Of Queens and Kings

I’m finally watching the Netflix series The Crown. Thank you, public library, for lending the episodes on disk. Queen Elizabeth II’s story is filled with drama, romance, political intrigue, family dynamics, and of course history. Much of the history I never knew, some I remember from news reports, and some I’ve written about (see “Great Stink and Killer Fog”).

Monarchy was unremarkable to my Canadian-born parents. My feminist mother, sister to my Aunt Margaret and bearing the middle name Elizabeth, took pleasure in seeing a young woman on the English throne. My father sang to the tune of the Farmer in the Dell, "The twenty-fourth of May’s the Queen’s birthday. It you don’t give us a holiday, we’ll all run away!” The queen in the ditty was Victoria.

Americans are ambivalent about royalty. The Declaration of Independence is largely a detailed list of King George III’s “repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.” The U.S. Constitution prohibits titles of nobility. In spite of this, or perhaps because of it, Americans’ fascination with the royal family seems to have no limits.
 
On this side of the Atlantic, “No Kings” rallies this past year hark back to the injuries and usurpations of a British king 250 years ago. The signs at supportive rallies in Europe read “No Tyrants!” instead. European nations with constitutional monarchs are now more democratic and less tyrannical than some without a king or queen. Watching The Crown suggests that modern British monarchs may be more deserving of sympathy than of protest.

​Image: Buckingham Palace gates, photo by Mark Stuckey on Unsplash.