Todd Jensen writes...

Another "Vows" thought. Princess Elena's being of Norman ancestry has two interesting features about it (at least, interesting to me).

1. I did some research on the subject and found that the Duke of Normandy in 975 was one Richard the Fearless; I assume that he would have been Princess Elena's father. In actual history, he had a daughter named Emma who married Ethelred the Unready (and Canute of Denmark after Ethelred's deposition and death), and was the mother of Edward the Confessor (the King of England at the time of Canmore's overthrow of Macbeth - and who got a brief mention in Shakespeare's "Macbeth", particularly the bit about his touch curing the King's Evil). If Richard the Fearless was indeed Elena's father in the Gargoyles Universe as well as Emma's, then that would make Princess Katharine and Edward the Confessor cousins, which I find both interesting and amusing.

2. Also, the Normans were of Viking descent, as you no doubt know (Frenchified Vikings who settled in northern France in the year 911), which would mean, since Princess Katharine was of Norman descent on her mother's side, that she was ultimately part-Viking (although I certainly doubt that either she or Hakon ever suspected that :). An amusing irony, to me at least.