But it doesn’t, there’s quite a few other royals (both in the British family and in others) who have less class than my trashcan.
Actually, Spoke raises a fair point: one of QE2’s many advantages is her experience. She has been on the Throne such a long time. With a succession of monarchs acceding in their 50s, we would not get that experience.
Yes, but they aren’t The Queen.
Why the hate for Charlie here. Diana was a media image. I suspect he will do well when he comes to power.
The thing is, I thought he made himself ineligible by first getting divorced, then marrying a divorced woman. Or has that been waived?
One thing’s for certain, when Charles takes over, our stamps will get a whole lot uglier. 
(Incidentally, I’m not sure why the portrait of Her Maj on our coins has aged through (IIRC) four iterations since she became queen, but the stamps still stick with the Dorian Grey head.)
I would wager that no child of William (or Harry, or Beatrice, or Eugenie) will ever be king or queen, (at least of Britain). I believe the monarchy will be made obsolete before that.
But divorce was never a legal obstacle to anyone becoming king. The only reason it had been an issue in the past was (1) the disapproval of divorce by the Church of England and thus the embarassment of having someone who had benefitted from divorce as its Supreme Governor, and (2) strong public disapproval of divorce. But the Church of England softened its policy towards divorce anyway, in a large part because almost no one in Britain (apart from the Queen?) now believes that divorce in general is wrong. So, while plenty of people disapproved of Charles’s second marriage because Camillia was ‘the other woman’, no one* thought that it automatically debarred him from becoming king.
*Well, apart from all the ignoramuses who thought Camillia was a Catholic.
On the question of the Queen’s health, what speculation there is, whether in the press or private rumour, tends to focus on Prince Philip. This might be a deliberate smokescreen or a sense that the subject is off-limits. But more likely it’s that there’s not much to say.
As to whether Charles will be George VII, that rumour was only ever been based on a single newspaper story, which was immediately denied. Which doesn’t mean it’s untrue, but, then again, it’s not much of a reason to believe that it is true
I don’t see the value of getting rid of the royal family. Here in Canada, we’ve had the post of queen’s representative generally handed out to recycle used politicians. (To Jean Chretien’s credit, one of the few good things he did besides ahving Paul Martin as finance minister was to start a trend of appointing non-politicians.) If you replace her with an elected “head of state” as many parliamentary systems do, you end up with a worse brand of head-of-state. The presidents of both Israel and Italy, for example, were investigated for various charges.
Do you really want a system where someone like Tony Blair or Margaret Thatcher would return from the political wilderness as the person able to seriously change the course of the elected parliament?
The beauty of the royal post is that while it seems ceremonial, she has a great deal of pwoer; she can refuse to sign bills into law, she can appoint members of the upper house, and she can call elections at will. However, like all arbitrary power, it is used at the risk that if abused, it can be revoked with sufficient agreement of the parliament. So rather than being used to force a government to bend to her will, it is best used only to prevent a government from following an extremely unpopular and divisive course of action - more like a last resort veto to prevent social upheaval. Since she rarely uses it, it is best used as a threat - “If I veto this and you have to face an election over it, do you think you would win?” Or used as a warning - “I’ll let it go this time, but you are stretching my patience.”
The maturity and restraint needed to manage that power is best handled by someone who can never hope to be more than she is (how much more would anyone want?). It should not be passed to a used politician who obviously had the ego to get where he is, and likely as an ex-prime minister, has axes to grind and grudges to settle, and an ego to re-inflate. Add to this mix the fact a “president” is elected, and therefore can claim equally with the prime minister the “will of the people”, and you end up with an even less productive form of government than the USA has had in recent years.
As for Charles, I really don’t see that he’s that bad. He was pretty much forced into droppping the love of his life as an inappropriate choice, then marrying someone who really didn’t fit in and was bipolar on top of that. I don’t understand the cult of Diana - does anyone find it odd that after Charles she “fell in love” with one of the few men who could afford her lifestyle and was a bad choice all around and a significantly worse character than anyone could accuse Charles of being?
I’m a big hater of the “cult of Diana”, but I can’t find much fault with:
She was bound to socialize within a certain class of folks. I don’t particularly see this as an indictment of her character.
Not necessarily; a non-executive president in parliamentary systems can be nominated by Parliament, or chosen through some other process. It’s typically only executive presidents who are elected by the people.
Diana certainly had her flaws, but Charles was, by all accounts, carrying on with Camilla throughout their marriage - from the very beginning - and was cold and unhelpful to Diana when she had problems fitting into the Royal Family. I think he bears the lion’s share of blame for the problems in their marriage, at least at first, and set things on a path to end badly.
Guin’s point is well-made, though – “The long-reigning Queen’s son, the Prince of Wales, has some peculiar ideas and is notorious for having slept around on his long-suffering and popular wife” describes the situation at the end of the 19th century just as well as it does that at the end of the 20th – and Edward VII proved to be a highly competent monarch who helped his ministers deal fairly with social unrest and arguably used his personal cachet to help postpone World War I for a decade. Charles takes the job he’s been studying for for 55 years quite seriously; don’t let popular focus on his foibles mislead you on that point. As to whether the monarchy should be kept in place, I defer to those who have to live under it – but based on some of the stunts our combination Heads of State/Heads of Government (of both parties) have pulled over the last 70 years, I think there’s something to be said for concentrating much of the most far-reaching powers in someone who may use it him/herself only in utmost crisis, and will normally use it only on the advice of elected officials – but can reject that advice when the sort of crisis normally seen only in bizarre thriller novels actually does happen.
Nitpick: Edward VII was Albert Edward, not the other way around. (Queen Victoria wanted him to use the double name “Albert Edward I” when he became king, but he dropped the first when he secceeded)
And the interesting thing about George VI is that Albert was his first name, as his younger brother, the Duke of Kent’s first name was George.
Not to mention Poly, Charles only had one mistress, while his great-great grandfather had god-knows how many! They didn’t call him “Edward the Caresser” for nothing!
Seriously, the history of royalty is a fascinating thing. I don’t think you could swing a dead cat in Europe without hitting some monarch that’s not a descendent of Victoria – not to mention most of the pretenders.
Note: “pretender” isn’t necessarily a derogatory term, it simply denotes the heir to a defunct throne. For example, you have Prince Otto of Austria, and the former Tsar Simon of Bulgaria – the latter who was actually elected prime minister! At one point, Juan Carlos I and his father were “pretenders”. The Crown Prince of Yugoslavia is fairly well-respected, as is the former King Michael of Romania.
Fwiw, I like it. I like that the head of state is not party political, builds up a very acute political sensibility, provides continuity and provides an alternative when party politicians get a little too keen.
A good example of that was provided last year when Gordon Brown was advocating a second stimulus package - perhaps more in the interests of re-election than national interest. In retrospect, it looks utterly foolish and dangerous to have planned even more debt.
Anyway, the Queen had lunch with the Governor of the Bank of England, something not done in 200 years. Brown shat himself and no more was heard of his second stimulus. Nothing was ever said, the fact of the two having lunch was enough.
The mechanism also tends to make the monarch pretty immune to bribery, corruption and all the other pressures the combination democracy with capitalism brings - inc. different brands of free market ideology, if only because the monarch knows the public will have them out and it’ll all be over.
Also, having been around for so long allows her to see political trends for what they are whether it’s the recent inclination towards neo-liberalism or occasional lurches the other way. It’s one steady hand on the national tiller.
More negatively, there are important and significant issues in relation to the status quo - perhaps esp. the system of Honours that reward those who play the Establishment game, of endorsing privilege and reinforcing elites. But it’s not as if this is a unique function of the House of Windsor, it’s something Heads of State throughout the world practice.
No, but some are regnants.
As far as I can see the problems in Charles and Diana’s marriage stem from the marriage itself. They should never have been together. Thirteen years age difference and sod all in common. It was clear even before the wedding that Charles was not fully committed - that notorius interview when they were both asked if they were in love and she said “Of course” and he responded “Whatever “in love” means”! My understanding was that he was pressured into the marriage by the Queen and Prince Philip who insisted that his bride could not have “a past” - which essentially meant they had to be too young for him.
So they shouldn’t have married but once they were it is pretty obvious there were faults on both sides. He obviously had affairs but so did she. Personally I never took to her simpering glances up from under her eye-lashes :dubious: and I absolutely hated the sainthood the tabloid press bestowed on her.
Charles is definitely not perfect - who is - but he is not stupid. A product of a wierd upbringing where he was shoved off to a school he hated by parents enormously busy with the early years of QEII’s reign. He is fully committed to the causes he cares about - modern architecture, sustainable farming, youth development, etc - and uses whatever influence he can to advance them. When he becomes King he will have to back off from that use of influence but there is no reason to doubt he knows and accepts that. I believe he will make a pretty good King for the 21st century.
It does seem to appear Diana went into the marriage with different expectations than Charles. Europeans also don’t seem to have the same attitude to “affairs on the side, as long as their discreet” as American do
A perfect example of how the role of Queen involves a lot more skill than merely being able to wave for a hour and cut a few ribbons. Someone here recently recounted the story of the Canadian DJs who rang the palace pretending to be the Canadian PM, only to have QE2 demonstrate that she was extremely knowledgable about current Canadian affairs (and comfortable conversing in French as well). Liz is one smart cookie, and I for one am looking for her to beat Victoria’s record.
I also like Charles and think he’ll be a fine king; perhaps not the backbone of the nation that his mother is but a quiet and respectable monarch. I think people keen to have William on the throne are just thinking about the media-driven excitement of having a sexy young king at the helm. Wills will likely be a fine king as well in his time; there’s no rush to get them there sooner than necessary.
I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when Gordon found out about the lunch between Mervyn King and the Queen…
I would have thought the reluctance to have a Charles III would stem more from the fact that the last attempt to seize the throne by military force was in 1745 by Prince Charles Edward Stuart, aka Bonnie Prince Charlie, aka The Young Pretender.
Guinastasia: “Note: “pretender” isn’t necessarily a derogatory term, it simply denotes the heir to a defunct throne.”
“It may be a parliamentary expression; but it is not a gentlemanly expression.”
– James Boswell, “The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D.”