Yes, yes, yes, on the "old" Point de Vue. Years ago, PDV used to *suggest* scandals and overtones in a way that fascinated me -- I'd get the drift of what they meant, but everything was sort of discreet.
(These days, rather than talking about Baudouin and Fabiola's love story, we'd probably get ovulation schedules and sperm counts.
)
But, I wonder if today's younger royals even have enough glamour or mystique to create the stories we saw years ago. I think that the generation born after, say, the mid-1960s has grown up with such a sense of being "like everyone else," there's nothing special about them at all. They just don't have the "presence" their elders had.
I've had a chance to see several royals up close in real life. Elizabeth and Philip, Charles, Farah Diba, Beatrix, Grace, Henrik, Anne-Marie, Sophia and Juan Carlos, Felipe, Pavlos, Noor, and Silvia all had *magic* -- they truly changed the electricity in the rooms they were in, even though several of them were "off duty" and dining or shopping in private circumstances. By contrast, I literally didn't notice that Mary, Laurent, Zara, or Willem-Alexander were in the room or at the event until someone pointed them out. They seemed like nice, charming people, but they didn't have the presence their elders have.
(But, I'd bet they'd still run rings around Britney Spears!)