Years ago, when TV started to regularly feature debates on the subject, it seemed we might outgrow the need for our constitutional monarchy. Sadly, they seem more a fixture of our way of life than ever.
The Queen has been celebrating 60 years of uninterrupted employment. She's done well, hasn't she? Apparently, so well that she is loved and admired the world over. Mostly for her staying power, or what commentators are calling continuity. Just to think she could have packed it in, or maybe been replaced for under performing. Except, she can't be. It's pretty much her gig until she croaks it.
Why do we fawn over the “achievements” of royalty?
Is it that we truly believe being incumbent in a job, where the only qualification was your birth right, that requires little to no actual work, where your personal life is one spent in opulent and private luxury, really represents a magnificent and selfless achievement?
Oh, but they can’t have a normal life. You enjoy your normal life to the extent that you look up to them in awe, and count them unlucky to be so venerated? What is this normal life and what are they missing out on? Shopping with members of the public?
Ah, they can’t marry who they like. Yes they can, and we love it when they do, the romance of it all. In fact, we offer the same vacant eyed adulation to the newly grafted on members of this special club. The blue blood required to make you special, divine even, and link you to tradition and history, in the ways we’ve been told justify the monarchy, seems unnecessary, as it’s all the more exciting when the “ordinary” are married in, and instantly become super human as a result.
Ah, but they can’t get divorced. Yes they can and they can remarry and carry on.
They live in a goldfish bowl, really? I thought they lived in several huge palaces, which they own and yet are maintained by taxes. As for it being transparent, so that we can watch them swimming inside, I haven’t myself been able to witness any private royal moments. What you do see is all public engagements, and by and large the press are very deferential to the royals.
60 years of selfless dedication to a life of service. That's what they're saying. Selflessly, carrying on serving as queen. I hope that when a doctor, or nurse or fireman retires, we have a huge public outpouring of sympathy and celebration for their life of selfless dedication to service. Otherwise, it seems we really put much too higher price on waving from the back of a carriage.
Friday 7 June 2013
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