Rev dear Rev: Is there some substance in the recent assertion of one of the royals that she is the most persecuted royal lady in the history of royalty?

Persecutions of royal ladies there are a few. We can briefly adumbrate a few representative examples over the course of time:

• Lady Guinevere of Arthur fame was persecuted, ostensibly for an alleged affair with Lancelot;

• Queen Matilda of Stephen fame was also persecuted for the succession;

• Queen Catherine of Aragon had much suffering to endure about her loyalty to her king and husband, but she remained true to the end, though she may have died as a Christian martyr herself, the wells being poisoned slowly over time by other queens and challengers for the coveted queen’s crown alongside Henry VIII;

• Queen Anne Boleyn was persecuted for her inner religious faith and her loyalty to the Church by a heavily jealous king Henry VIII, while heand his Cromwells and Cranmers planned the dissolution of churches and monasteries to obtain wealth, lovely Queen Anne probably dying the death of a Christian martyr, in odium fidei, much like Charles I, though more popular than him;

• Queen Henrietta of Charles I fame was also much misunderstood by royal courtiers and republican Roundheads;

• Princess Victoria was much persecuted for her friendships first with Abdul the butler and then with Mr Brown the ghillie in Scotland - she was also much misunderstood for having lots of children with her German Consort husband Prince Albert;

• Princess Diana was also persecuted, chiefly by an obsessive media;

• Princess Sarah Ferguson was persecuted somewhat by elements within the media after appearing to divorce - she is the origin of the comment that she was the most persecuted royal lady in royal history, so maybe, it is not inconceivable;

• Princess Meghan too is also persecuted in our own time for her American open-minded ideology and her discreet alleged involvement with the book, Finding Freedom.

  All these royal ladies quickly found that life at the top had its princely sum to pay since they became the object of a certain amount of speculation among the media paparazzi and also among the courtiers, but that seems to be par for the course. The churches too have something analogous when young good looking handsome clerics find that they have become the object of comment and gossip as they ascend the ranks of the chosen - “his star is rising but it’s fading fast”, was one of the more amusing comments of Bro Randle Riede in the American sector of the imperial cities out abroad. So it seems such persecutions are a regular feature of imperial cities and royal courts, sad but true, and very much par for the course. Persecutions there are a few. And the reasons vary but a common feature is the normal human emotion of invidia and the concomitant feeling of admiratio - not always something to be encouraged, according to Fr Tim Valentine, the Magus Merlin of his time.