Blue is my favorite color!  Is it yours?
I do like blue. I like blues with a greenish hue, like azure. But other blues like ultramarine are pretty, too.
How does the different shades of blue come about?
It lies between violet and green on the light spectrum, so the closer the color moves to one side or the other, the stronger that color will be.
Interesting.  Does the color have any significant meaning to any cultures?
In many cultures. For example, in China in the eighth century artists would use cobalt blue for fine blue and white porcelain.
I imagine those items are worth quite a bit now, right?
I'm sure the originals are worth a lot. Especially as decorating them was done by brush painting. Now stencilling is employed; either that or transfer-printing.
I figured that.  Isn't blue considered a royal color?
An optical effect called Tyndall scattering explains blue eyes. Distant objects appear more blue because of another optical effect called aerial perspective.
Blue has been an important colour in art and decoration since ancient times. The semi-precious stone lapis lazuli was used in ancient Egypt for jewellery and ornament and later, in the Renaissance, to make the pigment ultramarine, the most expensive of all pigments. In the eighth century Chinese artists used cobalt blue to colour fine blue and white porcelain. In the Middle Ages, European artists used
whole range of colors denoted by the English term "blue". Instead, it traditionally treats light blue (голубой, "goluboy") as a separate color independent from plain or dark blue (синий, "siniy"), with all seven "basic" colors of the spectrum (red–orange–yellow–green–голубой / "goluboy" (sky blue, light azure, but "does not equal" cyan)–синий / "siniy" ("true" deep blue, like synthetic ultramarine)–violet) while in