The Displaced Nation

The Standard, Hong Kong’s biggest-circulation English daily, reported on April 27 that yet another Hong Kong-based Brit has claimed to be related to Kate Middleton:

Public relations professional Penelope Troon and Kate are third cousins; that is, they share the same great-great grandfather: John William Middleton, a solicitor from Leeds.

We — ML Awanohara and Kate Allison — should like to begin this statement by declaring no relationship to the royals.

Well, that’s not strictly true. ML once met and chatted with Prince Charles. She has also seen Princess Diana (who was with him on that day) as well as Princess Anne (on a separate occasion).

And Kate saw the queen once, driving through her town during the Silver Jubilee in 1977, and she may have seen the Queen Mother a few years before that on a school trip — she has only a hazy recollection.

But what qualifies us to live-tweet the wedding of Kate Middleton and Prince William is that we have no blood ties to the royals and are not in line for the throne, at least as far as we know.

We were both in England when Prince William’s parents got married in 1981 — and for this wedding, find ourselves in again in the same place (more or less): on the U.S. East Coast.

Thirty years on, thanks to new communications technology, we have met (albeit still only virtually). And we’ve discovered that whereas Kate has no time for the royals, ML has tremendous nostalgia for them, owing to having spent part of her youth in the UK.

So join us as we live-tweet our impressions of this second Royal Wedding from the American side of the pond, from 5:00 a.m. EST; hashtag: #DNRW.

~ML Awanohara & Kate Allison