Musician King Princess, Descended from Couple Who Perished on the Titanic, Comments on Disaster
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As the search for the missing Titanic tourist submersible was ongoing, reporters uncovered an eerie connection between victims of the Titanic disaster and the OceanGate CEO—who was also the pilot of the sub.
Wendy Rush, the wife of OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, is descended from Ida and Isidor Straus, two first-class passengers who perished in the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. The New York Times reports Wendy, born Wendy Hollings Weil, is the great-great-granddaughter of Ida and Isidor Straus, passengers known for "their tragic love story," as Ida refused a lifeboat seat to remain with her husband.
As Town & Country wrote,"Just four days before, Mrs. Isidor Straus had written a letter aboard Titanic, that is now owned by her great-grandson Ken Straus: 'But what a ship! It’s so huge and so magnificently appointed.' As the ship began to list Ida almost entered lifeboat number 8, but then changed her mind and rejoined her husband. 'I will not be separated from my husband,' she said softly. 'As we have lived, so we will die. Together.' After wrapping Mrs. Straus' fur coat around their maid Ellen Bird and seeing her into the lifeboat, the old couple sat for a bit in the deck chairs, watching the other passengers. Then, around 12:50, they retired to their stateroom."
The Strauses were fictionalized in James Cameron's 1997 film, when the movie showed an older couple embracing in bed in their cabin. A cenotaph in the Bronx is dedicated to the Strauses, which reads "Many waters cannot quench love – neither can the floods drown it," a quote from the Song of Songs.
Mikaela Straus, who performs under the name King Princess, another great-great-granddaughter of Ida and Isidor, spoke out about the Titan disaster on TikTok, which she has since deleted. "I think there is a cycle of bajonga-jillionaires wanting to explore shit and then dying," Straus said, per Rolling Stone. "Like, look at my f*cking family, right? Who wants to take a boat across the ocean? That sounds terrible. But they did it because they had the money to, and they died. So now these people are like, 'Oh, I have so much money. Oh my god, I just want to go to the inhabitable depths of the ocean.' In a GameCube? No. Dead! Sorry."
She continued, "Rich people are not exempt from making really stupid decisions, obviously. Why do rich people go to space? You don’t need to be there. You’re not a fucking scientist. Because they make terrible decisions, constantly. I hate this world… The sheer irony of these billionaires going down to visit the gravesite of other billionaires — amongst other people who were on the Titanic, there weren’t just billionaires — and then dying is so crazy to me."
This post has been updated throughout.
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