodorovna / Re: Re: Alexandra and her Health Part 2

« on: January 11, 2009, 03:05:20 PM »

In pre-antibiotic days, severe infections  introduced into minor wounds or skin probes in ways that seem incredible to us now.

John Brown died of a superficial streptococcal infection of the face. for ex.

Ear, nose and throat infections then could go very serious very fast (this is not the same pathogenic behaviour of the otitis media bacteria that worries all these days).

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Alexandra Feodorovna / Re: Re: Alexandra and her Health Part 2

« on: January 11, 2009, 02:59:32 PM »

Well, we know that she suffered from sciatica, and that can be extremely painful to the point of not being able to walk. And the nerve damage in her legs from the glass incident also would have added to that. I think she also suffered from CFS. But, I'm no doctor, that just my 2 cents.

Sciatica is merely a descriptive term; it is not a medical diagnosis. It describes some class of pain and/or altered sensation down the sciatic nerve diagonally across the buttocks and down the nerve through the backs of the thighs. There would have to be a source of damage or deficit for such disability - pain enough would cause a lameness but would not cripple one in the sense that the limb(s) were useless.

It is exacerbated by direct contact with cold etc. Nerve "pain" is known as neuropathy - this does not in itself cause disabilitity. MS is a stripping away of the myelin sheath covering nerves and so is a separate pathology.

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The Windsors / Re: Where were you/What were you doing when you heard Diana had died?

« on: November 24, 2008, 06:41:49 PM »

On a boat to Denmark

Not far from me! I was on Silja Line from Stockholm to Helsinki.

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Alexandra Feodorovna / Re: Alexandra's Personality Traits - Good & Bad

« on: November 24, 2008, 04:32:00 PM »

Hysterical, narrow-minded, insensitive, superstitious, gullible, interfering,  ignorant, haughty, lazy and self-indulgent, autocratic and sickeningly and grotesquely anti-semitic. And probably IMHO suffering from the mental and emotional effects of the porphyria inherited via her great-great-grandfather George III, which would (charitably) go a long way to explain her appallingly destructive effect.

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Alexandra Feodorovna / Re: Re: Alexandra and her Health Part 2

« on: November 24, 2008, 04:23:38 PM »

Just remembered- the name of Alix's pet pill was Veronal