WELL-DESIGNED JEWELRY FOR NOBILITY

When it comes to the royal family, scandal is nothing new. Sexual romps, extramarital indiscretions, and crumbling marriages are par for the scurrilous, regal course, n'est pas? My mother, who the former Prince of Wales is quoted, circa 1933, calling 'Lady Patricia' and alternately just 'Vicountess', told me and also wrote in her manuscript that the 'Prince' in question called the current TRH: 'Chatsworth'.

I knew the public story about Edward VIII being forced to abdicated in order to marry Wallis Simpson. Post-Victorian morals were different to those of today. As a young man, I was fascinated with conspiracy theories. In the years before the internet, English teachers introduced me to the long-running theories about Shakespeare being Voltaire or the other way around. In The Empress Hotel, where I had the pleasure of meeting the Queen in 1971, friends would discuss over pints the 'facts' about how the USA had not actually landed a man on the moon.

My mother's oral history made me wonder if the Wallis Simpson marriage was just British propaganda aimed at covering up King Edward VIII's all too cozy relationship with the Nazis, his misogynist prejudiced views towards women, and perhaps even murder. Remember, the women's suffrage movement did not get the vote on the same terms as men in the United Kingdom until 1928.

During WWII, Bletcheley Park, a mansion in Buckinghamshire, England, was the home to the British government's Code and Cypher School, where codebreakers famously built the world's first computer and cracked Nazi Germany's Enigma cypher. Strangely, we first encounter characters in 'Tangled Feeling' talking about using computers before the first one had even been built. Most of this manuscript was written before the internet was born, but IT remains a theme throughout.

Foot traffic has fallen sharply, and schools have been closed due to the worldwide coronavirus outbreaks that my dearest friend and Queen spoke to the Commonwealth about. Meanwhile, here in rural bucolic Normandy, your transcriber is busy digitising his mother's often difficult to read handwritten manuscripts.

At first, the manuscripts appear to change Eugène's backstory and reveal that the stories his mother told him were false. Initially, Eugène Christian Evans (on Facebook - no accents) was shattered. Then, with greater familiarity, he realized the first diary entries he examined illustrated a state of mind when his mother Patrizia was suffering from Alzheimer's and lifelong memory loss.

Honestly, as a trained journalist, I can't decide if this prose writing is informative, oral historical or factual, rather than fictional. Would TRH The Prince of Wales and/or The Duchess of Cornwall venture a private and confidential opinion? I was most touched to receive your kind letter of 13th September 2016. May I loyally suggest, if you want to be a popular king of Quebec, you learn three words: JE ME SOUVIENS.

Yours Sincerely, Eugène Christian Evans, Editor & Son

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