COMMENT:
What does one do when princes go rogue? A rarefied question, perhaps one to file under top-drawer problems. And yet not without popular appeal, as evidenced by the explosion of breathless expert punditry and wild speculation (see if you can spot the difference) that has greeted the announcement by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex that they wish to be little less royal and a bit more financially independent.
All very House of Windsor, you might say. Yet, Britain is not the only country wrestling with a troubled prince right now. Germany is also witnessing a spot of regal controversy, involving lots of money and touching on wrenching questions about its past and present identity. What began as a behind-the-scenes wrangle about former royal possessions has become a national talking point, generating headlines, fuelling academic and legal disputes, and providing good material for primetime satirists and parliamentary debate.
This is all the more surprising as it's been an age since Germany was a monarchy. Since Kaiser Wilhelm II bolted from his throne in 1918 following defeat in the first world war, the country's "ruling houses" — topped off by the Hohenzollerns, Prussia's royal family — have largely faded into irrelevance, useful space-fillers in gossip columns but absent from the sharp end of public life.
Enter Georg Friedrich, Prince of Prussia. The 43-year-old current head of the House of Hohenzollern, a great-great-grandson of the kaiser, last year lodged a claim for the return of scores of valuable objects, from paintings to letters, and the right to take up residence in one of the family's former palaces. These were expropriated after the second world war by the Soviets, later becoming public property in communist East Germany.