She
dances on a yacht, lithe and bronzed in a neon bikini, her long hair
gleaming in the sun. She's the picture of rebellion in a nightclub,
sitting astride a female friend, her slim legs in revealing floral
shorts and her midriff on show under her black crop top.
And, again and again, pictures from her social media accounts show her pouting over cocktails and cigarettes.
So
far, so thrillingly wild. But it wasn't this side of Lady Amelia
Windsor that was on show this week. On the cover of the latest edition
of Tatler magazine, the granddaughter to the Queen's cousin, the Duke of
Kent, is portrayed as more demure English rose than party girl. Indeed,
the magazine even dubs her 'the most beautiful member of the Royal
Family'.
Amelia Windsor is outspoken about her
passion for Bloody Mary cocktails. And her apparent motto, as inscribed
on a photo in her Instagram account? 'Go hard or go home.'
But Lady Amelia is rather bookish in
nature and vocal about her love for Latin, saying she is 'crazy' about
it after studying it for A-level
Pictures from her publicly available social media accounts show her dancing at Notting Hill Carnival
Other snaps show Lady Amelia posing at Glastonbury Festival and smoking in the bath
While
you would be forgiven for not being instantly familiar with Lady
Amelia, with her full lips, glossy mane and molten brown eyes, she's
tipped as the one to watch among the young royals. And although the
20-year-old student may have a delicate baby-faced beauty, she's
certainly not averse to living it up.
Indeed,
other pictures from her publicly available social media accounts show
her dancing at Notting Hill Carnival (that bronzed midriff on display),
posing at Glastonbury Festival and smoking in the bath. She's outspoken
about her passion for Bloody Mary cocktails. And her apparent motto, as
inscribed on a photo in her Instagram account? 'Go hard or go home.' In
other words, party like you're Prince Harry.
But
Lady Amelia is no mere vacuous socialite in the making. On the
contrary. She is vocal about her love for Latin, saying she is 'crazy'
about it after studying it for A-level and is rather bookish in nature.
She's currently reading French and Italian at Edinburgh University.
Indeed, a friend of hers insists that, despite appearances, she's 'quite
quiet'.
Yet
there's no denying she comes from what one in her circle describes as
'historically the most fashionable and glamorous branch of the Royal
Family'. And it seems that even bookworm Amelia can't fight what's in
her genes.
Her
most flamboyant relation is her aunt, Lady Helen Taylor, 51, the only
daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Kent — dubbed 'Melons' in her youth
by the tabloids because of her busty figure. Lady Helen's 20s were a
whirlwind of endless parties and dates and she herself admits to having
had 'loads of boyfriends'.
Equally
as beautiful, but not remotely as edgy, is Amelia's grandmother, the
Duchess of Kent. A watercolour pale beauty, she was born Katharine
Worsley in North Yorkshire, and as a piano teacher avoided the
limelight. Yet her elegant and ethereal beauty is legendary, and was
particularly on show when she presented the tennis trophies at
Wimbledon.
The magazine even dubs her 'the most beautiful member of the Royal Family'
Lady Amelia Windsor attends the
Flannels for Heroes charity cricket match and garden party hosted by
menswear brand Dockers at Burtons Court
But
even more influential than the fashionable Lady Helen is Amelia's
great-grandmother, Princess Marina of Kent, who died in 1968. One of
Amelia's acquaintances tells me she is an absolute inspiration to the
young royal.
As
well as being the Queen Mother's sister-in-law, Princess Marina was a
friend of Cecil Beaton and Noel Coward. The Princess Diana of her day,
she only had to wear an item once to create an instant trend. There was
even a song about her, 'She's bought a hat like Princess Marina,' sung
by the Sixties rock band The Kinks.
The
other side of Amelia, her bookish nature, comes from her father.
'Gentle' George, Earl of St Andrews, is the Duke and Duchess's oldest
son. Super-bright, reclusive and bespectacled, he attended Eton as an
elite King's Scholar, before going to Cambridge University, where he
read history.
After
a stint as a diplomat in New York and Budapest, George worked in the
antiquarian book business and became chairman of an internet-based world
history project at Cambridge University in 2012, before devoting
himself to charitable works.
But
as well as these high-minded pursuits, he was also 'almost a house
husband', according to one close to the family, in that he was very
hands-on with his children's upbringing.
His
desire to bring up his three children — Edward, Lord Downpatrick, 27,
Lady Marina, 23, and Amelia — in an erudite environment was reinforced
by his wife, Sylvana Tomaselli.
To
be frank, she is a rather exotic bride for a British Royal, even for a
minor one, being not only a divorcee, a Roman Catholic, and a Canadian
of Austrian lineage, but also a highly regarded academic who teaches at
Cambridge University.
Sylvana
is a fellow of St John's College, Cambridge, and specialises in
18th-century British and French political theory. She produces papers
with very un-It-Girl friendly titles such as Montesquieu's L'Esprit des
Lois from a Contemporary Feminist Point of View and Mary Wollstonecraft:
The Reunification Of Domestic And Political Spheres. It's not
surprising, then, that she and her husband determined to bring up their
children in a low-key, publicity-averse, tiara-shunning manner.
On the cover of the latest edition of
Tatler magazine, the granddaughter to the Queen's cousin, the Duke of
Kent, is portrayed as more demure English rose than party girl
Lady Amelia Windsor arrives at the 2013 Debutantes Ball at Automobile Club De France
Religion
was an important part of the children's formative years, and both
Amelia's elder siblings converted to Catholicism, ruling themselves out
of the line of succession, allowing Amelia to become 36th in line to the
throne.
By
royal standards, Amelia and her siblings' acts of youthful rebellion
have been relatively mild. No Prince Harry in a Nazi uniform-style japes
here.
Amelia's
brother, Edward, known as Eddy, is fashionably bearded and passionate
about hunting, Formula One and cricket. While undoubtedly intelligent,
when the Old Etonian went to Oxford, where he studied modern languages,
he became president of the notorious hell-raising Bullingdon Club.
Lady
Marina, meanwhile, is friends with Princess Eugenie. Pretty, sporty and
with a penchant for skydiving, she's again rather clever — a graduate
of Edinburgh University, she was also deputy head girl at school.
Fashion,
though, was her initial calling and she did an internship at Hermes.
Today, she works in Brazil at a publishing company. Sweetly, her
nickname is 'Big Win' (after their surname Windsor) to her little
sister's 'Little Win'.
Amelia
studied art history, French and Latin for A-level. But that Windsor
love for glamour kicked in at an early age. As a teenager at St Mary's
Ascot — the Berkshire boarding school that educated Princess Caroline of
Monaco and Lady Antonia Fraser — Amelia had already announced her
fervour for fashion.
Her
first dabble came in 2010, when she and her siblings modelled for Hardy
Amies. One long-term family friend said: 'Amelia has always been crazy
about fashion. She's been talking about nothing else for years.'
And so, far from spending all her time reading Cicero, Amelia has cultivated rather more prosaic interests.
On
Facebook, she declares herself a fan of British Vogue, and TV programme
Beverly Hills 90210. Last month she attended the Vogue centenary party
at the National Portrait Gallery and hobnobbed alongside Fifty Shades Of
Grey actress Dakota Johnson and supermodel Lara Stone.
In
2013 she said her aim was to work in fashion in Paris. Indeed, she has
already been an intern at Chanel in Paris, which she described as 'one
of the best experiences I've ever had'.
It
was a natural step, then, to appear as a debutante at the Bal des
Debutantes in Paris in 2013, an annual event at the Hotel de Crillon in
which the world's most privileged girls are given the chance to wear
couture, taught to waltz and photographed endlessly.
Sylvana Windsor, Countess of St
Andrews (L) and Lady Amelia Windsor attend a gala pre-wedding dinner
held at the Mandarin Oriental on April 2011
Lady Amelia Windsor and Duchess of Kent depicted after a Royal family Christmas lunch
Ellie Smith (L) and Lady Amelia
Windsor attends the drinks reception hosted by Dockers, the San
Francisco based apparel brand in 2014
Amelia,
who appeared looking lovely in a silvery puff of a gown made by
Lebanese couturier Elie Saab, later told Teen Vogue Magazine she had
forgotten how to waltz instantly and was surprised she didn't fall flat
on her face. 'I felt like the most spoiled girl in the world,' she said.
And
this, perhaps, sums Amelia up most succinctly. In spite of her love of
glitz, she's too well brought up to say anything brattish or
embarrassing. And she's not grand — one of her acquaintances was
surprised to see her waitressing in a cafe; surely a first for a young
royal.
Her
gentle nature is also on show in her social media accounts. In a
sweetly naive way, some of her first posts on her Instagram account —
accessible to the public — were pictures of herself and her parents on
the balcony at Buckingham Palace.
Another
photo of her with Prince Charles on the royal balcony had the caption:
'Chilling with the best great-uncle ever — love you Uncle Charles!'
She
also welcomed Prince George to the clan by posting the official photo
released by William and Kate to mark his birth saying: 'Loving this
photo of my cousin Will, his lovely wife Kate, and of course the newest
addition to our family — baby George! Loving the latest, cutest and most
amazing addition to the fam.'
When some strangers expressed amazement she knew Prince William, she replied: 'Of course I've met baby Georgie! He's adorable!'
Since
then, Amelia has wised up, no doubt aided by her move away from her
beloved parents to Edinburgh University. She's become a member of the
'Castle Crew', a party-loving set that formerly numbered Pippa
Middleton, an alumna of Edinburgh. Weeknights are spent in the city's
bars and then it's up the A9 to someone's castle for a shooting weekend.
She's
acting in a student production of The Crucible. Indeed, according to
one acquaintance, she's weighing up whether to seek a modelling agent,
or an acting agent, or both.
Before any of that can be pursued full-time, however, she has three years of studying to go.
But
despite the love of books and the professorial influence of her
parents, fashion loves a blue-blood, and this particular blue-blood
loves fashion.
It's surely only a matter of time before Lady Amelia's making her way to a catwalk near you . . .
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