It would be folly to try and pretend that Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie are the best English royals, but history will probably remember them as being far from the worst English royals. They are completely average, as far as royals go, save for the facts that they’ve managed to parlay “quitting internships” and “visiting places” into resume skills, as well as additionally holding the titles of first and second-best tiny hat wearers in all of England for more than a decade.
For a combination of these reasons, Beatrice and Eugenie have long been my favorites of their admittedly not-that-great family. They are like if the Bush twins were also the Schlegel sisters from Howard’s End. Fancy, yet also somehow not that fancy, theoretically opposed to people being poor or sick or whatever, yet easily distracted by a teensy flower attached to half a hat. But unlike Helen Schlegel, Princess Eugenie is expecting a legitimate baby. Congratulations to the princesses and to that baby! To celebrate the occasion, let us retell the story of the Schlegal sisters, two other also sort-of German members of the English ruling class, through the magic of Beatrice and Eugenie’s smallest, most whimsical hats.
