The second world war had many repercussions; perhaps the most trivial is that HRH Princess Katarina of Yugoslavia is now an etiquette consultant. "Would you like a unique opportunity of experiencing an insight into real upper-class etiquette?" asks her website in capital letters, which is the typed equivalent of screaming. It is an interesting predicament; what does a princess without a castle do but teach strangers how to eat a sandwich for £395? Or preside, maybe, over the London season, the ancient ritual in which debutantes sought husbands, which has mysteriously reanimated itself as an events company and relocated, of all places, to Dubai?

The London Season held a ball at the Royal Island Beach Club on The World last week, with Princess Katarina on hand to prevent etiquette terror, which I fondly imagine includes the spraying of menstrual blood. Readers may remember The World, perhaps the silliest construction project ever conceived; it is a series of sand islands in the Persian Gulf in the shape of the countries of the world. Construction was halted after the financial crash, and The World stopped except for Lebanon and its Royal Island Beach Club and, now, a dethroned princess existing in a netherworld of agonised metaphor.

Princesses for sale: their marketing material floats in the dark part of the internet that features ancient episodes of Falcon Crest and lessons with the Prince of Wales's ex-butler Grant Harrold, whose spelling is atrocious.

He describes his colleague Princess Katarina as a "great-neice of HM Queen Elizabeth II", says "there have been many diffrent views from experts on British Etiquette", and copies out a testimonial from the Daily Mail, which he misspells: "[Harrold is] the perfect man to lead you through an impromptu Dinner Pary". The London Season's marketing, meanwhile, is as self-deceptive as the French nobility, pre-revolution; it also holds a Kind Hearts and Coronets Ball. Do they not know that Tennyson's line is "Kind hearts are more than coronets"? Or that the film of that name is about a serial killer who only targets aristocrats, specifically ones he is closely related to? I did not know this pitch of social anxiety still existed, even less that there is a market to soothe it. For every buyer, a seller; sometimes the market weeps tears of blood.

The London Season insists it exists for charity – we all need charity – but its emphasis is odd. Dubai, and the surrounding Gulf states, is full of construction workers, toiling in conditions of near slavery. They are building the infrastructure for Qatar's 2022 World Cup. (How I wish the "vagina stadium" was revenge for their sufferings; but it is, I know from long experience of watching fools plot vanity in mirrors, more likely a mistake.) They will build Entertainment City in Qatar, a metro, a semi-submerged resort, roads, bridges, hotels and more stadiums that look like other things by mistake.

Even the authentic London season was not explicitly that cruel – at least until its central ritual, the curtsey to the monarch, was decapitated in 1958: "We had to put a stop to it," explained Princess Margaret helpfully. "Every tart in London was getting in." So the debutantes curtsied to a cake instead (supreme governor of the Church of England or sponge cake – who cares?)

More curious is what possible benefit can a ragtag army of stateless European princesses and over-dressed teenagers bring to the land where Islamism meets hyper-capitalism? Why does Dubai, a tyranny with seven-star hotels, a mountain in a fridge (for skiing), the lost city of Atlantis and politically neutral dolphins need Princess Katarina, pursued by a butler, and the wreckage of the London season? Why does Qatar need a branch of University College London – for shame? Why does Dubai need a branch of Repton, the famous English public school? Why does the Qatar Museum Authority need a partnership with Prada, makers of strange and ugly handbags?

The tyrants of the Gulf do not give frank interviews, except to their couturiers and portraitists, so I must guess. It is surely a combination of greed, snobbery and, perhaps obliviously, revenge; the final victory of new money on old. If only they both could lose.

Twitter: @TanyaGold1