Letter from Seville Patrice HarringtonFor the third time in a week she bowed out of a scheduled public appearance, but the disappointed Sevillanos forgave their pregnant princess.
Prince Felipe and his wife Letizia - former news anchor at Televisión Española, a divorcee and the alleged subject of Mexican nude paintings in her youth - were supposed to add some glitz to a dinner here on Saturday night, celebrating the 10th anniversary of the US-Spain Council meetings.
These had taken place all day in the handsome San Telmo Palace, named for the patron saint of navigators when it was built in 1682 and now housing the Andalusian regional government.
But by 5pm, the resisted rumour was confirmed on local radio news: Princess Letizia - expecting an heir to the throne in November - was too tired to attend the 9pm dinner.
Earlier in the week, during the couple's five-day official visit to the Balearic Islands, she was unable to visit the university or shake the hands of air and sea workers for the same reason.
Her delicacy may not have been surprising news, but you could almost feel the wind exiting Seville's sails nonetheless.
And so the towering, besuited Prince Felipe arrived wifeless to the five-star Hotel Alfonso XIII, where the dinner went ahead without the still petite bumpless princess.
Only handfuls of curious locals and scorched-looking tourists hung around the opulent foyer; nobody bothered to bring politically correct gifts of yellow coloured teddies and booties, as had been the custom since the palace officially announced the pregnancy just six days earlier on May 8th.
"Neither pink nor blue," Letizia (32) noted with an ironic smile, when a little old woman from Palma in Mallorca presented her with butter- coloured baby socks last week.
The gender of the unborn child has inspired a delightful controversy: if it's a girl, she will be heir to the throne, even if she has brothers in the future.
Socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero promised last week to take a metaphorical scissors to the sexist article in the Spanish constitution which says heirs must be male except in the case of a female only child.
Before he made this guarantee, the vice-president of his cabinet, María Teresa Fernández de la Vega, came out with this tongue- twister: "We hope that they have a girl and then another girl, or that they have a boy and then a girl or that they only have one girl, to eliminate problems [ of a constitutional reform]."
As if to prove they don't want things to be quite so clean-cut from the start, a poll in the Qué! newspaper showed that a little more than half of the 1,200 people questioned would prefer if the baby were a girl.
"It's all the same to us if it is a boy or a girl," Prince Felipe has insisted, adding that there was "no urgency" in changing the constitution. A referendum has since been scheduled for 2008 and will be retroactive from the time of the baby's birth. This means that Felipe will remain first in line to the throne, even though he has two older sisters.
This clearing-up of things has not quelled the intense media interest in the troublesome potential of the pregnancy.
What if the baby is gay and there are no successors What if it's twins and they argue over who is to be king?
Every possible outcome has been the subject of column inches and television debates.
On the day the pregnancy was announced, all male TV presenters appeared to have been shooed off the networks to be replaced by a team of beaming females, their usual serious tones replaced with breathy, at times squeaky voices, as they plumped the baby news like a pillow for hours on end.
"The sick joke of all these other European royals expecting babies won't plague Letizia's nightmares any longer," declared one, before listing the current pregnant princesses on her fingers: Maxima of Holland, Matilde of Belgium, Mette-Marit of Norway, Mary of Denmark.
"Yes, at long last it is our turn," agreed another, her eyes misty.
Poor Letizia - her first wedding anniversary isn't until May 20th.