I’m saying that it wasn’t picked randomly to strictly highlight what would happen in the future. It was big news at the time. You’re right, I’m sure the the writers made it a winking reference to his recent history but Koo news also dominated the tabloids at the time.
Yes, and it is a important duty.
In the USA the President spends way too much time attending funerals, event anniversaries , ribbon cuttings and other things that the Queen, as a mostly powerless head of state does instead of the PM.
I am disgusted by Last Week Tonights Jon Oliver making a big nasty salacious deal over the fact that Phillip and Elizabeth were “COUSINS!!!” 
.
Yes, barely related third cousins. Us average joes often dont even know who are our third cousins.
What a asshole.
So true, I can read that in a tenth the time.
His degree from Eton would have put him in line for Officer anyway.
He was well qualified to be a officer even without Royal Blood.
But would he have been able to attend Eton without being royal, as a regular slob with maybe talent, but without family money and prestige?
Oh, good grief. John Oliver was joking. Besides they’re all related … mostly. I toured Mountbatten’s house when I was in England. When we went back downstairs we took a different stair that was filled with portraits. The guide stopped us and pointed out which countries these people were “rulers of.” And that they were mostly cousins. Victoria had a bunch of kids who married royalty all over the continent…merrily spreading their hemophiliac genes.
Yeah, you do need some money and connections but hardly royal.
can you imagine Eton turning away the heir and the spare as students?
Yeah, I’d see being a direct descendant of the royal family as an automatic free ticket to Eton, even if the individual is an idiot.
Similarly, Obama’s daughter had no problem getting into Harvard.
Fees at Eton run out at £50,000 plus, so unless you can bag one of the four or five scholarships you really have to be pretty well off. A bit of a shame that they didn’t stick to how it was when founded by King Henry VI in 1440 with the specific purpose of educating 70 poor scholars
Note that this is for boys 13 to 18 only.
Except it’s a joke, like cousin jokes about populations in certain parts of the US South, that keeps getting kicked up in a derogatory way. If someone disagrees with the monarchy, they should make their arguments honestly, instead of stereotypical slurs.
I completely agree.
I enjoyed this PBS NewsHour biography on Prince Philip. At about the 39 min mark, it describes his illness in 2012 that had him hospitalized. There were some clips of the Queen, Charles & Camilla riding in a carriage. It’s really did seem odd to see the Queen in public without him.
It’s North Korea levels of barbaric grooming. They are human beings, NOT personifications of the state (although that is what they’re dehumanized to become and exist as).
I think the people don’t need state-groomed, -bred, -deindividualized human beings to serve as the human face to (what is in fact) a set of governmental institutions, services, laws, practices, traditions, territory, and the people who live within.
I know, “but royalty is tradition”. I still think its state sponsored/enforced coercion that I am forced to be complicit; all just to absurdly personify the intangible concept of a nation.
However, he was not President at that time. He was wealthy enough to pay the tuition of course.
It’s fascinating to read this thread and how different it is to the reactions of people I know in the UK.
For example, even among those who love the royal family, there’s been pushback against the announcement of “eight days of national mourning,” and things like the BBC actually shutting down BBC4, and having such blanket coverage that they cancelled the Masterchef final, and ITV cancelled Coronation Street (two of the highest-rated shows in the UK).
I mean, CBeebies, the channel aimed at preschoolers, had a black banner FFS!
People did change channels, of course. Channel 4 did well out of it.
Eton is a school. It doesn’t award degrees. Andrew didn’t go there, anyway, he went to Gordonstoun, same as his brothers, because Phillip had gone there. That’s just a school too, and doesn’t award degrees. It’s absolutely not a qualification to be an officer except that it seems to help to be posh.
I think being a former US President, perhaps especially the first black POTUS, is really just about as high on the personal-prestige meter as being the current POTUS. It’s a pretty exclusive club, and its members have quite a bit of ceremonial significance to the nation, even outside of their individual post-Presidential career paths.
Eton is just a high school, it doesn’t confer degrees. A very expensive, very exclusive high school, obviously. Prince Harry got just two, very mediocre A levels, which wouldn’t have qualified him to get into a good university.
Required qualifications for officer training include 72 UCAS points (UCAS points go towards university qualification and are based on your school qualifications). His A Levels come to 64.
Obama’s daughters would also be legacy admissions to Harvard, just as their father was, which also helps considerably in getting a foot in the door.
Personally, I think the notion of “legacy admissions” to be BS and should be abolished, as it was a pretty obvious way of keeping the powerful and upperclass powerful and upperclass, a sort of economic aristocracy. The unusual thing in the Obama’s case is that they’re a black family with legacy privileges at Harvard, as the institution was formed mainly to entrench the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants that have dominated the US power structure from the beginning.