young, beautiful, and lucky

Yesterday we considered being tired, bored, and lucky.
(the theory: In Life, most days are boring, if you're lucky)

Made me think of Princess Diana -- when she married Prince Charles in 1981 someone asked why people were so fascinated with Diana and an onlooker stated, "Because she is young, beautiful, and lucky."

That memory inspired me to share another excerpt from Tina Brown's Diana biography, The Diana Chronicles -- In Chapter Three, "Difficult Women" Brown writes about the Spencer family:

The family was older by 250 years than that Hanoverian import of the eighteenth century, King George I, whose descendants are today's House of Windsor. The Spencers could trace themselves back to 1469, when they were a respected clan of prospering sheep farmers in Warwickshire, already in a position to lend money to the monarchy. In 1603, James I repaid the royal debts with the traditional Get Out of Jail Free card--a barony, conferred on the prosperous Robert Spencer, which forty years later included the earldom of Sunderland.

In 1699, the Spencers entwined their lustrous family tree with that of the Churchill family when the daughter of the first Duke of Marlborough, hero-general of the Battle of Blenheim, married Charles Spencer. The result was a celebrated branch of the family--the Spencer-Churchills, who were residents of one of England's most spectacular stately homes, Blenheim Palace.

The Spencers' glory days were the eighteenth century. They became powerful forces in the Whig party, dedicated to restraining the power of the monarchy and supporters of the Protestant succession; in the nineteenth century, they became Parliamentary Liberals, rivals to the Tories. They were behind-the-scenes power brokers. They helped smooth the ascension to the throne of the Hanoverian prince who became King George I.

There was no paradox in the fact that seven or eight generations of Spencers had been loyal courtiers and servants of the crown. They were servants of the monarchy THEY CHOSE. They saw themselves not as courtiers but--literally--as kingmakers, in touch with the populace but aloof from the merely rich.

In 1765, George III upgraded their barony to an earldom.

I note in that last bit how she writes, "They saw themselves..." not as courtiers...etc.

Like, part of being aristocratic is how you "see yourself," how you position yourself, even when titles are conferred.

And, doesn't "in touch with the populace but aloof from the merely rich" strike you as a rather excellent place to be?(!)