Sadly I suspect you are right. We don’t like to wait.
And no matter when Charles takes the throne or what name he adopts, he will never measure up to his mother as a monarch. QE II has done a stellar job for a very long time; Charles will end up taking on the job at an age when most people will be retiring or retired. I don’t think he even really wants to be king; if you told him he could keep pottering away with his overpriced organics business and never had to worry about being king he would probably be relieved.
I also think that the noise about William will die down as he gets older, less sexy and much, much balder. That hairline is racing for the nape of his neck so fast they’re going to need a short shutter speed for the wedding photos to keep it from blurring.
The latest poll showed that 44% wanted William as the next king as opposed to 37% who wanted Charles (Sunday Times YouGov 21 November). Other polls have showed higher figures. As always a lot depends on how the question is framed.
As to why, I think it is lot down to our delightful tabloid press who have for years plugged the line that Charles is some sort of nut job while William is the handsome, dynamic, action man. This is also linked to the tabloids love affair with Diana - no half measures, if Diana is a saint, Charles must be a villain.
Like **Gyrate **I think this rush for William will die away as he gets older and memories of Diana fade. He’s definately not looking so handsome these days - compare pictures of him at St Andrewto some more recent ones! It’s not as though there are two rival courts sparring with each other. Charles and William obviously get on and I doubt William wants to be King any sooner than he has to be.
Just for the record, personally, I am for keeping the monarch as Head of State and I’m for Charles becoming monarch when Liz dies.
I’m no sort of ardent royalist but I’d rather have a constituional monarchy than a republic. I like the continuity of a HoS that does not need to be elected or be beholden to any party or faction. Having a monarchy also takes the burden off the head of government for ceremonial duties. For what we get I think it is worth the money - quite apart from the massive boost it gives to the UK’s tourist industry.
As to Charles, I’m pretty sure he’ll make a decent King. He’s bright enough if no genius and has a conscience and a stong sense of duty. As to Cumbrian’s worry that he’ll interfere in politics, I don’t see it. He knows he can say and do things a Prince of Wales that he won’t be able to a King. Even if he doesn’t, any attempt to interfere would be slapped down by the elected politicians.
The Queen won’t abdicate in favour of Charles and it is nothing to do with not trusting him. It is down to her seeing herself as having a religious duty to abide by her coronation oath. In the final part of the oath the Queen said, “The things which I have here before promised, **I will perform and keep. **So help me God.” and she meant it. Mixed with this is the view that the Queen Mother drummed into the whole family that abdication was/is a “bad thing”. She saw Edward VIII as having let down himself, his family, and his country by abdicating - not to mention driving her husband George VI to an early grave - and this attitude permeates the whole Royal Family now. It is one reason why Charles himself would never abdicate in favour of William.
The idea of a poll like this makes chuckle with delicious irony since the most basic characteristic of a monarchy is that the people don’t get to choose the monarch.
I hope you’re correct on both these counts. Given I have not seen any indication that he won’t behave as he is now, if/when he becomes King, I am somewhat less optimistic. That said, one good aspect of The Queen hanging on for the rest of her (presumably still to be quite long, given how long her mother hung around) life is that Charles will be even older when he ascends to the throne, thus presumably removing some of the energy he might have for getting into this sort of thing, so it will probably wash out OK in the end.
I have no real desire to get rid of the monarchy either, for what it is worth. I take the David Mitchell view that if we get rid of it, we’ll be responsible for whatever comes afterwards and we’ll almost certainly make a total dog’s breakfast of it and leave ourselves worse off than we are now. Might as well stick to what we’ve got.
Actually, there’s no systemic reason for Americans to be reverent towards the president. By tradition, we have treated the president as head of state, but the concept of “head of state” is not in the constitution and we would lose nothing by doing away with it altogether. People in a democracy shouldn’t need to grant special status to an individual person to embody the concept of the state.
…and the remaining 19% would want the stuffed and mounted corpse of the current monarch to remain in the role, at least until it started to smell funny and bits started dropping off.
But I thought that it was pretty well accepted that Elizabeth is involved in politics behind the scenes. I don’t think it’s on the day to day issues but I’m sure there have been a few things that she would have considered withholding her Royal Assent to that were negotiated.
And perhaps this is coming from an American with the series of checks and balances but would it really be so bad to have a monarch involved in politics as a stabilising influence, especially considerin the House of Lords has been emasculated throughout the 20th Century? Our Congress can change every 2 years but Parliament can stay in power for 5 years and gets to choose (within reason) when reelections are held. Would it really be that bad for someone that doesn’t have to worry about reelection to offer some input into government policy?
If you can provide the cites, then fair enough - but I am not aware of the Queen threatening to withold assent to laws passed by Parliament and gained concessions from them. I’d have thought the ban on Fox Hunting, as a for instance, would have been a prime candidate for this sort of horse trading (no pun intended). Royal assent is basically a rubber stamp - as it should be; we elect the politicians to make the laws on our behalf - if someone totally unelected enacted a unilateral veto on a government we elected, no matter how popular that action might be, that would be grounds for constitutional crisis. If it happened, I might start to rethink my attitude to constitutional monatchy.
As for The Queen’s other involvement in politics - the fact it is not public knowledge suggests she knows what she is doing and doesn’t push it too far. When Charles lobbies for alternative medicine to be offered on the National Health Service, explicitly writing to the Health Secretary to make the demand, you can see we’re dealing with totally different operators here.
The House of Lords is responsible for the checks and balances on the legislative process. Whilst the Commons is effectively the senior chamber, as it can over-ride the will of the lords by invoking the Parliament Act, this very rarely happens - the opinions of the Lords are taken into consideration when looking at the bills. You may see it as being emasculated but it’s effectively providing exactly the role that you’re looking for the monarch to provide - which seems to me to render the need for the monarch to do it redundant.
Viscounts are really peers, but the children of living earls aren’t really viscounts. What happens, as Spectre alluded to, is that in some noble families that hold several titles, the head of the family uses the senior title (in this case Earl Spencer) while permitting his eldest son to use one of the lesser titles “by courtesy.” The son isn’t really the viscount (and isn’t a peer), the father is, by courtesy.
Diana’s status as a commoner has no bearing on her title when she was married. As soon as she married HRH the Prince of Wales, her married title was HRH the Princess of Wales, regardless of whether she was a commoner or not. AFAIK, if she had been a peeress in her own right, she still probably would simply have used the title Princess of Wales, since that’s a higher title.
As I understand it (and I may be off, this all just the product of casual reading), Edward’s wife would be titled like any other wife of an earl. So, Sophie, Countess of Wessex, as you say. But if Edward was just an unlanded prince, she’d be Princess Edward.
I suspect that when Harry marries Kate Middleton, his grandmother will give him some sort of peerage and she would end being called by that title rather than Princess Henry.
Prince Michael of Kent, husband of the aforementioned Princess Michael, is the grandson of George V, and his father, George’s fourth son, was the Duke of Kent, died early on. Michael doesn’t have any particular title of his own except his birth title. His wife according to wiki is a Baroness, but she’s Princess Michael since she’s only a princess by marriage.
Also, looking it up on wiki, he married his wife in a Catholic ceremony, so he’s excluded from the succession. Their kids were brought up Anglican and are still in line to the throne (way down the list.) I didn’t know it could work like that. I thought once he was out, his kids were out too. The kids are called Lord Frederick Windsor & Lady Gabriella Windsor - they don’t have any landed titles of their own and apparently they’re far enough removed that they aren’t prince or princesses. I wonder what the cut off is? I wonder if their kids will have titles or just be honorables?
Right. That’s how I understand it anyway. I wonder whose job it is to sort all this out. I wonder what sort of college degree you need for this? Librarian, maybe.
I stand corrected! Somehow I was under the impression that only Earls and up qualified as peers. But you’re right, it’s Barons and up. The current speaker of the House of Lords is a Baroness.
Now that I think about it, Galahad Threepwood was an Honorable, not a Lord and he was the younger son. So you’re right about younger sons of Earls too. Jeeves would never have let Mr. Wodehouse make that mistake.
After Busman’s Honeymoon, Sayer’s attention turned toward theological books. In the early years of WW2, she published a series of letters in Spectator Magazine, purportedly from the various Wimsey family members, commenting on aspects of life in England in the run up to the war. These were referred to as “The Wimsey Papers”. They, along with some unfinished manuscripts left after her death, included the news that Gerry, Peter’s speed-driving nephew, joined the RAF and was shot down (I forget where.)
The Wimsey Papers and the unfinished manuscripts are being used by Jill Patton Walsh (with the Sayers’ estate’s blessing) to continue the story. Her first novel, Thrones, Tribulations, takes place over the course of Edward’s abdication. The second novel takes place during the war. The third novel, which comes out in January, is called The Attenbury Emeralds. It’s set in 1951, when Peter has just become the next duke, and deals in part with his first case back in 1921.
They’re not as good as the original DLS novels but, for posthumously published stuff, they’re not bad.
OH! On topic: I think there should be a mandatory retirement age for monarchs. Not so much for their own sake - the governement has loads of experience dealing with senile monarchs. But for the sake of the heir, I think monarchs should retire in their sixties so that the next heir inherits the throne while he’s a young person, rather than being expected to take up the career when he’s at retirement age himself. I realize that monarchy is typically seen as a lifetime endeavor but I don’t think Elizabeth has done Charles any favors by keeping him dangling so long (nor Victoria, Bertie).
I think Charles’ biggest problem is that his mother is very established. Even many people who don’t like the idea of the monarchy in general think Elizabeth is doing a good job. And she’s been doing if for almost sixty years. To the majority of Britons, Elizabeth and the monarchy have become synonymous.
So when Charles becomes king, he’s going to be competing with the image of his mother.
The College of Arms presumably! And it looks like law is good degree - that’s what Garter Principal King of Arms and Clarenceux King of Arms studied.
Thanks for this. I’ve read both the Jill Patton Walsh books - liked Thrones, Dominations but A Presumption of Death not so much - but Viscount St George was alive at the end of the second book (although serving a an RAF pilot in the months before the Battle of Britain).
Yeah, I think this is the big issue. The actual approval of the monarchy in general is very connected to the approval of the current monarch; in general, Elizabeth is reasonably well liked. Charles already has a not-as-good reputation which likely will in turn become the reputation of the monarchy, and that reputation will certainly be compared to the past.
