Start with the fragile, elephant-shooting king. Add an angry queen, a princess accused of embezzlement, the king’s golden-haired friend (also a princess), charges of usurpation (usurpury?), an adultery web site accused of fakery (no! really?), and a nation in financial crisis. The Spanish royal house can make the British look dowdy.

Last year a friend with a deep interest in royal families tipped me off that Spain’s Juan Carlos I had publicly apologized… for something. Perhaps anticipating a cynical “Whatevs,” she explained this was the first time a Spanish monarch had ever issued a public apology.

In the royal line between Robert of Hesbaye and Juan Carlos I: Hugh Capet, likely pursuing an elephant with one of the primitive weapons of his day.

Juan Carlos I can trace his ancestry to Robert of Hesbaye, who lived from 770 to 807 (and whom I like to think of as Chrodobert, Count of Worms), and who also spawned the Capets, Valois, and Bourbons. The Spanish monarchy is the second oldest in the world, established in the fifteenth century by celebrity power couple Ferdinand and Isabella. That’s a lot of public apologies not issued.

So if you come from folks who don’t apologize for the goddamned Spanish Inquisition, what might you apologize for?

Juan Carlos, 74, was leaving a hospital in Madrid where he had been treated for a broken hip. Which he broke on a hunting trip in Botswana. Where he shot an elephant. Or elephants.

King Juan Carlos I and Queen Sofia waving to the peons of Pensacola, Florida, in 2009, on the 450th anniversary of its founding. When it belonged to Spain.

Until he had to be rushed back, it was not generally known that Juan Carlos was on safari. Since Spain was (and is) in the midst of devastating economic crisis, this made many Spaniards angry and disgusted. With unemployment around 23% and an elephant-hunting safari estimated to cost twice the average income in Spain, it cast doubt on the king’s earlier remark that he couldn’t sleep at night for thinking about jobless youth (their unemployment rate is now 55%). (It also upset the Spanish branch of the WWF, whose honorary president he was. They fired him. They had been overlooking the fact that he also shoots bears.)

On his way out of the hospital, Juan Carlos said, “Lo siento mucho. Me he equivocado y no volverá a ocurrir.” In other words, “I am very sorry. I have made a mistake and it will not happen again.” El Pais called it an unprecedented gesture.

It wasn’t clear what he was apologizing for. Probably for going off and having fun while his country and people were having such hard times. I’m sad to say that it probably wasn’t for shooting elephants. (In general I’m against shooting elephants.) It’s too vague to be a good apology. But then he hadn’t had much practice.

Various things came out about the safari. Good news! It turned out the king didn’t pay for it himself. It was “organized and subsidized” by a Syrian friend, Mohamed Eyad Kayali, who’s in construction, and who has worked with the king to get a contract for a Spanish consortium to work on a bullet train in Saudi Arabia. Totally work-related, for everyone but the elephants.

Bad news! It turned out the king was accompanied on safari by That Woman, I mean the fetching Princess Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein, nee Larsen, who still calls herself Princess though she’s divorced from Prince Casimir zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn.

Mysterious friend of the king, Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein. Charming! Does she look like a usurper to you?

I suppose we all knew that Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia haven’t been getting along. Certainly there has been talk about the king and other women. (Even if you know he is the father of your baby, do not bother with a paternity suit against the King. The courts declared him “inviolable,” and tossed such suits.) The question of whether zu Sayn-Wittgenstein was his mistress was raised – she denied it. In fact, another ex-husband, Philip Atkins, had been on the safari, too. So you see.

A Spanish citizen (who has a grudge against the king) brought charges of “usurping public functions” against Sayn-Wittgenstein, alleging that she acted as a representative or advisor of the king on several occasions. Notably she accompanied the king on a trip to Abu Dhabi and the Arab Emirates (on a Formula 1 Racing occasion), and assisted along with the first ladies of several nations, such as Chechnya, Gabon, and Rwanda. Usurping is “illegitimately exercising acts reserved to an authority or public official” and it’s a crime. No, not beheading – up to three years in prison.

The idea that the king has very very close female friends is so prevalent that in 2010 Ashley Madison, a sleazy company with an adulterous-dating business in 25 countries, ran an ad in Spanish media with a picture of Juan Carlos I and two women so lovely they hardly needed to attract attention by wearing those skimpy outfits, along with the slogan, “The best place to ‘hunt’ for an adventure.”

Maybe that brought in business. So in late 2012 they did a pamphlet, with the slogan “Now you no longer need to spend the night alone,” and a photograph that appeared to show a smiling Queen Sofia clasping a young man so handsome he hardly needed to attract attention by being shirtless.

Sofia was not amused. A former Princess of Greece and Denmark, she is one of the Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburgs, a Hohenzollern, a Romanov, a third cousin of Queen Elizabeth II, a first cousin of Prince Philip, and is used to some respect. Using private funds, she filed suit. The AUC, a Spanish nonprofit that monitors media and communications, filed a complaint with an industry group, which said Sofia’s right to privacy had been violated. In response, Ashley Madison’s Spanish director said the AUC had no sense of humor.

Queen Sofia, Laura Bush, George W. Bush, King Juan Carlos I, in 2001. This looks to me like the source of the Queen’s smiling image in the faked photo.

Sofia’s lawsuit went on, and an agreement was reached earlier this month. The company won’t use any images of the Queen in future, and they will run a public apology in Spain’s major newspapers. In the meantime, they issued a statement saying they “deeply regret” using her likeness. They said it was “without her consent and in a totally inappropriate context due to her personal career and her institutional significance.” That’s a decent apology. Too bad it took a lawsuit to get it.

Wow, I haven’t even mentioned the embezzlement charges against Princess Cristina and her husband Iňaki Urdangarin, Duke of Palma. Nor the incident in which the King’s 13-year-old grandson (Froilan, the Infanta Elena’s son) shot himself in the foot. Oh well, I didn’t hear that anyone apologized.

The Spanish weren’t happy about all this scandal. Earlier this month, thousands of people marched in a demonstration against the monarchy, packing Madrid’s Puerta del Sol.

For decades Juan Carlos I was beloved and admired. He ascended the throne two days after Franco died, and immediately began turning Spain into a democracy. He helped fend off a coup attempt in 1981. But now people are asking questions about where the royal family gets its money.

Elephants in Botswana. Minding their own business.

Could this be the fall of a royal house? Who cares? Americans shouldn’t get gaga about royalty. We went to a lot of trouble and heartache to eject them from our lives. Still, they are people, and people are interesting, and royalty are often in unusual situations, so I allow myself to take a mild interest.

But in fact I’m with those who care more about the vanishing of elephants and bears than of royal houses. They’re far more genetically distinct than Bourbons or Hohenzollerns. Or Sayn-Wittgensteins.