June 2019: As President Donald Trump and his family trooped into Buckingham Palace for a state banquet with Queen Elizabeth II on Monday night, royal watchers, palace protocol chiefs and journalists were on the alert. Consider, even before Trump landed, he had labeled Meghan Markle "nasty" and the London mayor "a stone cold loser."

For Trump, however, this royal dinner was clearly more than the usual state visit, as the New York Times pointed out on Tuesday. While Trump has worked hard to build his life into a glittering, eponymous brand, there has long been a royal-specific yearning in the Trump family. What is less known is that this desire arguably dates back to Trump's mother, an immigrant maid who came to America almost 100 years ago and bequeathed to her fourth child the notion that all that glitters really is gold.

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