Never ever stand between royalty, even minor European royalty, and republicans. If you do, you risk being knocked over in the rush.  Perhaps similar sentiments can be expressed about titles.

 “Given her leftist leanings and vocally establishment past, she had some serious soul searching to do before accepting her DBE –and the ‘ Dame” title that comes with it – in The Queen’s Birthday honours list in 2003.

[Dame Helen Mirren from The Queen]

“’I was ambivalent, I asked my sister, I asked associates and good friends. They all, to a man and a woman, said ‘take it’. 

“’If my sister had said,’ Maybe not, Helen, I wouldn’t have.

“I think if my parents had still been alive they would have been proud, even though they were still intensely republican.”

This was from an interview with Dame Helen Mirren DBE, whose most celebrated film was The Queen, 2007, by Susan Chenery in “The Last Laugh”, in The Weekend Australian Magazine, 6-7 December, 2008.