If that injunction was, indeed, directed at me, as I suspect, let me respond, Martha, before you draw the line under this discussion, as I have discovered is wont happen following such a rebuke.

I am bewildered how anyone might think it possible to host a message board on ‘Royal New and Views’ that excludes ‘politics’, in the broadest sense. What are monarchies if not the heart of the political systems in which they are located? In saying this I am not, of course, advocating discussions about Conservative/Labor or Republican/Democrat party political divisions – but you know that, because my posts on the Jordanian wedding raised no such issues, and neither have any of my other posts on this board. Rather,in this sequence, I have been interested in pursuing with Karenl, who I have long apprehended to have a particular knowledge of Jordanian Royal affairs, a discussion of the import (‘politics’, if you like) of the sartorial and behavioural choices of various members of the Jordanian Royal family. If I might elucidate?

The Crown Princess is a Saudi noble-women, whose mother is from the powerful al-Sudairi family. She is, therefore, a cousin of the King of Saudi Arabia, the Crown Prince and the other Princes of the predominant, ‘al-Sudairi Seven’, faction of the al-Saud family.

We would have to be children not to wonder whether this marriage is a love match or whether it was an arranged political settlement flowing from King Abdullah II’s allegations that the Saudi Government, led by the Crown Princess’s Saudi cousins, were behind the alleged coup attempt by Prince Hamzah (and, of course, the long-standing, deeper hostility between the Houses of al-Hashim and al-Saud that dates to the 1920s and the Saudi victory over the Hashemite Kingdom of the Hejaz).

But the more immediate point of my recent posts was to explore the importance (the ‘politics’, if you wish) of costumes and kissing. In this context, that Prince Hamzah’s younger full-brother, Prince Hashim, chose to attend the wedding, in Hamzah’s absence, wearing the costume of that section of Jordanian society suspected by King Abdullah II of supporting Hamzah’s alleged attempt to overthrow his regime would surely be interesting to any student of royal issues, or, to coin a phrase, ‘royal views’.

But let us turn to the women who, as is so often the case, have more profound points to make, in more subtle ways. The Jordanian Crown Princess at her reception banquet wore a gown that revealed two thirds of her shoulders and featured a neckline that, though almost unremarkable in Europe (as I have intimated previously, my Catholic cousins would not consider that neckline appropriate), was (unacceptably) revealing for the Middle East. Had she worn it in public in Saudi Arabia, she would have exposed herself to being arrested and whipped or, indeed, just being publicly whipped by the religious police, without any judicial intervention. Further, had she, in Saudi Arabia, touched hands and kissed all those men to whom she was unrelated, she would have been arrested for the sin of physical intimacy, the potential consequences of which are more significant than an uncovered face or a revealed bosom.

That she did all this in the presence of her Saudi royal cousins suggests to me that she was making a statement about the integrity and autonomy of female bodies, a view which is anathema in Saudi Arabia. That she did so at a Jordanian state occasion indicates that she did it with the full backing of the Jordanian Court. That the King’s mother and sister-in-law also wore gowns with deep cleavages suggested to me that they were making personal and political statements in solidarity with the Crown Princess. In this context, I wonder whether Queen Maxima and Crown Princess Mary wore their gowns in (pre-arranged) solidarity with these sentiments.

And lastly, that The King, The Queen and the Crown Prince of Jordan also kissed unrelated people of the opposite sex indicates that they were also deliberately confronting the more restrictive, Salafist interpretations of Islam promulgated by the Saudis and some of the Gulf monarchies.

BUT: that all of the Saudi and Gulf St ate rulers also touched the hands of The Queen and the Crown Princess surely suggests that negotiations had been conducted with them about the representation of Islam at this occasion and, therefore, that the 'politics' of this occasion also was deliberately and carefully negotiated, and should not be ignored.

I’m seriously sorry, Martha, if you think that this commentary is political. I consider it to be analysis which no-one needs read if s/he is not interested in it. But I also think that to seek to shut down any exploration of what Crown Princess Rajwa, Princess Muna and Princess Zeina might have been doing (perhaps with the support of Maxima and Mary) by choosing the gowns that they wore would be to deny those Royal women the voices that I think they have chosen to raise. And that, given the social and political status of women on in Princess Rajwa’s home-country, would be unconscionable.