Why do embarrassing rows about race keep on dogging Princess Pushy?
As her daughter’s ex-boyfriend claims she kept two black sheep called Venus and Serena ...
With a new baby in the Royal Family and the Windsor wedding of harry and Meghan just days away, who could have imagined that, at 73, it would be Princess Michael of Kent who would be making headlines?
these should be tranquil days for the former secretary, Marie Christine von Reibnitz. Now a grandmother twice over, next month she and the Queen’s first cousin, Prince Michael, 75, will be celebrating their Ruby wedding.
But suddenly there she was, the uneasy focus of an article in snooty Vanity Fair magazine touching on the issue of racism in relation to the Royal Family.
it was written by Aatish taseer, a young man with a Sikh mother and Muslim father who, a few years back, some thought might have become the Michaels’ son-in-law.
he dated their daughter, Lady Gabriella, now 37, for three years between 2003 and 2006 (he’s now married to a man).
in the article, taseer flippantly declared that ‘royals and Nazis go together like blini and caviar’.
he also revealed that Princess Michael used to own two black sheep at her former Gloucestershire home, where he often stayed, which she named Venus and Serena after the African- American Williams tennis sisters.
‘Most everyone thought she was “perfectly ghastly” but i saw a nice side of Princess Michael,’ writes taseer, damning the Princess with the faintest of praise.
Until now, you’d have thought that just about everything that could be said about the so- called ‘Princess Pushy’ has been said — but it appears not.
What is undeniable is the fact that she wouldn’t have attracted all the opprobrium that has come her way over the years if she hadn’t spent so much time boasting about her elevated ancestry.
She has claimed to have ‘more royal blood’ than anyone who has married into the Royal Family since Prince Philip.
TYPICAL of her self-congratulatory crowing is the following: ‘i have a great lineage. the Duke of Burgundy started the Order of the Fleece [a Roman Catholic Order of Chivalry] in 1430. And, of the first 20 members, 17 are my ancestors.
‘Even Catherine de Medici and Diane de Poitiers [the first a French Queen, mother of three kings; the second the mistress of Catherine’s husband, henry ii of France] — i descend from them both. Do you descend from Charlemagne directly? Do you descend from Saint King Louis Xi? i do!’
yesterday, Princess Michael was said to be feeling ‘deeply wounded’ at what is seen in her family as ‘a betrayal by someone [taseer] she treated almost as a son, welcoming him into her home’.
‘in all the years i’ve known her i have never seen her so injured,’ said one long-time family friend.
it isn’t, of course, the first time that Princess Michael has been caught up in a row about race, a particularly awkward allegation to brush off in view of her father, Baron Gunther von Reibnitz, so inconveniently having been a Cavalry officer in hitler’s SS.
And indeed, there is one incident in particular that is held to be responsible for Marie Christine, author of several biographies and historical novels, failing in her ambition to make it big as a writer in America, where she also hoped to break into the lucrative world of U.S. television.
this is the infamous — and disputed — episode in New york’s fashionable Da Silvano italian restaurant when a group of black diners at a nearby table insist they heard the Princess say ‘go back to the Colonies’. Even now, 14 years after it happened, it seems scarcely credible that the Czech- born princess who grew up in a working class district of Sydney being referred to as a ‘reffo’ — a refugee — could use such words as she allegedly rounded on the diners for being too noisy.
her version of the event is that she asked to be moved to a quieter table and was told the only one free was ‘in Siberia’, and she had responded: ‘ “Siberia?” i said. “At this point i would be ready to go back to the colonies.” i was unaware, and i probably should have been aware, that “colonies” is a pejorative term in America.’
Whatever her exact words, the Princess emphasised them by banging on the noisy diners’ table with her open hand.
immediately branded a ‘bigot’ in the American media, rightly or wrongly the clash was seen as an ugly piece of naked racism.
the U.S. public relations firm Dan Klores Communications, which was in the final stages of signing a contract with the Princess, instantly dropped her, saying: ‘We do not want to be associated with those kind of comments.’
in his article, taseer recounts discussing the restaurant incident with the Princess, who explained: ‘i would never have said that. i’m a historian. i know that America itself was a colony.’
he goes on: ‘She feigned an odd mixture of injustice and contrition: “i daren’t even say i want my coffee black any more. i say, without milk.” ’
For Princess Michael, who has always pleaded that she and Prince Michael have struggled to make ends meet, the fallout of the New york incident was a shattering blow to her ambitions in the land of opportunity.
She had been trying to establish herself there as a high- earning ‘people’s princess’, rather like the Duchess of york who made a fortune in the USA before losing it and crashing to earth.
Mindful of this episode in 2004, it was all the more astonishing when, last December, Princess Michael arrived at the Queen’s Christmas lunch at Buckingham Palace, where the guests included harry’s new fiancee Meghan Markle, displaying a Blackamoor brooch.
She was seen wearing the distinctive and controversial piece of jewellery — which depicts the head of a black man — on her coat as she drove into the Palace, where she was to be introduced to Meghan, whose mother is black, for the first time.
NOW we have the black sheep. in Vanity Fair, Aatish taseer appears to suggest that they were the result of Princess Michael inviting ‘ trouble out of a desire to shock’.
Whether they, or the Blackamoor brooch for that matter, create any waves when she meets Meghan’s mother, Doria Ragland — and, presumably, the bride’s great friend Serena Williams — at the wedding in two weeks’ time, remains to be seen. Certainly, the suggestion in some quarters, that the controversy could mean not being invited to the wedding at all, is absurd.
As the Queen’s first cousin and an occasional working royal, Prince Michael and his statuesque, 6ft wife are among the first names on the guest list.
Meanwhile, wags among Palace courtiers have taken to referring to Marie Christine as the ‘black sheep of the family’. this about the women of whom the Queen once said ‘she sounds a bit too grand for us’, after the illustrious royal bloodline of Marie Christine Anna Agnes hedwig ida von Reibnitz was recounted to her by Lord Mountbatten when her marriage to Prince Michael was being arranged!
the ‘black sheep’ joke is bound to follow her to the Windsor wedding where younger royals might find it difficult to resist joining in the gag.
the irony of Princess Michael’s two black sheep is that, according to one of her friends at least, naming them Venus and Serena was meant to be a friendly joke.
‘ MC adores tennis and is a regular at Wimbledon,’ says the
friend. ‘ She’s a big admirer of the Williams’ sisters. She’s really upset that people should think she has racist inclinations.’
All the same, if she happens to be present in the Royal Box at Wimbledon this year when either of the Williams sisters walks out, there’s likely to be a ripple around the Centre Court.
For her part, the Princess blames ‘not being English’ for her humour being misunderstood. ‘Both my husband and my son (Lord Frederick Windsor) say i don’t understand English humour and they don’t always understand what i think is funny or when i’m being ironic,’ she has said.
‘MC’s biggest trouble is her mouth,’ says another friend. ‘She tends to speak her mind with a certain arrogance as though she’s always right.’
how very different is Lady Gabriella — Ella to everybody — the other wounded party in this sorry tale, now having to live down taseer’s claims that while dating they swam naked in the Queen’s pool at Buckingham Palace, and took MDMA — ecstasy — at Windsor Castle.
While Lord Freddie, a City financial analyst married to actress Sophie Winkleman, with whom he has two children, has taken on his mother’s rather imperious manner, Ella, a freelance writer, is like her father, rather diffident and shy. ‘She would never have swum naked or taken drugs without being led into doing it,’ says a family friend.
All in all, one can understand why Princess Michael is so upset. She once described taseer as ‘one of the most handsome men i have ever met’ and allowed him to appear with Ella in an 11-page hello! magazine spread of pictures at Nether Lypiatt Manor, the family home in Gloucester (where they kept the black sheep), which was later sold for £6 million.
Certainly, he and Ella seemed to be in love, always touching, sometimes kissing, and, it is said, ‘never having a row’.
however, Princess Michael never saw him as an ideal son-in-law. it was just something, according to an old friend, that the Princess ‘felt’ about him. As things turned out, she was right. three years ago taseer, now 38, married American lawyer Ryan Davis, 32.
they live in a £1.2 million flat in Manhattan with their dog, Zinc, and taseer has become an outspoken advocate for gay rights.
Lady Gabriella, meanwhile, is seeing banker tom Kingston, 40, a former date of Pippa Middleton.
‘She was always being saved by her mother for a prince,’ says the old friend.
‘But even Marie Christine knows things don’t always turn out as you wish.’