HRH Princess Louis of Battenberg, Princess Victoria of Hesse and by Rhine, later Victoria Mountbatten, Marchioness of Milford Haven, [Source], whose husband Prince Louis of Battenberg, later Louis Mountbatten, 1st Marquess of Milford Haven, becomes Rear Admiral of the British Fleet in 1904.

"Mountbatten" is as you probably are aware simply the anglicized form of "Battenberg," a change of name made out of deference to the understandably anti-German feelings of the English people during WWI.

This gets complicated, but sometimes I think everything that's happened since 1904 brings us back to the Vanderbilts.  I'm not saying what's happening right now is their fault, of course; just that the world can seem so small you can't swing a dead cat without hitting someone who knew someone who had an affair with a Vanderbilt.  It has certainly been my experience.  And as Wall Street collapses and the center of financial power in the world shifts elsewhere and the flow of capital away from the United States which began this summer continues at a rapid pace [Source], I think it is worth our while examining the complicated connections that bind us all together into, as it were, one big family -- in some cases penniless, but a family in this global village of ours nonetheless.

Let us begin with Gloria Laura Mercedes Morgan Vanderbilt (1904 - 1965), mother of Gloria Vanderbilt Cooper, in turn the mother of the well-known television journalist Anderson Cooper. 

Now -- bear with me, I warned you this gets complicated -- note that HRH Princess Victoria, pictured above, was the mother of both George, 2nd Marquess of Milford Haven (1892-1938) and Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma (1900-1979), father of Lady Pamela Hicks (b. 1929) in turn the mother of India Amanda Caroline Hicks, host of Bravo's acclaimed reality television series, "Top Design."

It is India's great uncle (her grandfather's brother) George, 2nd Marquess of Milford Haven who married in 1916 the beautiful Countess Nadejda de Torby, nicknamed "Nada" who became the beautiful and infamous wife of the 2nd Marquess when she became lovers with Mrs. Reginald Vanderbilt, which is to say Gloria Laura Mercedes Morgan Vanderbilt.  It was the testimony in court of the personal maid to the Marchioness regarding the lesbian relationship of the two women which led in 1934 to Mrs. Vanderbilt being declared an unfit mother and losing custody of her daughter, little Gloria.  The Dowager Marchioness would pass from this world in Cannes, in 1963; Big Gloria would die virtually penniless in California, where she is buried in a cemetery in Culver City, next to her twin sister, Lady Furness, (about which more another time).

In short, as you can imagine, being so closely connected through their great aunt and grandmother respectively, when India and Anderson run into one another in the busy world of television, they have much to talk about.

I think this brief history lesson helps clarify the current situation and should serve as a reminder that we have all had our share of ups and downs, our own brushes with fame and scandal and ruin, but that it is possible, even with name changes and with the transfer of wealth from one nation to another, even with Dubai or Shanghai or Mumbai on the verge of supplanting Wall Street as the world's financial hub -- even with everyone and everything seemingly headed in handbaskets to a very hot place -- it is possible to find some comfort in a winning interior design, or be reassurred by the equally winning journalistic commentary of a member of the best news team on television anywhere, ever.  And to know that it is possible, like Little Gloria, to be happy at last.