Sky News contributor Sophie Elsworth says it has been reported Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is forcing his very few staff to address him still as “sir,” despit...
I heard a very interesting argument that if the Royal family can remove Andrew from the line of succession, then the line itself can be manipulated, and anyone else could be added. In that case, what is the point of having a royal family?
People have been adding other people to royal families for the entirety of recorded history.
Sometimes its through marriage, but sometimes its adoption, sometimes they just make up a lineage.
Now, theres arguments against royalty, for sure, but if the royal family wasn’t allowed to prune itself, find the best people and merge them into the royal family, etc, there never would’ve been royals in the first place. Royal families begin with individuals but they remain by caring about “good breeding” (and other ways of consolidating power).
Consolidating is the real purpose. It can be obscured with religious lines of divinity, or what have you, but royal families are always shopping for people to incorporate.
The line has been manipulated several times by Parliament, including the selection and elimination of kings.
The point of the royal family now isn’t to be a defined lineage, but an agreed upon vessel to hold power when Parliament temporarily breaks. Even then, Queen Elizabeth II was kind of shit at it.
Not to mention that the current royal family was originally named Saxe-Coburg, changing it to a more palatable “Windsor” during the first World war (which was fought against subjects of the German Kaiser, who was a cousin of the British king).
I heard a very interesting argument that if the Royal family can remove Andrew from the line of succession, then the line itself can be manipulated, and anyone else could be added. In that case, what is the point of having a royal family?
Seems a little threadbare as a theory.
People have been adding other people to royal families for the entirety of recorded history.
Sometimes its through marriage, but sometimes its adoption, sometimes they just make up a lineage.
Now, theres arguments against royalty, for sure, but if the royal family wasn’t allowed to prune itself, find the best people and merge them into the royal family, etc, there never would’ve been royals in the first place. Royal families begin with individuals but they remain by caring about “good breeding” (and other ways of consolidating power).
Consolidating is the real purpose. It can be obscured with religious lines of divinity, or what have you, but royal families are always shopping for people to incorporate.
I’m not sure what the point is in any case. Whatever about how the monarch is chosen…having a monarch is bad! And this monarchy is particularly bad!
The line has been manipulated several times by Parliament, including the selection and elimination of kings.
The point of the royal family now isn’t to be a defined lineage, but an agreed upon vessel to hold power when Parliament temporarily breaks. Even then, Queen Elizabeth II was kind of shit at it.
Not to mention that the current royal family was originally named Saxe-Coburg, changing it to a more palatable “Windsor” during the first World war (which was fought against subjects of the German Kaiser, who was a cousin of the British king).
A monarchy is a family business. Anyone in the family can run it. Monarchies are inherently unstable when the monarchs die because of this.