Caricature/Cartoon – Prince William and Kate Middleton – A Wedding Present to the Royal Couple!

WISHING THE ROYAL COUPLE A LONG & HAPPY MARRIED LIFE!

(Check out what the Royal Wedding Invitation Card looks like ;-))

The Royal Bond of Love - Kate Middleton and Prince William.

You are welcome to use this caricature on your blog/non-commercial website.

Prince William – A Dash of his Biography

Prince William was born on June 21, 1982. With Prince Charles as his dad and Princess Diana as his mom, Prince William possibly became famous before he was born. He could be the King of 16 states of the Commonwealth Realm, including the United Kingdom but excluding India – thanks to the Indian Freedom Struggle🙂

As it must be with those of royal lineage, the Prince stays busy with humanitarian causes (AIDS, Poverty in Africa), and sports (for charity). Read all about him at his Wikipedia page.

What interests me most about Prince Williams is the fact that he one among the 10% lefties in the world. I guess in all other things, he is one in a zillion. How many people are born princes or princesses – even if you include the worlds at the outer-realms of the universe?

Everything that you ever wanted to know about Kate Middleton

Kate Middleton was born on January 9, 1982 (older than the Prince – is she?) She’s known for winning the Jackpot (read: Prince William’s Heart.) She was William’s flatmate at the University, and they’d been dating ever since.

Her parents earlier worked with British Airways in Jordan, but later relocated to Britain. Nevertheless, the interesting bit is that her maternal ancestors were workers and miners (Please read Ken Follett’s “Fall of the Giants” for a detailed account of their lives) and in those days, a girl born in a miner’s family would probably never become the Queen! But thankfully, the times have changed, and Cinderella stories happen outside the fairy tales too.

As it happens, the moment you are slated to become a princess – you turn the best-dressed/most glamorous/most beautiful – so it happened with Kate too. She’s been topping the best-dressed celeb charts in the recent past. 

Here are some childhood pictures of Kate Middleton.  (She looks pretty in these pictures, doesn’t she?)

The William-Kate Marriage or the Royal Wedding 2011!

Let us now return to the topic of this post – William’s marriage with Kate. It’s going to happen on April 29, 2011 – and for some strange reason, everyone (including your caricaturist) is interested in following it. It’s always nice to see a normal person become a princess. And now that the Queen has become used to accepting “common” people like you and me in their family – life should be substantially easier for Kate than it was for Diana.

But I wonder…

• Isn’t the British royalty a tad sexist? Believe it or not, Kate Middleton might be called “Her Royal Highness Princess William of Wales” especially if Prince William decides not to become a Duke, and Kate doesn’t get the title of Duchess. Now, where did “Kate Middleton” go? Do you see her in her new title? I don’t.
• Is Kate truly happy? She might be head-over-heels in love with William, but does she have to really give up her freedom for love?
• If a whole story begins with weight-loss programs (these days, Kate Middleton’s looking thinner than a stick,) I really don’t care to read it through. (Check this out.)

The Royal Wedding Data Sheet

Other than the fact that neither the Obamas nor I am invited to the wedding (and yet, the magnanimous caricaturist draws a wedding gift for the couple,) you may find the following bits interesting.

1. The guests are requested (oops! “required”) to reach Westminster Abbey at 11 a.m. on April 29.
2. They are required to wear  military uniform, tailcoat, or business suit (Can I assume that only men are invited – or that women can attend wearing bikinis?)
3. Total Invitations: 1900 for the wedding; of the 1900, 600 for the reception; of the 600, 300 for the dinner! So, you know how “Select” you are, by assessing the extent of your invitation.
4. The dress that Kate wears for her wedding is going to be important. You can see what the designers did to poor Diana (her Mother-in-Law,) here. Imagine a dress that would generate employment for four people for four hours – It reminds me of Chief Vitalstatistix’s shield carriers. You can just hope that Kate remembers to go to the loo before she gets into a dress like that – right? By the way, you can’t hope to influence the dress-designer into designing something more practical and comfortable for Kate, because the designer’s identity is being kept a secret.

Kate and William Wedding – Humor

• Five Reasons Why Kate and William Shouldn’t Marry
• Jokes – Sick and Well.
• Four Reasons Why Kate and William will Stay Married.

But what’s this?

A Video of their marriage? (Gasp! Are they already married? Double Gasp!) But seriously, you need to look at that video – it’s hilarious!

NEWEST NEWS! – Fresh from the Royal Oven (Added: April 28, 2011)

Kate Middleton has been having nightmares in which she sees herself exchanging vows with Prince William au-naturel, naked, in the buff! In her dream she gets stern looks from the queen (naturally) and she finds herself prioritizing which part of hers she should cover first. I wonder if she got state-approval on her comment before she made it to the media, because it does conjure a colorful image of the wedding – doesn’t it?

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Caricature/Cartoon – Queen Elizabeth II, the reigning British Monarch and Her Crown!

Queen Elizabeth II is the queen regnant of the United Kingdom. (Queen Regnant is a queen with all the royal authority ascribed to the ruler instead of being queen just by virtue of being the wife of a king.) This caricature-cartoon of Queen Elizabeth of the United Kingdom is about those many crowns that she wears!

After the caricature is a short biography of the Queen (Find the long one here.)

Uneasy?

Queen Elizabeth’s shortest biography on the web:

She was born on April 21, 1926. Her father George VI was the last Emperor of India. When he died in 1952, Elizabeth ascended the throne. About 5 years before her coronation she married Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburg, with whom she had fallen in love when she was only thirteen. They had four children. The Queen went through a lot of public criticism over the Charles-Diana debacle and later her response to Diana’s death. After Queen Victoria and King George III, she’s the longest reigning monarch of the British Empire, who has been the queen for 58 years now.

(Source: The Official Website of the British Monarchy.)

The Queen’s Annus Horribilis:

The Queen called 1992 her annus horribilis, which included the Topless Sarah Ferguson’s toe being kissed by John Bryan scandal, the fire at the palace, and Prince Charles’ and Princess Diana’s divorce…among other things! Phew! What an year…even for a queen with all the support systems in place!

(Source: Annus Horribilis – 1992 )

The Queen’s Gutsy Admirer – Michael Fagan

Of course, you can read the details of the Queen’s biography all over the web. So, let me talk about Michael Fagan, a 32-year-old man who broke into the Buckingham Palace and got into the Queen’s bedroom. This young man sat in the Queen’s bedroom and had about 8 minutes of uninterrupted conversation with her. Fascinating…right? The underside of it all was that he was accused of stealing half-a-bottle of wine…and then had to spend about six months in a mental asylum! There are two ways of looking at this punishment.

1. It was a small price to pay for a one-to-one conversation with the Queen.
2. Something was mentally wrong with those who put him into the mental asylum instead of the prison. By this philosophy, the thieves who ransacked our office last year and partied on all that was available in the pantry, should be sent to the mental assylum, instead of being put behind bars!

(Source: The Michael Fagan Incident)

Here are some interesting links:

• A Queen’s life
• The Coronation Dress
• Queen Elizabeth’s pictures
• The British Monarchy Site
• The Crown Jewels
• The Queen’s Personal Wealth
• Annus Horribilis – 1992

Queen Elizabeth II – Glossary:

Queen Regnant: The queen who is vested with all the royal authority (at par with the King.)
Queen Consort: The queen who’s a queen by virtue of being the wife of a king.
Annus Horibilis: A truly bad year where nothing works out and everybody is out to get you. (2009 for me, 1992 for the Queen!)

Drawing the Caricature of Queen Elizabeth II:

(A Window into my Thoughts, for those who want to learn how to draw the Queen’s caricature.)

• When you draw a queen, caricature or otherwise, you draw a queen. So it was important that the caricature highlighted her queenly attributes/features. Thus, the crown became important.
• Next, because the caricature was of Queen Elizabeth II, it had to have a likeness. As you’d note from her pictures, the Queen’s chin is slightly drawn in and she’s got a nice nose and a smile. These were important too.
• So the crown, the chin, and the smile got exaggerated. The dress and the ribbons were drawn to build additional likeness.
• The joke…well:-) Queen Elizabeth II is a strong woman who seems to have been born with a crown – and so she hardly notices it:-)