Queen’s gambit

Rania of Jordan’s glamour and eloquence have won her celebrity friends in the West – and comparisons to Marie Antoinette at home

Amman, Jordan

To the western world, she is the closest the 21st century gets to Princess Diana: glamorous, beautiful, charitable and royal. But to many of her citizens, she is extravagant, meddling and possibly even corrupt. She describes herself on Twitter as ‘a mum and a wife with a really cool day job…’ So which is the real Queen Rania? As the Arab spring spread across Jordan, I took a trip to Amman to find out.

The 40-year-old Palestinian never expected to be Queen of Jordan. She was born and brought up in Kuwait; her father, a doctor, was first-generation middle-class. Rania went to university in Cairo and her family moved to Jordan after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. She met her husband, now King Abdullah II, at a dinner party, but he was not even Crown Prince when they married a few months later.