I was a Princess. It had its disadvantages but not so that you’d really notice and it certainly dusted me with glamour at school.
“Oooooooh“, breathed Pauline Gauci, her brown eyes glazed with awe, “you’re a Princess“! “Don’t tell anyone“, I said quickly. “It’s a secret“, thus ensuring the news would travel throughout the school by lunchtime.
When I left the small pond of St Fidelis for the not much bigger pond of St Columba’s, I arrived as a princess. These older girls weren’t as quick to take my royalty for granted but called me ‘her Maj’ and always ushered me on first when we caught the bus.
A couple of the nuns weren’t happy with my status and Marguerite Fullner Nepomuk didn’t like it either. Her mother was a real princess, she said, and turned up one day with a family history chart which showed, she said, flapping it in my face, that her mother was a direct descendant of King Ferenc II, but who takes seriously the remnants of obscure Hungarian nobility? I remained the only princess in the school and the name, now shortened to ‘Maj’ stayed with me.
But every princess has a family. Here are some of mine.
