Their royal whats?

Editor's note: Michael Ackley's columns may include satire and parody based on current events, and thus mix fact with fiction. He assumes informed readers will be able to tell which is which.

I sat down to lunch with Howard Bashford and could tell at once he was distracted. He usually doesn't pour sugar on his hamburger and put mustard in his coffee.

"Howard," I said. "Snap out of it! You're acting like you're on another planet."

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His eyes lost their vacant look as he took a sip of coffee.

"Ugh!" he grunted, then signaled the waiter to bring a fresh cup.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I've just been preoccupied for days by the announcement that Prince Charles was going to marry Camilla Parker Bowles."

"What do you care?" I asked.

"Well, I didn't – at first," Howard replied, "but then I read Charles had given Camilla an heirloom engagement ring, described has a platinum band with a square-cut central diamond with three baguettes on each side.

"That really set me to thinking."

"Thinking what?" I asked.

Howard mused, "Why would you put six loaves of bread next to an engagement ring?"

"Howard," I said, "those 'baguettes' aren't they kind you get from a French bakery. They're rectangular gems – part of the ring."

"Oh," he said in a small voice. "Well, then there's the question of surnames. Prince Charles has four given names – Charles Phillip Arthur George – like his parents were trying to corner the market."

His voice trailed off as he added, "Though they didn't get Jason or Joshua ..."

"Howard!" I said sharply.

"Right," he said, regaining a semblance of consciousness. "The surname. Charles has a lot of titles – Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall, Duke of Rothesay, Earl of Carrick, Baron Renfrew, Lord of the Isles and Great Steward of Scotland and Knight of the Garter (and I think he's Earl of Chester, too) – but the happy couple are going to be 'Mr. and Mrs. Something,' aren't they? But mister and misses what?"

I couldn't suppress a superior smile.

"You're probably guessing 'Windsor,'" I said, "because Queen Elizabeth is a Windsor, but his dad's name is Mountbatten."

Howard either ignored or failed to notice my supercilious air.

"Perhaps, but Mountbatten wasn't the original name of his father, the duke of Edinburgh, he said. "Prince Phillip was born Philippos Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderbert-Glucksburn. He just took the name Mountbatten because he was raised by his uncle, Louis Mountbatten, first earl Mountbatten of Burma.

"I couldn't find any indication that he legally changed his name. And even though Camilla is used to a double last name, I'm not sure she's ready to be Camilla Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderbert-Glucksburn. You couldn't even fit that on a calling card."

It was my turn to say "Oh" in a small voice.

Howard continued, "And think of the geography. Phillip was prince of Greece and Denmark. To you know how far Greece is from Denmark? What could the royals be thinking?"

He now was bouncing from subject to subject like a ping-pong ball in a cluttered garage.

"There also is the question of whether or not Camilla is of royal blood," he said, "but I checked and found at least one baron in her lineage, so I guess that will be OK with the Brits – even though he died in Dorking."

At this reference Howard snickered, and I decided it was time to call a halt.

"OK, Howard," I said. "Why don't you just forget about the surname issue? If you ever have occasion to speak to Charles or Camilla, you'll be expected to address them as 'your royal highness.'"

"That's worth considering," said Howard agreeably, as he scraped the sugar from his hamburger patty. "However, as we have conversed, a new thought has entered my head."

Naturally I asked what it was, and he replied, "We might have to call them 'royal highness' in Britain, but here we're free to be more accurate."

"So how would you address them?" I demanded.

Howard smirked, "How about 'your anachronism' or 'your irrelevancy'?"