Just Call Me Your Highness...

We have “discovered” (along I'm sure with tens of thousands of other people) the delightful new show “No Taste Like Home With Antoni Porowski.” The host takes “Hollywood stars” (their words, not mine, and while true the phrase itself hits my ear as an antiquity) back to the countries from which their families emigrated. There is a light dusting of culinary adventure on top of what is mostly a show about reclaiming family stories. I recommend it if, like me, you prefer to go to bed with a little buffer between the horrors of the day and your dreams.

Last night, we hit the James Marsden episode, in which he explores his family's German heritage. (Don't worry, his family emigrated long before history would have made the show uncomfortable.)

https://youtube.com/shorts/kPWg59X3aiE?si=1YCfuWaExaM1p4JS

Among the other places Marston is shown, is the Schaumburg von der Lippe Palace.

A still from the show.

Or, as we call it around here, Dominik's ancestral home. (We say this in our Downton Abbey voices, of course, when we have occassion to say it at all. Last night, that occasion came while we were sitting around in ratty old bathrobes and had just finished watching professional wrestling, as royals are wont to do.)

Austria abolished it's royalty and claims of royalty by it's citizens after WWI, in part because having royalty is how they started that war. The Schaumburgs are German royalty, though, so if Dominik renounced his Austrian citizenship he could use the title. This isn't the time to give up being a two passport household, so he won't be doing that. If he did, though, as his wife I'd instantly become Her Serene Highness Princess Sarah zu Schaumburg-Lippe.

Somewhere, in a version of what happens to us when we die that's more Disney than D'var Torah, my grandfather is telling a lot of other ghost grandparents “I always knew she was a princess.”

Now, if you'll pardon me, I'm going to go scrub the bathroom. But, you know, in a fancy way.