Huh? Say what again?

On Tuesday morning, I listened to NPR's coverage of the President Obama's inauguration. For the most part, it was unobjectionable (once one overlooks the lack of journalistic neutrality, which I don't really believe can exist anyhow). However, when one of the commentators described the colors he saw people in the crowd wearing and noted the amount of purple, he meaningfully asked whether it might not be "royal purple". What was that about? We have a democratically elected leader of one of our THREE branches of government. There's absolutely nothing royal about an inauguration, and there had better never be! Thank you, George Washington!