A British King

After all the disagreements, raids incursions and invasions, the crowns of england and Scotland were united in the wisest fool in Christendom, James Stuart. James shook the smoke of Auld Reekie, Edinburgh, from his garments and rushed away down to London as soon as he heard Queen Elizabeth of England was dead. His royal household, tailors, hairdressers, cup bearers and kitchen staff, rushed after him, only to find a kitchen staff already busy in the palace. With their strange accents and rude manners, they stood out like bees in a wasp nest. Most decided to go back to Edinburgh and a band of them were set upon by the London mob. Unlike today's MPs, James was too busy enjoying his new luxury apartments to pay any attention and it created ill feeling out of which should have come brotherhood. The real tragedy was that Jimmy had come from an environment where he depended on the support of his barons to rule, even to keep his head. As a boy, he'd been captured and recaptured by one lot, then the other  but now he found they thought of him as the Big Chief and people fawned on him, so he taught his son to behave as a real king should, and, of course, he lost him his head.

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Delta's royal connection

The white wine Amalie is named after Princess Amalie zu Solms-Braunfels, who’s grandson became William III of England two years before Delta had its first European resident in 1691.

While William had no children, the English royal family have German ancestry and, no matter how distant today, the Solms have many family ties with them. Their royal connections proved valuable when Friedrich Hermann, 3^rd Prince of Solms-Baruth was convicted of involvement in the plot to assassinate Hitler. At the time, Hitler was negotiating with the king of Sweden and the Prince's life was spared due to the intervention of the Swedish ambassador, who informed the Nazi’s that the execution of the brother-in-law of the Swedish king’s queen would have unpredictable consequences for ongoing negotiations.

It was the unpredictability of what I would find that fascinated me as a freelance journalist in Cape Town.

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