The royal balancing act
First things first. How would she like to be addressed? 'Whatever makes you feel comfortable,' replies Her Royal Highness Princess Alexandra of Denmark, courteously but bafflingly. (There isn't really a recognised comfort zone for addressing royalty, so she remains 'you' for the rest of the interview.) Outside the room, a Chinese bagpiper, loitering in a kilt, tries out a lowish, tentative moan.
It is a November Sunday morning at the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club, the day of the Panerai Around the Island Race, and the princess has agreed to give an interview amid the festivities. She has extracted herself from her family, other reporters, the stalls selling candy floss and marine memorabilia, and now she's sitting alone, without PRs or Danish consular staff, unpinning a shoulder nosegay and saying, 'I'll just peel this attire off,' and asking if she can have a few minutes' warning about photographs because she'd like to brush her hair in advance. She looks very pretty and very in control: a friendly woman of 39 who thinks before she speaks, carefully enunciates sentences sprinkled with faintly old-fashioned British phrases ('I take my hat off to them!' 'The bane of my life', 'Goodness me!') and has clearly learned to present a certain image of herself in public.
Eight years ago, on November 18, 1995, Alexandra Manley, who was born and raised in Hong Kong, the daughter of a half-British, half-Chinese father, Richard, and an Austrian mother, Christa, became the wife of Prince Joachim Holger Waldemar Christian, the second son of Queen Margrethe and Prince Henrik of Denmark. She thereby gained a title and lost a surname - the Danish royal family doesn't have any - and became the first person of Asian blood to marry into a reigning European royal family.
She was 31 and her groom was 26. She had been an Island School student: 'Very popular with the boys,' says an exact contemporary, and this is a constant refrain from those who know her, the young Alex not being a curds-and-whey, moping sort of storybook heroine but a vivacious and spirited young woman who loved to party.
When she met Prince Joachim, in 1994, she was a mutual-funds executive who lived in Discovery Bay and he was working here for Maersk, the Danish shipping line. Those who are interested in royal form - and who view the Almanach De Gotha as a sort of glorified stud book - may appreciate the fact that their first date was reported to be at the Happy Valley racecourse. By May 1995, Queen Margrethe had informed the Danish prime minister of the happy couple's intentions, and on May 31, 1995, Manley was formally presented to the Danish government at a Council of State meeting.
After that, it was Danish lessons and Danish commercial effusions: Alexandra bottles of wine, Alexandra cake, Alexandra biscuits, Alexandra beer, Alexandra phone-cards. There was a wedding dress with 8,900 pearls, a church filled with 10,000 blooms and, as if marking the occasion in a properly spectacular manner, the worst snowstorm in a decade. The bride carried a bouquet that contained bauhinia (to honour her birthplace), lime leaves (plucked from the trees of her future home at Schackenborg Castle, South Jutland) and rosemary.