I must admit the Belgian royal family weren't one of the bigger blips on my radar, but Queen Fabiola has certainly caught my attention.

Hellomagazine.com reports that an anonymous assassin threatened to shoot the Belgian queen with a crossbow.

A very scary proposition, and it would have been understandable for Queen Fabiola to take immediate evasive action.

I would have cancelled all appointments forever and ordered in for the remainder of my potentially short life.

She could have come up with a perfectly reasonable excuse to duck out of a public appearance at National Day like: 

• feigning a headache and pulling a sickie for the day
• arranging a last-minute schedule change to a more protected venue, texting the new location to bodyguards and other required people on route - I'm sure she's technology-savvy
• cancelling the procession altogether - she can do that. She's a royal.

No-one could have blamed her for it. But she chose none of those. She chose to forge ahead with her commitments, as planned, no alterations required, thank you very much.

An admirable move. But as if this wasn't enough, the grande old dame of royalty publicly mocked her would-be assassin with a feisty shake of a green apple, in a reference to folk hero William Tell.

Mocked him (or her). In public. In all her royal, not-wearing-an-arrow-proof-vest glory. That is one gutsy lady! It has to be said - at 81-years-old, Queen Fabiola has more feist in her little finger than I have in my whole body.

A question does spring to mind as to where she got the green apple... was it some child's unwanted snack scooped up off the ground? Was it her own snack?

Or was it pre-meditated? Did she deliberately stash it in her handbag to be used precisely for this purpose - now that's almost too delicious to contemplate.

Whatever the truth, Queen Fabiola is an inspiration! Fearless and funny, may she live to shake many, many more apples.