Nae king! Nae quin! Nae laird! Nae master! We willna' be fooled again!"posted by edgeways at 8:47 PM on July 26, 2011 [15 favorites]
The mathematical study of genealogy indicates that everyone in the world is descended from Nefertiti and Confucius, and everyone of European ancestry is descended from Muhammad and Charlemagne.Indeed, most people of English ancestry are probably related to William the Conqueror. Everyone is related to royalty. It's only special if it was in the past .. 200 or 300 years or so, beyond that the math just makes it normal.
Some societies have certainly been more warlike than others, probably from necessity. ... When fighting is necessary for physical survival those who are good at it will predominate. If they pass on their genes to their offspring they will found ruling dynasties. They and their companions will become warrior elites whose interests and attitudes determine the nature of their culture, including religion, literature and the arts. They create a social and political order, which initially may have no justification but its own strength, but for which utility, prescription and, above all, religious sanction ultimately provide legitimacy. Legitimized order produces domestic peace, and also legitimizes the conduct of war. Success in war further reinforces legitimacy. Failure results either in subjection and the imposition of an exogenous elite whose rule in turn becomes legitimized by prescription, or the eventual emergence of another indigenous elite more successful than its predecessors.posted by russilwvong at 12:57 PM on July 27, 2011 [1 favorite]
“A princely marriage,” the great Victorian constitutional thinker Walter Bagehot wrote, “is the brilliant edition of a universal fact, and as such, it rivets mankind. … Just so, a royal family sweetens politics by the seasonable addition of nice and pretty events.” He was speaking of just the sort of pomp we will witness on Friday.posted by russilwvong at 5:06 PM on July 27, 2011
Indeed, he was explaining its precise political purpose, which he argued helps to justify a constitutional monarchy, despite its flaws: By creating an air of mystery and remove, it can keep politicians and public focused on the state and its laws, not hierarchy and power, unlike a system with an elected or Parliament-appointed head of state. A constitutional monarchy “has a comprehensible element” – the king or queen – “for the vacant many, as well as complex laws and notions for the inquiring few.”
For this division between the “efficient” state and the “dignified” Crown to work as a constitutional whole, Bagehot added, the monarch must be a person capable of maintaining that mystique – else the entire system cannot work: “He should not be brought too closely to real measurement,” he wrote. “He should be aloof and solitary.”
The Crown, in fact, “seems to order, but it never seems to struggle. It is commonly hidden like a mystery, and sometimes paraded like a pageant, but in neither case is it contentious. The nation is divided into parties, but the Crown is of no party. Its apparent separation from business is that which removes it from both enmities and from desecration, which preserves its mystery, which enables it to combine the affection of conflicting parties – to be a visible symbol of unity to those still so imperfectly educated as to need a symbol.”
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posted by Joey Michaels at 8:15 PM on July 26, 2011 [26 favorites]