Ichabod's Kin
A place for politics, pop culture, and social issues

          Not a big fan of royalty. I take no hankering to kings and queens on thrones or in decks of cards.

          Let’s admit that when we left the Empire we didn’t entirely: Hollywood is our re-creation of royalty, with its unending Red Carpets—as is the world of athletics. In all, we pay obeisance to a lot of people.

          But we also let them go easily, when the next pretty face or the next G.O.A.T. comes along which, by the way, is our saving grace. We’re good at “moving on,” as the saying goes. The Brit’s “grace” is not a saving one. He or she is the next thing to a figment of imaginations, emperors with no clothes–and no real power,as in the bad old days, but ones on which the great impressionable population can project its fantasies.

          Royals more or less do nothing but sit on a pile of money, rear the worst dysfunctional families, play and go to parties. They also know how to put on a show: lift a finger and it’s to the tune of long-horns, parades, men dressed in fine but funny costumes—and the sound of cannon to drown out all who dare complain.

          The past queen outdid them all except for her namesake, in whose time all the world went on the move: to Rome, Canterbury, Jerusalem, et al, to look for bones and relics of the dearly departed saints. By the end of our Liz’s time we’re on the move, all right–apparently to hell and back, amid national and world disunity while peering into the chasm of god-knows-what.

          With her passing, the best we can say is: here we go again. Any and everyone who dislikes monarchies gets another dose of pomp and circumstance and maybe a tinge of guilt about being rough on all the grieving family. Then we’ll go through it again with Charles’ coronation, and who knows how long he may or may not live, or when he may just give up. Then William and his pretty little bride will have the hopes of all to be another young Charles and Diana but without all the drama.

          Sadly, I’ve mentioned Charles in passing and that won’t do–a man we first knew as young and dashing, and now an old fuddy-duddy, along the way having messed up his marriage to the people’s ab-fab favorite and is now with his dearest darling from the beginning—she who has no business being anything royal. Don’t expect Camilla to go hugging AIDS patients, the world’s hungry or hopscotching land mines. But the Buckingham press is already doing all it can to make her look presentable while she dines at the table that’ll never be empty. What’s really going to hurt, though, is that William and Harry, for the time being, literally have to bow to Camilla, oh, excuse me—the Queen Consort—trying all along to forget that it should be Diana, their own mum, instead.

          Charles actually thought about changing his name, given the checkered past of the earlier ones: Chaz I brought on the English Civil War and lost his head for it; and son C-II had a scandal-ridden reign in which he fathered more than a dozen illegitimates and took up sympathy for the wrong religion. This makes us ask why, along with all the other mistakes of our most-recent royalty, did they name our Charles that in the first place? But after he and his brain-trust mulled it over, they stuck with the moniker; hence, two mistakes over the same matter. This is going to be a pip of a reign.

As for the cornucopia by which the Royals barely survive, we also learn that Charles will not pay inheritance tax on his mum’s private estate: such a dun might put a harmful dent in that $750 million property. Our Bonnie Prince Charlie had already built his own empire whilst fumbling his youth away, but money breeds money and his own estate’s now worth a billion in its own right. The article heading that revealed this fact was headed, “King Charles Inherits Untold Riches, and Passes Off His Own Empire.” At first I thought the word “Passes” was a misspelling, but an outcry was unheard; it seems adoring Brits will care more which shoes the first family’s ladies will wear to the funeral and following coronation.

What Charles is truly blessed with is luck. After having been anything but a poster child for a New Royal Order—and whom his mum had no wish that he long wear the crown—he gets a fresh start at the top of the heap. All he has to do is emulate her as a “constant” that smiles, waves, and otherwise does nothing.

Meantime, we’ll all be subject to the big show, and the next and the next. Liz will always be the Queen of Hearts for all who care for that nonsense, and for the rest of us, our mantra will ever be, until this silly monarchy runs its course: “Here We Go Again.”)