Royal Pains,,,,,

How about that Megan and Harry?  Will their baby be dark or light or spray painted rainbow?  Will Harry and Charles kiss and make up?   Will Catherine and Megan ever get their hair done together again?  Will Granny and her consort, the Duke of Darth Vader, survive another royal pain in the ass?  If we never had royalty, would we make them up for the entertainment value?

Yes, whether you’re a monarchist or a believer in republican ideals, there’s nothing like watching the long running series called the Royal Soap Opera and its many spin-offs – it’s right up there with classics like ‘Godzilla Meets Bambi’. There’s no end of arguing to be enjoyed about whether they have any relevancy in the age of constitutional parliaments.  Maybe it was easier back when royals were chosen directly by God and could do anything they liked – much like the sultan of Saudi Arabia does now.  If people didn’t like the king, you rounded them up and chopped off their heads – in Saudi Arabia you just invite them to your embassy.

I guess I can never understand how either group can claim superiority.  The idea that someone is automatically better because they win an election is a pretty thin reed to lean on.  You don’t have to look further than the results of the 2016 US election, or the continuing popularity of Dustbin Truthless, Prime Ribber of Kanadoodle, to confirm that republican processes manages to elect more than its fair share of total idiots.

Royalty, on the other hand, produces total idiots by genetic means.  If you’ve ever watched/read any of the millions of books, movies or television series about royals, you know that any current king/queen got their position because one of their ancestors was meaner, more brutal and more unscrupulous than any of their competitors.  In fact, a dollop of duplicitous dealing and homicidal instincts combined with pluck and luck were requisites to getting a crown – Darwinism at work with its triumph in the survival of the pitiless, balanced by the quaint belief that their offspring would be just as ruthless and lucky. Right.

The advantage of republican processes is that the electorate has the option of voting for a different idiot in the next election.  The monarchists are stuck with their idiots until they die.  Of course in the past it was possible to hasten the exit if the monarch didn’t watch his/her back closely enough.

But how about that Megan and Harry?  Writing themselves out of the script, stepping away from ‘the firm’ – Harry ‘de-princing’ himself and joining the hoi polloi – or at least the part of the common folk that can afford multi-million dollar mansions in California.  It’s not everyone that can flout royal roots and cash in on Oprah’s show. Yes, there’s nothing like snubbing the royal roots when you’ll never get to be monarch in any case – especially when you have forty million in the bank to fall back on.  Who knows, maybe de-royaling could become a fad and some of the de-royals could get elected as heads of state.  Then we could get the benefit of having the worst of both worlds. 

‘Tis a far, far better thing he does, than he has ever done before…

TL-DR

Anarchist theory gets a bad rap in my books