Court of St. James's

The conceit of Kate as the undiplomatic diplomat — a woman whose stone-cold, steel-trap strategic abilities would be considered suitable for the Court of St. James’s — is, to put it kindly, absurd, but its main purpose is to set up the contrast with the smoother, more devious, more obviously diplomatic Hal.

In the mid-’90s, he wrote effusively to Anatoly Adamashin, the Russian ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, inviting him to the horse races near his home in almost painful detail: “I could recommend the night sleeper to Penzance, which leaves around midnight and arrives at Penzance at half-past eight in the morning or so. We would collect you from the train.”

They also developed ties to top Nazis: Joachim Ribbentrop, who served as Hitler’s bumbling ambassador to the Court of St. James’s and then as foreign minister; Hermann Göring, the Luftwaffe’s commander in chief and president of the Reichstag; and Hitler’s nominal deputy, Rudolf Hess.

After Part I of the council, the proclamation is read from the Proclamation Gallery, a balcony above Friary Court of St James's Palace, by the Garter King of Arms, currently David White, the senior herald in England whose ceremonial role brings an annual salary of 49 pounds, fixed in the 1830s.

In “The Ambassador: Joseph P. Kennedy at the Court of St. James’s, 1938-1940,” Susan Ronald fashions a portrait of the ambitious Kennedy that brings to mind the mythological figure Icarus.