lady what?

A lot of recent news I don't have much to say on. I'm sorry that Christine McVie died, and shouldn't have been as surprised as I was to learn that she was 79. Fleetwood Mac was very popular when I was at university, and I got to recognize a few of their songs, though they never made a big impact on me.

Nor can I make much useful commentary on the late Queen's lady-in-waiting who kept pressing a black guest as to where in Africa she was really from, even after the guest explained that she was a born and bred Londoner. I could sort of understand if it had been asking where her ancestors were from, though even that would be rather tasteless, as it still bears the assumption you're not real: but also because, unless one has a special interest in Africa (don't laugh, some do), such deep background goes far beyond polite conversational inquiry.

But what puzzled me in the news articles is that the lady-in-waiting was sometimes called Lady Susan Hussey, or Lady Susan for short, and sometimes Lady Hussey. Which is it? You can't be both, not at the same time. But even the British news sources, which really ought to be capable of getting this straight, treated them as interchangeable.

It turns out, if Wikipedia is to be trusted (which it isn't, not entirely), that she's the daughter of an earl, so she would have started out as Lady Susan. Then her husband was given a life peerage, so that made her Lady Hussey. Oh god. But no longer "Lady Susan" after that point, is that clear? What she's been since her husband died, I'm not sure. If he'd had a hereditary peerage passed on to the next generation, she'd be the Dowager Lady Hussey, but in the absence of that I'm not sure what she is if anything. Not working at the Palace any more, that's for damn sure.