I despise royalty in general, although I have met some who are educated and well-mannered. This weekend I had the opportunity to spend some time at a palais which still belongs to a descendant of the original owner. This prince is quite rich, but also a businessman and he makes the palais, which has an impressive garden, pay for itself by running a restaurant and hotel there.

It was expensive, and a good place to people-watch. There was quite a variety of people there, all rich, but otherwise dissimilar. A lot of Americans. There was the good-looking American art dealer and his rich-looking American clients and his pudgy sidekick with little hands and feet. There was another American couple (you could tell from the way they were dressed even before they opened their mouths – baseball cap, polo shirt, shorts, running shoes); and when they opened their mouths! – too-white teeth (bleached? capped? veneers? glow-in-the-dark at any rate) and the questions they asked: “Is the restaurant good here?” (Doh). “‘Cause we like ethnic food. You have good ethnic food?”

At another table sat a family – a thirty-ish couple and the husband’s mother, but all pressed from the same mold: very tall and skinny, posture somehow just a little out of whack. Similar in the way dynastic families are, with spouses chosen as much for morphology as background. Some sort of royalty, but of the dopey, monied kind that is entitled to its position in the upper class purely by benefit of history and money and not any special smarts. I like to imagine that, if they had to pay their own way through college, they would probably be sweeping floors in an adult book store now instead of lunching at a palace.

Anyway.

The owner – the prince – was standing around. I got to shake his hand at one point, when he mistook me for someone important.