All Intensive Purposes

Sarah Ferrell reviews Helen Reddy's The Woman I Am: A Memoir, in yesterday's New York Times Book Review:

Reddy is a subscriber to the notion of group karma, which "involves several people -- often family members but not necessarily in the same configuration -- reincarnating together to resolve unfinished business, so spouses might reincarnate as siblings or vice versa." She applies this to, among other things, the British royal family, in which she takes an almost unhealthy interest. (See her taken Princess Diana, saint and martyr.)

In a not-to-be-missed chapter entitled "Royalty and Reincarnation," Reddy, having dropped the bombshell that Wallis Warfield Simpson, Duchess of Windsor, was the reincarnation of Richard III, provides a chart of the dramatis personae surrounding the abdication of Edward VIII to demonstrate that it all goes back to the Wars of the Roses. Wallis (or Richard), it seems, had a soul mission to atone for the murders of the little princes in the tower and to see that the crown was returned to its rightful heirs. Edward, Duke of Windsor, was once Richard's personal servant (he is given no name) and can once again doggedly devote himself to his monarch once Wallis has arrived on the scene. The little princes are, of course, Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret. And, in the same chapter, Elvis was King Tut.

She had me up to the Elvis thing.