by Susan Ives, Alamo PC

 Within hours of Princess Diana's death, hundreds of home-grown Internet sites sprung up as tributes. As I write this article in mid-September, there were 385 sites affiliated with the Princess Diana Memorial WebRing, a loose affiliation of Web sites that sprung up after her death. Another WebRing, In Memory of Princess Diana, listed 234 affiliates. These are well traveled sites - in one day, the first ring logged almost 25,000 hits. I looked at a few. All of the sites have pictures, many have music. They're composed by ordinary people with deep feelings, and their shock and sadness radiates from every page. 

Just as heartfelt are the guestbooks, where people can leave a brief message recording their feelings. One site, the Diana Memorial Guestbook, has had more than 1,600 entries in only two weeks. Andrew, from Tomsk, Russia, wrote, "She was a last true princess in our World... I'm sad. P.S. Excuse me for my bad English. I have not words to explane what I feel. " Nurul Iman Abdullah From Kuala Lumpur, wrote "let us continue to be united in this fight to live in a world where color, race or creed matters not." The outpouring of feeling is breathtaking. 

 The best mainstream funeral coverage, by far, is on the BBC. If you haven't installed the free RealPlayer yet, this is reason to do so. BBC has extensive video and audio archives, including a 57 minute BBC funeral tribute, Earl Spencer's eulogy and Elton John singing the revised Candle in the Wind. There's also a great press clipping archive, lots of photos and biographical information. 

 For a more formal presentation, go to the Royal Family's web page. In keeping with their image, the web site is high on dignity and low on pizzaz. Queen Elizabeth herself switched on the site last March, saying, "The Internet is rapidly becoming a part of everyday life, and used properly, it opens the door to a huge range of knowledge, which has no national boundaries." Couldn't have said it better myself. This is where you will find a link to the official Princess Diana Memorial Fund, if you wish to donate. 

 Since Diana's death the most scurrilous pages covering the royal bickering have either vanished or taken a 180 degree turn to become memorials to Diana. The Daily Mail, a British tabloid, once hosted a site called RoyaltyUK. Its sudden demise (all that's left is an empty index page) might have been caused as much by its unsupportable $18 subscription fee as its born-again sensitivity to backlash against the paparazzi. Even more outrageous was The Royal Network, which billed itself as "your one-stop surfing headquarters for all the latest royal dirt!" At one time it hosted Club Di, which featured a shockwave game that let you dress-up the princess in virtual outfits ranging from nun to bondage mistress. It shamelessly has turned itself into a Princess Diana lovefest. Hypocrisy at its finest. 

Queen Elizabeth isn't the only Monarch with her own URL - several royal cousins have also taken the plunge into cyberspace. Queen Margrethe of Denmark has a nice site, alas in Danish. I was able to read some of it - Klik her, for example, really does mean click here. King Carl Gustav of Sweden has been online since June, 1996; an English version of the site is available. Monaco's princes have a web page, called 800 Years of the Grimaldi, which should warn you that it consists only of uninspired biographies of Prince Rainier and Prince Albert. No swimsuit pictures of princesses Stephanie or Caroline, which would have relieved the tedium. 

 King Albert of the Belgians has a site, courtesy of the government press office. It's dry, consisting of posed studio portraits and Curriculum vitae. H.S.H. Prince Hans-Adam II of Liechtenstein has a quasi-official page, published by the principality's official newspaper. The Spanish King, Juan Carlos, has a web site, for some reason hosted by the Spanish cultural office in Canada. 

 If this all sounds boring, it is. The European sites don't get lively until you cross the border into the Balkans. These are the kings with domain names but no domains. The deposed. The wannabes. The exiles. 

 The most polished is Royal House of Karadjordjevic, His Royal Highness Crown Prince Alexander of Serbia and Montenegro. The family was ousted by the Nazis during World War II, but he's not hesitant to offer his opinions to the elected leaders of his war-torn homeland. You get an entirely different perspective from the Montenegro web site, which has a lively explanation of how the Serbian Karadjordjevic's wrested the crown from the Montenegran Petrovic's after World War I. 

 Prince Paul Hohenzollern-Lambrino, claimant to the Romanian Throne also does a pretty slick job. There were apparently widespread rumors secret marriages and illegitimacy plaguing the family in the 1920s that erupted in a sensational court battle that started with the death of King Carol in 1953 and is still being argued. Who needs soap operas when real life is so much more interesting?

 King Simeon II of Bulgaria is in exile in Spain. For a king, he seems like a down-home kinda guy. His web page offers, "Any questions? Send an e-mail message to the King!" Unfortunately, to read his personal web page to need to be fluent in Bulgarian and have Cyrillic fonts installed on your system. There is another site that maintains an archive of information in English that is more useful. 

 The King of Greece, in Exile in London, does not have his own website but is valiantly represented on the Web by a champion in the Netherlands. 

 The granddaddy of deposed royalty must be Prince Philippe d'Araucania, the current head of the Royal House of Araucania. The Kingdom of Araucania & Patagonia was founded in 1860 by the Mapuche Indians in what is now Chile and Argentina. A French lawyer was elected to be first king, only to be kidnapped two years later and deported to France. The royal house has been in exile in France for over a century. The site is maintained by the North American Araucanian Royalist Society, and is fascinating. 

 There is also an advocacy group for Luiz Gastao, Prince of Orleans e Bragança also known as Luiz I, Emperor of Brazil. His family hit the streets in 1889 when Dom Pedro II was deposed following a military uprising. 

 The most famous of the deposed ruling families is, of course, the Romanovs. The current heir, Grand Duke Georgy, is the great-great-great-grandson of the murdered Alexander II. He's a teenager who lives in Paris, barely speaks Russian, but, from all reports, would love to move back into the Winter Palace. He has no site of his own, but there are a lot of Romanov sites for you to visit to glory in the family history. 

 Royal pages are not limited to Europe. The Jordanian royal family has a web page, consisting of mostly a family tree and a few biographies. The Thai royal family's web page is probably the most elegant of all of the royals. His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadejas, crowned in 1946 and the world's longest-reigning monarch, pays more attention to his many worthy projects than to family gossip. There is a full English edition but if you can read Thai, you can download the required font directly from this site. 

 My favorite royalty site is from the Netherlands, Royalty in History. The site design reeks of nobility, in jeweltone colors embroidered with a border of fleur de lis. The best part is the "Mad Monarch" series, which offers up a fresh bio on a crazy king once a month. The next promised offering is one of the Melancholic Majesties of Portugal and I can hardly wait. For all it's lighthearted attitude, every biography is well documented and includes an extensive bibliography. 

If the "mad monarch" theme appeals to you, you've come to the right place. Discovery Online has an excellent series covering exceedingly bad marriages, tawdry sexual escapades, the tragic and the twisted and wicked family feuds. The stories are limited to historic British royals, but if Fergie's foot nibbling escapades tickle your fancy, this is a way to put you voyeurism into an historical context. 

Another British scandal site is Queen Victoria's Dark Secrets, which contains great royal tales from the Victorian era, including interesting stuff on potential links between the royal family and Jack the Ripper. Lifetime Channel ran a series on royal scandals, covering royal scandals, weddings, marriages and children. There are hints of great gobs of gossip, but you'll have to watch the programs on television to get the full scoop. There are QuickTime movie previews available for download. 

 My Special fondness is for the British Kings and Queens. The best site for this is Brittania, one of my favorite sites on the Internet. Starting with Good King Egbert (802) the biographies are concise, nicely laid out and illustrated. There is also a link on each page to the genealogy of every monarch, which can lead you on an never-ending journey through the palaces of Europe. For example, Elizabeth II, great-great- granddaughter of Queen Victoria, is married to Phillip Mountbatten whose mother was Princess Alice of Battenberg, daughter of Princess Victoria Alberta of Hesse, daughter of Princess Alice Maud Mary, whose mother was Queen Victoria. Third Cousins! No wonder their children turned out like they did. 

 To digress, if the genealogy of the European royalty interests you, it's all on line. The Internet-Gotha is the web version of the royal stud book. All it has is parentage and birth and death dates, but I did look up Prinz zu Solms-Braunfels, whose family played a significant role in local history. (Note: in the two weeks since this article was written, the Internet-Gotha was removed because of copyright problems. An Alternative is the WWW database of European Nobility.) 

 The entire Brittania site is remarkable. In addition to the monarch pages, it also has equally extensive sections on the Church of England, prime ministers, a cleverly hyperlinked timeline of British history, a wonderful section on King Arthur and a three- part series on the development of medieval castles. The interface is a bit dodgy. I ended up stuck in a frame-induced browser gridlock, with three separate copies of Netscape open and duplicate frames on each page. The caliber of the material is worth the navigational challenges. Trust me. 

 There are a slew of other royal sites on the Internet. A good place to start searching for your favorite monarch at Marivi Dayrit Magat's site. She's based in the Philippines, and has accumulated an impressive list of links. Her Romanov and British links are especially good, and she keeps them admirably up to date. From here, you can jump to the Royalty of Hawaii and the Scottish Royalty (the web site grinds to a halt in the 13th Century, but maybe with the revival of the Scottish Parliament they'll cough up a King or two.) If Marivi doesn't list it, it probably doesn't exist. 

Susan Ives was recently crowned president of Alamo PC. You can usually find her in the palace working on the royal web page.