The Royal Treatment : Between all the hoopla and the hype of her U.S. visit, Britain’s Queen Elizabeth IIwill also find time to make a little history.

Queen Elizabeth II may be asking herself some new questions, as well as the usual ones, as she rockets across the Atlantic to Washington this morning in the Concorde:

Should I retire? Do you wear a tiara in Texas? Who’s on first?

During her fortnight tour of America, a place she apparently loves to visit, the 65-year-old British monarch will have ample opportunity to seek answers. Although her weekdays will be packed with official events, there will be time for reflection over two weekends, one cruising the South Florida coast aboard the royal luxury liner Britannia and the other mucking about with horses and American friends in Kentucky.

In her ninth visit to America, the queen also will do some things for the first time: She will attend a baseball game, the Baltimore Orioles vs. the Oakland A’s, and will be offered a hot dog and get to talk RBIs or whatever with President Bush. In addition, she will view the largest collection of first-edition plays by her country’s best-known author, William Shakespeare, at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington.

Also, all in a day’s work, the queen will make a bit of history: On Thursday, she will become the first British monarch to address a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress.

At every stop the queen’s hosts, including George and Barbara Bush, will be bombarded by people wanting more than a passing glance curbside at the tiny monarch and her husband, Prince Philip. In fact, the brokering for invitations has been fierce, although some in Washington say it is not as wild as in times past.

One member of Georgetown’s so-called “cave-dweller class”--which means she’s rich and has seen Presidents come and go--was annoyed to learn that the one queenly event she had been invited to, a garden party at the British Embassy, would involve almost 2,000 others.

“You mean they invited the whole city?” she sniffed.

And Martin Walker, a Washington-based reporter for the Guardian, a British newspaper, said that when word got out that he was fleeing the city during the royal drop-by, he received several calls “from members of Washington’s courtier classes, asking if I would mind passing on my press tags. It was quite embarrassing when I said no.”

At the White House, an aide said that at one point the importuning got out of hand for invitations to tonight’s state dinner--a black-tie-and-you-can-wear-your-medals affair at which there will be California wine and at least one tiara.

When asked what kind of people were pressing to be squeezed into the 120-guest event, the aide replied: “The type of people who read People magazine.”

In other words, everybody.

Apparently, the guest lists for this fete and the reciprocal dinner Thursday night at the British Embassy were not easy to compile. Although no one at the White House would discuss how the cut was made for the state dinner, the wife of a former U.S. official in London who helped with the process explained that the Bushes used a Noah’s-ark strategy for the spare tickets: They invited two artists, two lawyers, two doctors, two musicians and so forth.

“You’ll also see a strong showing of Americans with important ties to the English in business,” the official’s wife says. “After all, this trip is about more than statesmanship.”

Bush invited the queen for a state visit while he and Mrs. Bush were on a state visit to London in 1989. Royal watchers agree that for political reasons, the timing couldn’t be better.

In her speech to Congress, experts say, the queen is likely to attempt to consolidate gains made during the Persian Gulf War in reviving the relationship between the United States and Britain. That long-heralded “special relationship” had experienced a bit of slippage recently, with the United States tilting toward rapidly ascending Germany as a leading European power.

“The war did wonders for U.S.-Brit ties, and as someone who always plays an important role in keeping the Commonwealth together, you can bet the queen will remind us all of that,” says a State Department official who asked not to be quoted by name.

To reinforce that military theme, the queen has invited Gen. Colin Powell, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and his wife to dinner at the British Embassy along with the Bushes and 100 others Thursday night. She also is expected to have a grand photo opportunity with Gen. “Stormin’ ” Norman Schwarzkopf when she goes to the U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Fla., on Monday. She reportedly may even decorate or knight the burly general, who is as much a hero in Europe as he is at home.

But no royal romp would be complete without a little out-and-out capitalism.

In Miami, the royal yacht will be used for a symposium on the British auto industry, while in Tampa, there will be some talk about the British aerospace industry. Of course, the notion of hopscotching across Texas on the supersonic Concorde may seem ridiculous to some--but it is also intended as an advertisement for British air power.

“The British think of the queen as a super saleswoman of British products and industry,” says Roland Flamini, a former Time magazine correspondent whose new biography, “Sovereign: Elizabeth the Second and the Windsor Dynasty,” has just been published.

In addition to the smaller dinners, the queen will break bread with as many as 350 (at the Library of Congress) during this trip. Numerous parades and wave-a-thons from high places will give thousands more a look at the monarch.

It is likely that on all occasions the queen will be wearing extremely pale makeup and bright lipstick. “This gives the greatest number of people a chance to see the royal smile,” Flamini explains.

For those who may be asking why the queen chose to visit Texas and Florida, there are several responses.

First, the official and perhaps most logical one: She’s never been to either state, and she’s probably caught on that they are among the fastest-growing in America.

Unofficial responses also abound.

The Bush Administration, which is filled with Texans starting from the top, may have nudged her in that direction, because that’s been done to just about every other official guest.

And the queen’s children have visited both places, loved them and probably said something like, “Oh, Mummy, you ought to see the Alamo!” (She will.)

As she bounces from event to event, the queen will have a considerable tail wind of American reporters, as well as a few dozen British writers starting off with her in London. Even so, the British press is not giving their monarch the kind of coverage this time that it often has in the past.

The explanation, simply put, is that Elizabeth II is at an awkward age.

“The British love to romanticize the young royals like Princess Diana and find old royals, like the Queen Mum, venerable,” says Martin Walker. “But a royal in her 60s is just sort of stale and boring.”

And this royal is at a stage when she is raising much speculation that she may abdicate and turn over her duties to her son Prince Charles.

Still, while the mantle of celebrity may be slipping, the queen enjoys support from her subjects for the way she wields her discreet power. Adds Walker, “She’s politically very savvy, and therefore most people say she’s well worth the cost of the trip.”

The British will have to pick up more of the tab than usual for state visits to America.

When the Bush Administration came into power, the definition of a “state visit” was limited to time spent by foreign dignitaries in Washington, rather than on U.S. soil. Thus, although the capital part of this trip will be paid for by the federal government--just as the British paid for the Bushes’ stay in London in 1989--the rest of the royal sojourn will be paid for by Buckingham Palace, private donors and some local governments.

A spokesman for Buckingham Palace said the royal retinue will include about dozen senior advisers, to help the monarch with speeches, and “boxes” of government paperwork that she will do along the way. “She sort of moves her office around with her for two weeks,” says Michael Price, deputy press secretary at the British Embassy.

She also moves around part of her household: That is, there will be a dozen servants, including several footmen.

According to royal arcana, the queen also totes a lot of personal items. In addition to a whole wardrobe, she’ll bring her own pillow, bottled drinking water, a chest of homeopathic cures, perhaps some chocolates (she is a chocoholic ruler) and as many as 100 pairs of white gloves. On an average day, she shakes eight to 10 hands a minute, according to biographer Flamini.

By all accounts, those who are the guests of the queen should have a nice time, since she apparently throws quite a party.

Walter Annenberg, the octogenarian billionaire from Philadelphia and former ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, says the royal couple do their best to put you at ease, but “you have to know how far you can go. They’re brilliant conversationalists, but still, it’s all very professional.”

The last time the queen was in the United States was in 1983, by invitation of President and Nancy Reagan. At that time, the Annenbergs had her over to their Palm Springs estate. (That San Diego-to-Seattle tour apparently is still talked about in some royal circles as “the city-to-city evacuation” because the queen was caught up in so many rainstorms and Reagan roundups.)

Annenberg says that as delightful a guest as the queen was, she, like most people, is best entertaining in her own home. Recalling his first formal dinner at Windsor Castle, he says he was stunned when the entire party was invited into the library after the meal, where the librarian had something to interest each of the 24 guests.

For the Annenbergs there were letters written in Philadelphia by Edward VII, when he was Prince of Wales, to his mother Queen Victoria.

Annenberg could not recall what the letters said: “I was so bowled over by the fact that Her Majesty went to trouble relating to each one the guests, who could read (them)?”

This time around, the queen will be shown things that her hosts think will interest her. She also will be given many souvenirs, with the most unusual one coming from the Miamians, who will present her with a pair of Florida manatees. (Actually, the queen will get a photograph and the two endangered sea cows will be tagged Elizabeth and Philip and remain in Florida waters.)

But for all the gifts and grandeur, and all the trumpeting and symphonic display, everyone seems to agree that the part of this grinding tour that the queen will like most will come at the end, during a private visit to Kentucky and the stud farms where her racing mares and their foals are kept.

In Kentucky, she will stay for the fourth time with Will Farrish, a Texas investment banker and Bush buddy whose horse farm is the closest thing to home the queen knows in America.

“This is where the real fun begins for the queen,” says Flamini. “She’s passionate about horse racing, and what she doesn’t know about horseflesh you can fit on a 29-cent stamp.

“My guess,” he says “is that if she wasn’t queen, she probably would have been a horse breeder.”

Staff writer Don Shannon contributed to this article.

RELATED STORY: World Report

A Royal Doer

NAME: Her Most Excellent Majesty Elizabeth the Second.

HOME: Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, Balmoral, Sandringham.

AGE: 65.

PROFESSION: Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith, Fount of All Honors, Head of Armed Services, promoter of all things British.

HOBBY: Horses, horses, horses.

LAST BOOK READ: “Debrett’s Peerage.”

GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT: Looking at ease in vulgarly large jewels, especially in the Imperial State Crown, a 2.5-pound lump of dazzlers she wears annually to open Parliament.

LAST ACCOMPLISHMENT: Breaking up a fight between 10 dogs, including her own corgis.

WHY I DO WHAT I DO: Anointed.

QUOTE: “How very interesting.”

PROFILE: Keen, reserved and able to keep awake at boring events.

This profile was compiled by staff writers Geraldine Baum in Washington and Patt Morrison in Los Angeles.