Neck of the woods

Did u know that they still have Archdukes in Austria? And now they have an Archduchess in DC (no, she is white as in Anglo)? Now if that don’t beat the Arch of St Louis. And I had though the last Austrian Archduke was offed by a Serb in Sarajevo in the summer of 1914.
I don’t recall personally meeting (as in shaking hands with) an Archduke before: just a viscount or two, a few sirs (lots of these around: a dime a dozen), one nearly plebeian queen and her consort once (there could have been an Archduke lurking around), a prince and his sad doomed beautiful bride once. No archdukes that I know of so far, but unlikely to run into any in this neck of the woods.

Maybe we ought to start having Archdukes, or maybe just Arches, in our Gulf. Imagine the elegance of having to pronounce: ArchShaikh Khalifa Bin Kleptocrat of Bahrain, ArchMufti Al Shaikh of Riyadh, ArchMullah ShamsUlSomethingOrOther of Tehran, ArchEmir Shaikh Taiss Bin Haiss (or maybe Haiss Bin Taiss) of the Salafis, ArchShaikh Ras Bin Ghlais Bin Shaiboob of WTF. Has a certain ring to it, nicht war?

It would be fine so long as these Arches don’t start slapping each other on the face with limp white gloves and demand satisfaction with a duel at dawn somewhere. Using slingshots (what we call nabbata) of course.

Cheers
mhg
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