It’s not as if these ‘royals’ emerged from the soil and are continually shaped by the wind. The queen was a character and Elizabeth was the ageing actor who filled that role. There are no real princes/princesses, we have just created them all. It’s a grand civic performance, the Saxe-Coburg- Windsor Show, entertainment for the masses. We came up with the idea a very long time ago and decided that it would be permanent. It’s a combination of pantomime, power, propaganda and nostalgia for domestic and international consumption. And it works; the English have always been good at telling a story and they also crave entertainment. The queen character held it all together of course and was/is the most popular cast member. Now that era has passed, the rest will struggle to retain the audience. It’s on the decline and the script writers and PR gurus will be frantically attempting to conjure and curate. The cost of this production is eye watering: guardsmen, horses, valets, bands, footmen, (RSPB mentions an official Swan Keeper!) and on and on. And the variety of different costumes, insignia, badges, medals, braid, bonnets, bearskins, berets and other nonsensical paraphernalia and trimmings is stupefying. And then throw in the sets: palaces, castles, country estates, gardens e.t.c. Us subjects (the audience) all, in some way, play our part, no matter how small, it’s woven deep into our psyche. Took me years to see through it all. Millions of others think completely differently, are devotees of the show and would consider my views heretical, but that’s fine, imagination is a powerful thing. You can cite tradition, heraldry and history all you like, but it’s merely lavish adulation of quite unexceptional humans, based entirely on their titles, fabled lineage and connections. Not sure it should be abolished mind, many people would obviously be lost without it, but it should be disentangled from the politics and functions of an elected parliament. Perhaps just privatise the whole lot, hand it over to Mackintosh or Lloyd-Webber to run. If people need periods of choreographed mourning and unnecessary military pomp to fill their lives, then let them pay for it out of their own pockets. If they were looking for hosts of the Sycophancy Olympics, Pyongyang would be a joint favourite.
