She who lives to eat and is mad for sweetmeats, whose only pleasure is her belly and her throat, who stuffs her cheeks and her paunch, a gluttonous queen, grows fat herself and makes her husband's purse lean

The main thing is not to become like the Queen of England of 1625 to 1649, Henrietta Maria of France, as she is portrayed in satirical pamphlets. Deeply unpopular, she became the heroine of such insulting sketches; she was accused of extravagance, foreign influence and sympathy for the Catholic powers. But most likely the chief reason for all this ill will is that she was a Catholic and the wife of Charles I, who was not the people's favourite and was in the end beheaded.

Indeed, what a rarity, a spendthrift queen! Have you ever seen a queen who was not plastered with jewels down to the last centimetre, who did not eat too many dainties and did not revel in life, in costly gowns, in her palaces? Fiona from «Shrek» and Padmé Amidala from «Star Wars» are kindly requested not to be named.