Someone told me a story about Mariaska Romanov recently. Years ago they met her and, as she claimed to be a Russian countess, they asked whether she spoke Russian. "Oh no, we only ever spoke French at court." came the reply.
It reminded me of reading David Niven's memoirs years ago. Apparently, someone calling himself "Mike Romanov" ran a bar in Hollywood. Mike Romanov claimed to be a member of the famous dynasty. A Russian emigre who was somewhat sceptical of his identity one day addressed him in fluent Russian. He walked away, complaining about the vulgarity of that man using that language: "We only ever spoke French at Court."
By coincidence, I read a book by Richard Dawkins recently where he talks about the idea of memes, coherent packages of information that can be passed on in a similar way to genes. The example he gives is some origami instructions to make a Chinese junk that his father taught him and that he passed on to his school fellows. The advantage of origami instructions is that presumably they would not be suspectible to change (You would get a sadly misshapen junk), whereas the Romanov idea is much more suspectible to alteration.
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