courtly

Here, onstage at the Paradise club in Boston, his singing has a courtly charm that makes “She’s Got a Way” feel like Joel’s version of Paul McCartney’s “Maybe I’m Amazed.”

“Irresistible” might be set in the period we know as the Victorian era, and there are royals and attendant paraphernalia, but lovers of polite courtly romances might want to steer clear.

The courtly gentleman guided women around the floor to big band standards with all the aplomb of teenage boys waltzing at a cotillion dance they’ve been forced to attend by their parents.

Bertie’s romantic relations are entirely sexless, 20th-century echoes of courtly love, though throughout the oeuvre he gets engaged to at least six women by my count.

The life-size portrait he produced is a whiz-bang spectacle of courtly pomp and dynastic circumstance.