There’s comfort in a cool cousin
IT WASN’T a terrific week for the Royal family. But on the plus side, Prince Harry was allowed out without beady-eyed Meghan at his side to monitor his continuing commitment to making the world a better place. Or had he contrived to give her the slip? “Just going down to check on the...er... chicken coop, Megs”, he might have said, before swiping the car keys from the hall table and legging it to watch the LA Rams beat the Cincinnati Bengals in the Super Bowl.
For there he was with his cousin Eugenie watching the game. No wife, no kids.
Freeee-dom! And freedom from controversy too, because there’s nothing eyebrowraising about being with a cousin. She’s family and we know she and Harry have been good mates since they were little.
Cousins are marvellous accessories, because there’s a sense of shared adversity (all those eye-rolling details of your wider family to groan about) and you’re usually relaxed in each other’s company because there’s nothing to prove and nothing to hide. Familiarity breeds content.a relationship with a cousin is very much take-it-orleave-it. If you don’t see each other for years it doesn’t particularly matter. And as well as first cousins there are second cousins and cousins once or twice removed.
Nobody ever seems quite sure what that means, but you might send them a Christmas card anyway. If you don’t really like them they can be forgetten in a way that isn’t allowed with closer relatives.
In fiction the long-lost cousin has traditionally provided a neat way to bring together characters who wouldn’t normally meet. Urban sophisticates discover “country cousins” living in the sticks. Orphaned heroines are sent to live with distant relatives who have awful offspring to deal with.
Harry Potter had to live with his aunt and uncle Petunia and Vernon Dursley, only to be bullied by nasty coz Dudley.
Conversely, when Enid Blyton wrote the Famous Five stories, she understood how much pleasure children can get from being with cousins. Siblings Anne, Julian and Dick are forever being palmed off for the school holidays on their blissfully inattentive Aunt Fanny and Uncle Quentin, and spend time in Cornwall with their tomboy cousin George and her dog Timmy. This gives them endless scope for adventures with lashings of ginger beer. There’s nothing like that heady mix of familiarity and novelty that a visit to cousins can provide.
In Andrew, Eugenie has the most embarrassing dad in the world. Harry has possibly the most annoying wife. They have a lot to discuss. But maybe they parked all that and kept it simple.that’s the joy of cousins.