Confessions of a Rexophiliac

I plead guilty to a case of rexophilia.

It’s my own little term combining “rex” for “king” and “philio” for “attraction or affinity.” Feel free to share it; spreading this linguistic spore will surely make its usage grow.

Yes, I’m admitting it: I savor tidbits of knowledge and little brushes with royalty. I think it started when I learned as a child that my mother’s family is descended from Robert the Bruce. Our coat of arms includes the lion rampant, a symbol reserved for those of royal blood. King William I "The Lion" (1143-1214) adopted as his heraldic device the king of beasts 'rampant' i.e. rearing up with three paws outstretched. This became the Scottish royal coat of arms and was incorporated into the Great Seal of Scotland for official documents. Legend has it that the inspiration came from King William's own lion that he supposedly kept in Edinburgh castle. (My name, Joanna, is Hebrew in origin, but the first Joanna in the United States came from Scotland and was my ancestress.)

With this in mind, when we moved to the UK, I found myself in royalty nirvana. Watching royals there is like celebrity spotting here. Or like talking about our sports teams. Everyone has an opinion. Everyone has a story, and you can connect with all sorts of folks in all sorts of strata by chatting about the royals.

Here’s one of my favorite encounters: When we moved to the UK, we needed furniture. (We discovered that what we thought was the annual cost to rent furniture was a monthly fee.) Especially mattresses. So we were shopping and wound up in the place where Queen Elizabeth bought her mattress. (I have no idea how; we certainly didn't have "aspirations" to expensive mattresses.) The salesman started telling us about her, how cheap she is, and how she calls up every couple of years and says, "HRH here."

Can you imagine? It's rather like Trump referring to himself in third person. Evidently, Queen Elizabeth gets her mattresses re-stuffed on a regular basis with--stand back--HORSE HAIR!

Fortunately, I'm extremely allergic to horses, so my husband David and I could nod solemnly and say, "Oh, so sorry. We'd love to buy one of your ridiculously, excessively, stupendously expensive mattresses that won't fit any beds at home in the US but because of allergies we must decline...."

Now I’m curious. How many of you are rexophiles? If you are, and if you leave a comment saying so, I’ll write about my correspondence with Prince Charles. (Yes, and I’m not joking. I’ll even scan the letter and add it to this blog. But you have to let me know…)

I'll also upload my photo of HRH taken when we both were at Ascot--as soon as Blogger fixes its uploading glitch.

But...YOU have to let me know! Are you interested? Do you, too, harbor an interest in the doings of royalty?