It's a Puzzler

Royal-watchers and their fascination with heirloom celebrity status who outrank and outperform their counterparts in the media, popular entertainment, music, dance, theatre, Hollywood through the mystique surrounding royalty, inheritance and class distinctions present a mystery.  No talent is required; birthright is a necessity. 

Popular legends help enormously and popular acclaim in support of a dynastic rule with a public willing and eager to ascribe exceptionality to the otherwise-banal.

A young woman from a financially privileged background whose sister has married into the British royal household suddenly is described as one of the "most influential people in the world", by Time magazine.  Just because a respected and popular news journal makes that pronouncement doesn't, of course, guarantee the statement has real meaning in the real world. 

But it does describe popular fascination with something, some mysterious element attracting mass popularity and appeal.

That something just happens to be a young woman - 28-year-old Philippa Middleton, popularly known as "Pippa", which doubtless helps - whose social exploits seem anything but celebrational, but which have led to her being doted upon as a social leader of elite young international celebrities; people who worship their imaginary lifestyles and lead the public to do likewise.

Her sister Catherine, now Duchess of Cambridge, married to the British heir to the throne, Prince William, gained her own wildly fond popular appeal.  Tinged, however, with respect, since she is now part of the royal institution and she will undoubtedly become the mother of a royal figure who may one day sit on the throne.  For whatever that is worth.

But Philippa, Kate's sister, single, and much sought-out by the cavalier and worldly youth of aristocratic and/or wealthy European elite, has herself become famous as she flaunts her own connections.  What she wears, how she portrays herself, has become influential in how others wish to display and comport themselves. 

She has received enough advantage to allow her a $600,000 publishing fee for a book on that vital topic: party planning. There is now ongoing a six-figure bidding altercation for a 'major' television interview, her first. 

The fickle public will doubtless soon become bored with this hollow manifestation of social prestige; utterly meaningless, but obviously a measure of notoriety beyond any connection to values having been attributed to the empty lifestyle of someone revelling in her fortuitous public appeal.