A Royal has given birth

A Tyrant Named Miltiades! wrote: »

The Prince's wife has been delivered of a son, and the Brit media has lost its sh!t.

Watching the UK media, a Martian would be forgiven for believing that Christ has just been born to the world's richest welfare beneficiaries.

Is this bizarre carnival of Royal procreation proof-positive that we were right to object to 800 years of colonisation by such a strange nation?

Do you care about this story? Do you think it's all just celeb-mag trash? Or are you one of the people waving union flags and speculating on baby names (my money is on calling him Brexit)

I live in Britain and virtually noone I know gives a ****e. SOme didn't even know she was pregnant in the first place.

Anteayer wrote: »

There's a big difference between the media and the general public. There's definitely a hardcore of "royal watchers" though who are something like a cross between diehard fans and train spotters.

Most people I know in England are fairly cynical about the royals. It's far from absolute unwaivering respect. However the institution seems to keep stumbling on with largely totally unquestioned huge public funding.

They also probably know it's in their career interests to keep providing a soap opera to the tabloids. If the get too boring they might end up being reduced to the figure head level of the Belgian royals.

It's a bizarre institution when you think about it though in the context of what's simultaneously a modern democracy (as long as you don't look too hard at the House of Lords)

It is a bit bizarre but is really just a historical hangover. I'd imagine though if there was a referendum on becoming a republic it would lose. The impression I get is most people don't care too much about the Royals but wouldn't want to see the end of them at the same time. Might be different when this Queen dies though.

What royal? That women's a dirty commoner and an American to boot.;)

DanDan6592 wrote: »

It is a bit bizarre but is really just a historical hangover. I'd imagine though if there was a referendum on becoming a republic it would lose. The impression I get is most people don't care too much about the Royals but wouldn't want to see the end of them at the same time. Might be different when this Queen dies though.

I wouldn't think there's much likelihood of the UK (certianly not England anyway) replacing the monarchy with a president anytime soon. There's a lot of royalism and the monarchy and aristocracy still retains a lot of role in their political structures. I mean if you were going to scrap the monarchy, you'd need to scrap the hereditary Lords and radically reform Westminster and loads of other institutions with aristocratic hangovers. It would really take a huge shift in attitudes for that to change.

I could see it happening in an independent Scotland though, but the Scots aren't necessarily as wedded to the idea of republican values as they are independence from England. So you could still see a situation with an independent Scotland retaining the monarchy as a compromise.

There are in some ways almost two parallel Britains that coexist. An old fashioned quasi aristocracy and a modern, liberal and social democratic society.

However, I'd say there's a fairly strong possibility of some of the other countries where she's head of state moving on. I know in New Zealand for example, while there's a lot of nostalgic respect for the Queen, I don't think the same would apply to Charles and Camilla. There's also a concern that having an English head of state is a big loss of diplomatic representative opportunity. When you think about it, the Queen is supposed to representative of NZ, Canada, Australia and quite a few other countries that are entirely independent of the UK and for the most part her visits are pretty much like her visits to any other country where she's no connection.

The current Queen has carried out her role basically flawlessly (other than that glitch where she was very cold and aloof after Dianna's death). However, she's got this kind of iconic status and has been around in the role for pretty much the entire post war modern era.

I'd suspect that the "magic" will die with her as I can't really see the next generation being able to maintain that level of iconic poise. It's probably not even possible in this era of social media and rolling news.