I am legally eligible to be my country’s President.
If I look you in the eye and say “We are equal”, I am not being humble.
I am paying you the most extravagant compliment I know.
An American always thinks he is the smartest guy in the room.
But the hallmark of a gentleman is being gracious to one’s inferiors.
So, I am nice to you, and you are nice to me, and everybody is happy.
If there is a table for the aristocrats, and a table for the commoners, an American may ostentatiously insist on being seated with the commoners, but in his heart of hearts, he expects to be offered a place with the aristocrats.
Yeah, what I “love” about British culture is the impossibility, from an American perspective, of reliably guessing which archaic practices are completely extinct and which are still viewed as completely normal.
Do British people still write letters to the editor signed with pompous Latin nicknames like “Paterfamilias”? “Of course not, what a ridiculous notion.”
Does the Royal Family still ride in horse-drawn carriages to ceremonial public events? “Of course, that’s what the Royal Mews is for.”
OKAY BUT HOW TF CAN I KNOW WHAT SHOULD QUALIFY AS ABSURDLY OBSOLETE VERSUS THRIVING TRADITION, because from this side of the pond it all just looks equally “British”?
It’s not just the British Royalty that captivate and amuse us Americans, it’s British people in general.
Many of us start off believing Brits simply have a keen sense of humor, by watching shows like and Monty Python, Benny Hill and Mr. Bean. Look how funny John Cleese walks in that Ministry of Funny Walks skit! LOL. Look how funny Benny Hill talks in his frantic skits! LOL. Look how funny Mr. Bean looks! LOL.
But, then we visit the U.K. and realize…the British people really do walk, talk and look like that!
Queen Victoria got it wrong when she supposedly said, “we are not amused.” We Americans are amused!
Disclaimer: No offense intended. It’s just, what’s the term you Brits use when you bust someone’s chops that you like?..ah, yes: taking the piss out of you.
Just to bring your point fully home, a very significant piece of our constitution relating to the formation of government came into existence solely in the form of an anonymous letter to the Times. There’s no law, no ratified document, not even a royal declaration. Just a few paragraphs by “Senex” and behold, a new constitutional principle emerges.
Fuck, that was as recently as 1950?! Are we sure there aren’t people still doing that anonymous-Latin-signature thing?
That’s ANOTHER thing, the British will just reverse course about which traditions are obsolete, or mix and match them arbitrarily. Oh, of course judges don’t wear curled horsehair wigs in civil trials any more, it’s so outdated and silly! Oh, of course judges still wear curled horsehair wigs in criminal trials, it’s so traditional and serious-minded! GRHFTXSJJFFF WILL YOU PEOPLE JUST MAKE UP YOUR MINDS. (No, you won’t, because bewildering and exasperating foreigners and Americans is considered a good thing, isn’t it??)
At some point, he will have to go down the deep well in the Tower of London, accompanied by the Duke of Albion, to get Nimue’s approval. If she isn’t happy, we’ll be doing all this over again.
Of course I, Stanislaus, agree with you, Kimstu, that the idea of people submitting pseudonymous writings on political and cultural topics of the moment for public consumption is bizarre and unfathomable, for Latin pseudonyms especially
As to whether it’s still happening in the Times particularly, I couldn’t say, as I am very much the definition of lefty Guardian reader.
As to bewildering foreigners, the truth is it bewilders us if we ever think about it.
I think foreigners have an exaggerated idea of the importance and prominence of the monarchy and all that pomp and circumstance in actual British life. Understandably, because the ceremonial side of it can be impressive, and apart from occasions like this they probably pay little attention. Who outside the UK cares about what some minister in the British government has been up to? So they think Britain = that place where it’s all about kings and queens and palaces.
In fact, for the great majority of Britons the monarchy has no impact on their lives and I’d guess is not something they think about much outside of these birth/marriage/death events. The royal family sell a lot of copies of Hello! magazine, and that’s about it. The coverage may give the impression that the entire country has ground to a halt, but life goes on almost completely normally. I don’t know anyone who was hugely upset about the queen’s death, and it’s not like I move in rabidly republican circles. Despite the impressively long queue (sorry, The Queue) the total number of people filing past is a small fraction of the population. There’s far more people who wouldn’t bother queuing at all, let alone for ten hours, to glimpse the coffin of some nice old lady they didn’t really know apart from seeing her face on the stamps.
I mean no disrespect for the mourners. Just saying that they don’t necessarily reflect the general public reaction, which I would summarise as mostly ranging from brief, wistful sadness to polite indifference.
I’m puzzled at people saying “the country will never be the same again”, “this is a historic moment”, etc. Why? The death of the last monarch didn’t make any difference. Government policy didn’t change, because it is nothing to do with them. The course of British history proceded as it probably would have done anyway.
People said the same thing when Queen Victoria died, end of an epoch and so on. But the actual end of the era came in 1914, two kings later.
Sorry for the hijack, but could anyone explain to me exactly what determines if someone is Royal vs. “just” Nobility? For that matter, what makes one ‘Gentry’ as opposed to, I dunno, just being any old citizen?
Or point me to a good explainer, that would be good, too.
I suspect it is similar to when the US Federal government shuts down for one reason or another - for the average American it makes little to no difference because most of our government interactions are on the state or local level.
A certain number of people are impacted and I don’t want to trivialize that impact because to those affected it is very important. But most of the rest of the population are not much impacted.
IMHO it’s more a case of the monarchy being something that is in the background of everyday life-- pictures on money, portraits hanging in public buildings, “God Save the Queen” , etc. It’s an underpinning, a foundation. Not even that political, but visceral. You don’t think about it, but you’re used to it being there. It’s part of the national SUB-conscious, if not everyday consciousness. But when one day it’s gone-- you notice. OR when it undergoes a big change, like now, you notice. I used to live in Denver, and the Rocky Mountains are ALWAYS there in the west. You don’t think about them, but if you looked to the west one day and they weren’t there… it would be unsettling.
It’s a bit similar, but in the UK, it’s embodied in a person with a face, a history, a family. We don’t have that continuity represented by a single human being.
You do accurately point out the paradox that in the US, most people are deeply interested in Federal elections that truly have little impact on their daily lives, but don’t care all that much about local elections, which DO. Human nature, watcha gonna do, amirite?
Nobility means anyone who has a title in their own right, except for a Queen Consort.
Prince William and Harry before their individual wedding days (when they were created Dukes) were commoners not nobility since they didn’t have any title in their own right.
King Charles III was a commoner from birth until his mothers ascension to the throne when he automatically gained two Dukedoms, again since he held no title in his own right until then. Queen Camilla was a commoner until the day of her husbands accession, since she held no title in her own right and wasn’t Queen.
Royal is a bit more difficult to identify. It means those who are closely related to the monarch and it’s basically whom the monarch thinks is royal. Anne’s children have no title, but the late sovereign considered them as members of the Royal Family. It’s possible Charles won’t
Another criteria is whether they carry out “Royal duties”. That’s even more imprecise, since who does or doesn’t varies over time and even those who don’t ordinarily do so might find themselves drafted at times.
So, let’s say Charles got a bad case of measles as a little kid and died. He’d have died a commoner? With no right to be buried in wherever he could have been buried? That St. George’s chapel or whatever? Weird.
FurloeRoth, you live there and I don’t, but could you please explain to me how a million-plus people queueing up for hours (up to 20 hours, last I heard), and calling/emailing into BBC to share their anecdotes about The One Time They Met QEII that they never forgot, and creating tributes to her, and all the rest of it, “doesn’t necessarily reflect the general public reaction”? What does it look like when you guys really do care bigly about something?
He would have been a commoner under the technical definition, but if he had died as such, it would have affected nothing but what was engraved on the tomb. There is no special peers-only cemetery.
So what would be engraved on his tomb? And he would have been buried in an ordinary cemetery since there is no “special” cemetery? Color me still confused.
St George’s Chapel is a chapel at Windsor Castle, under the direct control of the monarch. The Royal Vault is used for burials of those in the direct line of succession, so I suppose he could have been interred there.
Alternatively, there is the Royal Burial Ground at Frogmore, also under the direct control of the Crown. Members of the Royal Family can also be buried there.
What I’m saying is that your supposition that one’s status as a commoner has some impact on where one is buried, or much of anything else, is not correct. There is no “right to be buried in wherever he could have been buried” that he attained in 1952. He was always a prince and a close member of the royal family and his becoming Duke of Cornwall changed very little about his life as a young child, other than that it implicitly meant his mother was a lot busier than she used to be.
You get buried in St George’s Chapel (or the Royal Burial Groundif the monarch gives permission, regardless of your legal status ad royal or commoner. If Charles had died young, his mum or grandfather would have given permission.
Similarly, Queen Maria of Yugoslavia was buried at Frogmore; she wasn’t a British royal even by birth (her mother was, though), but the Queen chose to give permission. (Her remains were sent back to Serbia a few years ago, as part of a gathering of Serb royals buried outside the country during Tito’s rule.)
Most likely, his tomb would have read simply “Charles” and his dates.
“God Save the Queen”