Are the English royal family the greatest scam ever played?

Is Spain better than Italy because they have a monarchy? Belgium better than France or Sweden better than Finland?

That is one flimsy thesis you got there

That's one that's trotted out quite a bit and tends to use selective examples of republics and monarchies and assumes that the fact they're constitutional monarchies is the primary driver of their stability, without providing any evidence at all.

The reality is that the countries they're looking at are in post-WWII Europe and whether they're republics or constitutional monarchies, tend to all share in a common vision of rights based democracy. The monarchy bit in the countries that retained it is usually not at all relevant to the structures of government or their politics.

You don't have to go back very far to find constitutional and other forms of monarchies in Europe involved in massive conflicts, including being most of the protagonists in WWI. If you want pick some nice examples, Imperial Japan was a constitutional monarchy... I suppose you could argue it was stable, but it was one of the most hostile forces in modern history and did huge damage to many of its neighbours.

if you take France, Ireland, Finland, Iceland, Switzerland and even post-WWII Germany, etc you can't really call any of those in any way unstable - many of them (including Ireland) are in the top ten most democratic countries in the world, and if you go to the older example of a large modern Republic, the United States, it's got whacky politics form time to time and plenty of flaws, but it's been ticking away since the late 1770s ...

I'm also unconvinced by the tourism argument. I mean, do people really go to the UK to see the royals or to see the palaces and sites and check out all the history and culture and so on that the UK has to offer? It's not like the 85+ million who visit France every year are put off by the fact there's no royal family either...

And I mean if you visit Spain does anyone (including the Spanish) even realise there's a king?!

I've also seen the arguments made from the perspective of NZ republicans about the fact that the Queen (or the new King) is a very remote character. They are technically the head of state for NZ, yet the reality of it is they're an ambassador and symbol of the United Kingdom. They occasionally visit, and it's pretty much like any visiting foreign dignitary, yet they're supposed to be the country's head of state? So they miss out on the opportunity to have a equivalent of a president who can act as their chief ambassador... I think it's probably even a looser connection when you get into some of the smaller states that people don't even realise the UK monarch is head of state in. Aussie and Canada are a bit more royalist I think, but I wonder will that fizzle a lot in the years ahead.

I mean, if you think of the Queen or Charles, you don't immediately go "oh yeah they represent Canada.." even though they're emblazoned on their coins and so on most people just see it as a technicality.

Churchills opining tended to be that of someone who saw the world through very deeply imperial pink glasses and who saw empire and monarchy as altruistic and benevolent somehow. His views on class and race were genuinely appalling, even if they may have been very much of their time and his background.

He said a few things during WWII that will be remembered, and turned into an impressive speechmaker during that period, but his views on a lot of things were just a snapshot of the views of the upper echelons of the British imperial establishment of that era and they liked their status quo, which probably meant keeping the oligarch of cousins i.e. the European royals in position.

It doesn't really add up. If you look at France, people walk through lavish former royal palaces like the Louvre, Versailles, Fountainebleau etc etc etc..

They're visited as pieces of archaeology almost - a look back at a bygone era. The fact there's no kings and queens in them isn't really relevant. If anything, it has made them far more accessible than their British counterparts.

On a much much smaller scale here in Ireland, we can wander Dublin Castle or Áras an Uachtaráin without any need for a viceroy being still in existence. The history's and the architecture is still there.