MemeMachineGo!

I was telling my friend, Debbie, that I had recently discovered three conspicuous holes in Pocahontas’ movie comedy literacy: Arsenic and Old Lace, The Court Jester, and… I blanked on the third one.

“Kind Hearts and Coronets”, she said, without missing a beat. Of course the third element of the series that begins Arsenic and Old Lace and The Court Jester is Kind Hearts and Coronets.

Pocahontas and I have since corrected those holes, and she loved all of them, to no great surprise. I especially enjoyed seeing Kind Hearts again. The premise is that our hero is the son of a disowned daughter of a duke, placing him personally at about 11th in the line of succession. When the family refuses to let his mother be buried in the family crypt, he vows to murder them all (neatly gaining himself a duchy.) Much of the movie is given over to his carrying out these murders, one by one. (That’s no more spoiler than the trailer offers — the fun is in the journey.)

Roger Ebert writes:

The methods of Louis’ murders are in the spirit of George Orwell’s famous essay “Decline of the English Murder” (1946), in which he regretted the modern practice of simply shooting people and being done with it. Praising the ingenuity of an earlier generation of English murders, Orwell examines those crimes “which have given the greatest pleasure to the British public,” finding that poison is the preferable means, and that an ideal murderer is a member of the middle class who hopes to improve his social position or get hold of a legacy.

There was some talk of remaking Kind Hearts; I’m relieved to find no mention of it subsequent to 2000 — it looks like the plans fell through. (Remember, what’s killing Hollywood is too much originality. Did Connie Willis have to be so right?)

The rules of succession to the British throne are somewhat complicated:

The basis for the succession was determined in the constitutional developments of the seventeenth century, which culminated in the Bill of Rights (1689) and the Act of Settlement (1701). […]

The succession to the throne is regulated not only through descent, but also by statute; the Act of Settlement confirmed that it was for Parliament to determine the title to the throne.

The Act laid down that only Protestant descendants of Princess Sophia - the Electress of Hanover and granddaughter of James I - are eligible to succeed. Subsequent Acts have confirmed this.

Parliament, under the Bill of Rights and the Act of Settlement, also laid down various conditions which the Sovereign must meet. A Roman Catholic is specifically excluded from succession to the throne; nor may the Sovereign marry a Roman Catholic.

The Sovereign must, in addition, be in communion with the Church of England and must swear to preserve the established Church of England and the established Church of Scotland. The Sovereign must also promise to uphold the Protestant succession.

Wikipedia, incredibly, lists the first 865 people in line for the British throne. On the occasion of the Queen’s Golden Jubilee, the Guardian sought to interview the Queen. When she refused, they thought they’d get someone in line for the throne, and invited everyone over 18 years old in the top 38. When they all refused, they kept going. Eventually, they found Raggi Lorentzen.

All of which explains why I am making this absurd day trip to San Francisco to talk to a woman who, like our Queen, is the great-great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria, but whose resemblance to her distant cousin ends there. Raggi Lorentzen is 34, tanned, blonde, very Nordic in appearance and co-owns two tapas restaurants in downtown San Francisco (one, the Thirsty Bear, doubles as a brewery). She was born and brought up in Rio, where her mother, Princess Ragnhild, moved soon after marrying her bodyguard-turned-businessman husband. They originally went there for two years; they have lived there for almost 50.

Raggi has dual Norwegian-Brazilian citizenship; is fluent in Norwegian and Portuguese; speaks somewhat haltingly in English and has no designs on the British throne. She did not know she was 66th in line, although she realised that as a descendant of Victoria she was somewhere on the list; nor did she realise that if she marries her Irish Catholic boyfriend she forfeits her place. The relationship is not in immediate danger.

I always wondered if she’d seen Kind Hearts, but she has since given it all up for love.