Trump is the would-be king. Clearly.
Not getting how your comment is relevant to my impending nausea.
I know, but my point is that Charles is a king, in other words someone who enjoys power(informal in his case, but still existent) and wealth that he hasn’t earned.
William the Conqueror was the would-be king whose inheritance Charles enjoys.
Charles may not be as morally loathsome as Trump but in the “king” part of morally deficiencies he has no room to complain, Trump is merely trying to do the same thing his ancestor did, a deed to which he owes his current position and wealth.
(I’ll cut some slack to William the bastard because he was not overthrowing a democracy but another nest of robbers, but he was still a robber)
A noted royal biographer says the Queen shouldn’t have protected then-Prince Andrew.
Now that it is no longer in the EU, the UK needs to negotiate a trade deal with the US. The current British government, specifically Starmer, is calculating that flattering Trump offers the best chance of success. That hasn’t exactly gone according to plan, most obviously with the disgrace of Trump whisperer and Epstein buddy, Lord Mandelson. And Trump is now threatening to rip up the first trade deal signed last year.
But the dumb thing is that using the King to massage Trump’s ego is the one element of this strategy that seems to work. Which frankly is more of a problem for the Americans than it is for the British. Most people in Britain, including one assumes the King, grasp that exploiting Trump’s vanity in this way is an easy win.
I wonder if Trump thinks that the King has actual power.
This is arguable. Henry VII might be more accurate in terms of who earned (=took) the position. Charles also counts pre-Norman kings of English & Welsh kingdoms among his ancestors, as well as lots of kings of places he doesn’t reign over.
I don’t wonder. I’m quite confident that Trump thinks that King Charles is the absolute ruler of his kingdom, and tells the government what to do.
More is available if you search, but let’s face it, it’s not wildly exciting, however worthy.
And, probably (at least here in the U.S.), the “not wildly exciting” stuff about Charles’s reign is likely drowned out, as far as news coverage, by:
- Tabloid-esque coverage of Charles’s brother and younger son
- Crazy news about our government
Yeah, I keep thinking about it after posting about old William and you could argue for Henry VII or William of Orange too.
Doesn’t affect the main point that Charles is but the descendant of successful “would-be kings”, legitimized by tradition but still profiting of his ancestors’ crimes.
Eh, look, they figure as long as they’re committed to a shindig for the 250, they might as well send HisMaj who’s probably used to being forced to spend time next to obnoxious twits (some of them immediate family) and not let them get under his skin. And who knows, he may comment that he really liked the old garden and East Wing.
(And anyway if we’re talking proximity to dynastic crimes there’s a household in Brussels who’s got the Windors beat by the classic mile.)
“When I sally forth to seek my prey
I help myself in a royal way.
I sink a few more ships, it’s true,
than a well-bred monarch ought to do;
but many a king on a first-class throne,
If he wants to call his crown his own,
must manage somehow to get through
more dirty work than ever I do.
For I am a Pirate King!
And it is, it is a glorious thing
to be a Pirate King!..”
I feel the same way. Trump has little idea of how the US government works; I’m sure that a constitutional monarchy would be completely beyond his comprehension.
According to Game Change by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann (an excellent behind-the-scenes look at the 2008 campaign), Sarah Palin thought the Queen actually ruled the UK, and had to be told otherwise.
I was thinking about it after the fact and concluded that’s the way he’s always had them. I mean, he lived in Manhattan at the top of a high-rise. He’s not going to pop out to MickeyDee himself, he’s going to send a minion out and back. Assuming the place is on the upper west side, looking on Google maps I see only two so it’s likely a several block walk back with a bag of burgers and fries, guaranteed cold by the time he gets them.
Yet millions of people have their own minions, called UberEats, and it doesn’t seem to bother them…
Could it be that Trump isn’t so different than everybody else?
.
Moderating:
Reminder everyone, this thread is about King Charles III, not Trump. Please drop the Trump tangents that don’t directly relate to the King.
William of Orange was invited in by Parliament.
One of the effects of that, in the traditionally class-ridden English society, was that the Nobility predates the Royalty. Charles is just an Employee.
He’s well paid (with inherited wealth in the crown estates), and William of Orange was himself part of the royal family. But parliament knows who called the shots, and they don’t let him forget it.
I remember that was a subtext of To Play the King, the sequel to the original British political satire House of Cards, in which a very conservative Prime Minister locked horns with a well-meaning liberal King (pretty clearly based on Charles, the then-Prince of Wales).
Yes it was less open robbery in William of Orange’s case, still not too clean (Parliament was not in any way democratic as we would understand it now for example)