[HN Gopher] Among Europe's Ex-Royals
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Among Europe's Ex-Royals
Author : lordylord
Score : 50 points
Date : 2022-04-26 02:02 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theatlantic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theatlantic.com)
| madaxe_again wrote:
| Small correction to the article - Alexander Karadordevic is not
| crown Prince of Serbia, but of Yugoslavia. I went to school with
| his sons, we were in the same house, same year - they went by
| "Prince" rather than Karadordevic - quite a few kids had
| fictitious surnames to avoid attention. They were regular and
| likeable dudes, liked skating, cars, hip-hop, bad 80's movies,
| games. Nobody cared that they were princes, or treated them
| differently, as it wasn't all that unusual at the school, and
| typically, the higher your rank, the less airs and graces and
| nobbery you bothered with.
|
| Me, I'm a baronet - not that I ever use the title, or even tell
| anyone (these days - as a kid rubbing shoulders with outranking
| aristos it mattered far more to me) - I've grown to think the
| whole thing bloody stupid, as my politics careened wildly off to
| the left after a tumultuous start to adulthood - and as I
| realised I really didn't want all the perceived responsibilities
| and expectations of an aristo - there are only so many balls and
| parties and royal enclosures you can go to before you're sick to
| the eye teeth of it.
|
| I guess the main thing that I saw among those heirs who were
| expected to actually take a throne, or were the primogeniture of
| a non-ruling family, was an overwhelming sense of obligation, the
| anticipation of a life run on rails, the desire to live
| absolutely wild here and now because later is a gilded cage. It's
| hard to be an isolated and aloof aristo in the modern world -
| nobody is raised in court any more.
|
| I can tell you that the millennial heirs of several European
| thrones are seriously sitting on the fence over whether they'll
| take the baton - one, I know, definitely won't - another probably
| will, but intends to fundamentally reshape the monarchy.
| Biologist123 wrote:
| Thanks for this post. Not standard fare for HN. May I ask - do
| you ever laugh at the weirdness of it all? That hundreds or
| even thousands of years ago, a bunch of cut throats and thugs
| started to give themselves cute names, and - cut to the present
| - all of the United Kingdom bows and scrapes in deference to
| their descendants who still sport those made up titles? From
| the inside - which more or less is your position as a baronet -
| does this feel more or less peculiar? Do you ever just think,
| WTF? How did we get to this?
| madaxe_again wrote:
| >> do you ever laugh at the weirdness of it all?
|
| Incessantly, to the extent that I find it hard to believe in
| society in any meaningful fashion, as it's all just reified
| concepts stacked atop one another. It isn't such a leap from
| "why aristocrats?" to "why states? Why employment? Why three
| meals a day?".
|
| The best answer I've been able to come up with is
| security/fear. At almost every scale from PNG tribes to
| federalised blocs of nations, people rally around the strong
| man, the protector who exacts a fee, and they follow the
| rules and expectations set by them. These days, aristos are
| generally superseded by democratic governance, but the
| underlying principle, the Leviathan, remains the same.
| Biologist123 wrote:
| If anything, it gives you a close-up view of man's ability
| to enchant others with stories and narrative; and for you
| to exit the fiction where you want to. Although nihilism is
| a risk as you point out, the upside might be the
| realisation that meaning can be constructed.
|
| One reason I don't expect millennial princes to exit the
| monarchy, in the UK at least, is that they won't be allowed
| to. Because their presence is a cornerstone to the entire
| fiction that is British social and economic culture, in
| which many have valuable vested interests.
| Biologist123 wrote:
| One last question: do you think your level of awareness is
| commonplace? I appreciate a baronet is not on a par with a
| Norman robber baron, but do you ever encounter a sense of
| shame amongst your peers (sorry for the pun).
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| As a bona-fide commoner, I'll say that it's been at least a
| couple of centuries since European royalty has been more than
| at-will employees of the republics ruling the land.
|
| The English went first, poor Charles I was terminated with
| extreme prejudice when he got ideas.
|
| 'Tis a pity, us commoners could use a good monarch to keep the
| blood-sucking senators in line.
| ggm wrote:
| The second HN article in a week in which I can refer to John
| Steinbeck's work "The Short Reign Of Pippin IV" (1957)
| kingcharles wrote:
| https://archive.ph/20220418100835/https://www.theatlantic.co...
| goblinux wrote:
| highly recommend Noble Blood podcast if you like this kind of
| stuff. totally changed my views on history. the narrator does a
| great job of showing that people are, and always have been,
| people - noble or not. part of the reason so many nobles died in
| the past is that people then didn't know what to do with ex-
| nobles either
|
| https://noblebloodtales.com/
| gwern wrote:
| "what do the ex-royals have to offer Europe?" tldr: nothing, for
| the most part, with the exception of a long profile in the middle
| of the Albanian pretender, which discusses his argument that
| Albania is still so impoverished and shattered by the legacy of
| Communism that some sort of constitutional monarchy would help
| repair it and enable it to recover and reach its potential. That
| part is interesting.
| dc-programmer wrote:
| Friends don't let friends get into neo-monarchism
| verisimi wrote:
| > What do the descendants of dethroned monarchs have to offer the
| continent in the 21st century?
|
| They had nothing to offer in previous centuries... why should
| they have anything to offer in the 21st?
| motohagiography wrote:
| The royal warrant system in the UK was very successful at
| promoting national business and culture, and I remember looking
| into tracking down some of these other european royals to stand
| up something similar for craftsmanship. The other use is they
| have convening power, where if they call, people answer, and
| toward peace and creating value, that's a huge benefit. That
| convening role has been taken up somewhat by celebrities, but
| celebrities don't offer dignity to people the same way nobility
| can. I can't defend the behaviour of any of them, but there is
| value in the roles they occupy.
|
| The point of nobility is to be able to take risks for
| principles, and having royals around provides a basis for that.
| Another is what can only be described as our modern
| managerialists seem to offer everything to people _except_
| dignity, and royals can wield that. I 'm all for republics when
| you can keep them, but I think setting royals up as symbols
| just to militate against is a bit coarse. They can provide a
| source of stability and continuity, legitimate convening power,
| and dignity for people who have earned recognition. Having
| nobles and royals around is more useful than I think most
| people realize.
| usrn wrote:
| I feel like people are about to learn a "Chesterton's fence"
| lesson on national scales.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Comments like this irritate me to no end. The OP hand waves
| away centuries of good, bad and indifferent history, in many
| countries, with a single pithy comment, and people act like
| that's insightful.
|
| It's barely even worth acknowledging. Don't encourage sassy
| reddit one liners.
| verisimi wrote:
| I, the OP, understand why you could be irritated.
|
| In fairness to myself, as someone who holds to individual
| sovereign autonomy as the only morally acceptable governing
| principle, I was being consistent!
|
| I don't accept the assumed right of government or of kings to
| rule over another, or me specifically. Our deferral to people
| we are taught are our betters, whose pronouncements we
| unreflectively accept as akin to the word of God, has always
| been the problem. The solution is individual autonomy.
|
| You may disagree with my view of course, but my one line
| 'sassy' comment was earnest and in keeping with my position!
| Barrin92 wrote:
| You may want to remember the moment when the King of Spain
| successfully preserved the democracy of the country by shutting
| down a military coup just 40 years ago.
|
| _" [...]the King of Spain appeared live on television, wearing
| the uniform of the Captain General of the Armed Forces (Capitan
| General de los Ejercitos), the highest Spanish military rank,
| to oppose the coup and its instigators, defend the Spanish
| Constitution and disavow the authority of Milans del Bosch. He
| declared: I address the Spanish people with brevity and
| concision: In the face of these exceptional circumstances, I
| ask for your serenity and trust, and I hereby inform you that I
| have given the Captains General of the Army, the Navy, and the
| Air Force the following order: Given the events taking place in
| the Palace of Congress, and to avoid any possible confusion, I
| hereby confirm that I have ordered the Civil Authorities and
| the Joint Chiefs of Staff to take any and all necessary
| measures to uphold constitutional order within the limits of
| the law. Should any measure of a military nature need to be
| taken, it must be approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The
| Crown, symbol of the permanence and unity of the nation, will
| not tolerate, in any degree whatsoever, the actions or behavior
| of anyone attempting, through use of force, to interrupt the
| democratic process of the Constitution, which the Spanish
| People approved by vote in referendum. From that moment on, the
| coup was understood to be a failure[...]"_
|
| Monarchs still have the same function they always had. The
| represent a direct connection between the nation and the
| people, and in times of crisis they can stabilize the nation or
| put an end to political brinkmanship, even if they only hold
| symbolic functions.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Spanish_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...
| [deleted]
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Also note the King of Denmark's role in opposing the Nazi
| occupation.
|
| And even in England, in _A Man Called Intrepid_ , William
| Stevenson notes that it was important that the secret
| services swore their oath to the king rather than the prime
| minister. That way, if Germany had conquered England and
| replaced the prime minister, the secret services could have
| continued fighting without feeling like traitors.
| hulitu wrote:
| And before that ? When Franco was in power ? What did he do ?
| bonzini wrote:
| He met secretly with exiled politicians and planned their
| return.
| evgen wrote:
| The failed coup attempt was in 1981. Franco died in '75. Is
| history really this hard for some people?
| ravi-delia wrote:
| Clearly the person you responded to wasn't asking what
| Franco did for that particular coup. Having ceded that
| one king did one useful thing, they pointed out that
| another was...perhaps less helpful.
| bonzini wrote:
| Spain had been a republic for almost 10 years when Franco
| took power. For most of the years when Franco was in
| power the king had no real powers even though Spain was
| again formerly a monarchy. Once Juan Carlos was named
| heir to the throne, he publicly supported Franco while
| secretly planning the return of exiled politicians and
| resumption of democracy. He was pretty badass overall.
|
| Maybe you're confusing it with Italy?
| ravi-delia wrote:
| I was using "king" as a catch-all term for rule by a
| single individual. Probably lazy in a discussion about
| actual aristocracy, but in my defense any sole person in
| charge of a nation could claim to represent a direct
| connection between the nation and the people.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| If there's anything HN threads that deal with history
| tells us it's - yes, yes it is. Nevertheless people will
| weigh in with their incredibly strong opinions they have
| based off of (I presume) hollywood movies. Maybe a lot of
| people just got finished watching that one where Leonardo
| di Caprio was Louis XIV, or maybe it was Braveheart.
| jacquesm wrote:
| > Is history really this hard for some people?
|
| No harder than civility is for others.
| dathinab wrote:
| They also can to the opposite, i.e. actively destabilizing
| the country, preventing needed reforms, call for coups etc.
| In difference to politicians you can't as simply remove their
| authority on misbehavior because royalty is not something you
| are elected to.
|
| The fundamental flaw of monarchies is that they raise or fall
| with the character and competency of a single person (or very
| small group). (This also applies to system where a single
| person hold a lot of power mostly unchecked, like e.g. a
| democratically elected president with way to much power).
|
| Anyway the role they still play differs hugely depending on
| country. In some it's close to none, in some they still have
| a bit of old money in some they still have some political
| influence.
|
| In the end Spain 1981 was lucky, lucky in that the King
| respected the choice of the people which had removed most of
| his families power from them. If the King instead would have
| wanted to reestablish royal power things probably would have
| ended pretty bad.
| nahuel0x wrote:
| The same monarchy who supported the Franco fascist coup
| against the Republic, starting the civil war? Yes, very
| democratic.
| gumby wrote:
| > They had nothing to offer in previous centuries...
|
| Are you kidding? They had the tremendous value of "do what I
| say or I will draw this very long knife and push it into you."
|
| They literally offered the gift of life.
| speeder wrote:
| I am from Brazil...
|
| The monarchs here been very useful:
|
| 1. Pedro I declared our independence, and later helped Portugal
| with some crap and became known there as Pedro the Liberator.
|
| 2. Pedro II believed in technology, half of all railways in
| Brazil was built during his reign, he installed the second
| telephone in the world in Brazil (the first was obviously,
| Graham Bell`s one), built a research centre in the same place
| that produced awesome results (it is not heavily celebrated as
| launching rockets but most of the food production from Brazil,
| including exported things, are stuff developed by them at some
| point) and heavily defended that the education level should
| rise as whole. Also he, ironically, strengthened a lot
| Brazillian democracy, he himself believed monarchy to be
| useless and left basically voluntarily.
|
| Brazil immediately after the coup derailed, the first republic
| was basically a crappy military dictatorship disguised as
| republic, it ended with another guy stealing the "throne" and
| becoming dictator himself, then a period of actual republic
| voting but with lots of instability and flirting with both
| fascists and communists, then another dictatorship, and now we
| have a republic where there were more failed to finish the rule
| than successes (1 president died, before taking power even, 2
| were deposed, and only 2 actually got elected and finished
| their time in power)
|
| The reason monarhy works, in principle, is because the monarch
| has to think long term, he can't fuck up the country or his
| heirs will be screwed. Of course there are always someone that
| go off rails but this apply to any system of government.
|
| The advantage of democracy, in theory, is that there is less
| violence to choose who is the next ruler... That said our
| current president was stabbed during elections, a former
| president was in prison for a while, and politicians here have
| a knack of having very weird deaths in inopportune moments...
|
| EDIT: I realized I should explain why Pedro I became Pedro the
| Liberator: Portugal was basically conquered by someone wanting
| to return Portugal to absolute rule, with the monarch having
| all the power. Pedro I despite starting with a heavy disvantage
| managed to free Portugal from the absolutists and put in power
| a Liberal government.
| diegoholiveira wrote:
| > The advantage of democracy, in theory, is that there is
| less violence to choose who is the next ruler... That said
| our current president was stabbed during elections, a former
| president was in prison for a while, and politicians here
| have a knack of having very weird deaths in inopportune
| moments...
|
| I think you wanna say "the advantage of a republic" because a
| monarchy doesn't mean lack of democracy. Many europeans
| countries are a monarchy and a democracy.
|
| Monarchy and Republic are one thing. Democracy and
| Dictatorship is another thing.
|
| Btw, great explanation about Dom Pedro II, many scholars call
| him "the magnanimous" and one of the best imperator of the
| modern times.
| dathinab wrote:
| They are not really monarchies, they are democracies with a
| small amount of monarchic elements.
|
| Monarchy in my understanding implies the rule of the
| monarch.
|
| The Monarchs in most EU countries do not rule, through some
| have some restricted political influence.
|
| I think the UK might be an exception, where as far as I
| remember the royalty still theoretically holds pretty much
| all the power just politely decide to pretend they don't
| know they still rule. But that might be a misconception of
| mine.
| diegoholiveira wrote:
| > They are not really monarchies, they are democracies
| with a small amount of monarchic elements.
|
| The king is the head of state, so how this is not a
| monarchy?
|
| > Monarchy in my understanding implies the rule of the
| monarch.
|
| There are two types of monarchies:
|
| - constitucional, like belgium, netherlands, norway and
| japan
|
| - absolute: saudi arabia and the vatican city.
| solveit wrote:
| > I think the UK might be an exception, where as far as I
| remember the royalty still theoretically holds pretty
| much all the power just politely decide to pretend they
| don't know they still rule.
|
| I would say that it is the rest of the country politely
| pretending that the Queen actually holds the enormous
| power she is legally entitled to. It is the law that is a
| polite fiction.
| tsupiroti wrote:
| The someone was Pedro's brother Miguel. After losing the war,
| he was banished and his descendents removed from the
| succession line, but they now claim to be heirs to the throne
| of Portugal (which nobody really cares about).
|
| This all happened after the royal family escaped the French
| invasions to Brazil and Rio de Janeiro became the capital of
| Portugal. The story of Pedro, the independence of Brazil and
| the Portuguese liberal wars is really interesting.
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| Make that hugely amusing. The absolutist king, Miguel, had
| the common people's support. The liberals were basically a
| bourgeois minority.
|
| It took a foreign invasion - Pedro travelled around in
| English ships, and his troops had a mercenary backbone - to
| "liberate" Portugal.
|
| The more it changes, the more it's the same.
| dc-programmer wrote:
| I don't know if they offered nothing. But European monarchism
| is a government structure situated in the past. It arose out of
| the material conditions and culture of a certain place and
| time, that no longer exist. Further, it's ideological
| justification, the Mandate of Heaven, would be strongly
| contested by contemporary people.
|
| So I don't think it's rational to transpose the historical
| benefits or flaws (if it's even possible to disentangle the
| causal relationship between government structure and societal
| outcomes) into the political discourse and assume they would
| remain the same. One salient massive societal change has been
| the de-mystification of the aristocracy due to increased
| transparency. Instead of reverence, commoners view these people
| with contempt or even pity.
|
| Speaking generally, I think way too much emphasis is being
| placed on the importance of government structure on outcomes. I
| understand why programmer types would be drawn to this
| analysis. But there are more salient dimensions: societal
| trust, peoples sense of stake in outcomes, the integrity of
| institutions, and material conditions.
| mongol wrote:
| Started yesterday to read Churchill's "The Gathering Storm",
| where he describes the follies of the victors after the first
| world war:
|
| "Wise policy would have crowned and fortified the Weimar
| Republic with a constitutional sovereign in the form of an
| infant grandson of the Kaiser, under a Council of Regency.
| Instead a gaping void was opened in the national life of the
| German people. All the strong elements, military and feudal,
| which might have rallied to a constitutional monarchy and for
| its sake respected and sustained the new democratic and
| Parliamentary processes were for the time unhinged."
|
| I will not quote further but in essence he speculates that in a
| still young Germany, a monarch could have provided the
| stability that it came to lack, and which in time lead to the
| fall of its young democracy. A monarch may not be the right
| answer always, but sometimes it may very well be.
| yywwbbn wrote:
| Having a king didn't help Italy too much. However Churchill
| probably had a point conservatives and monarchists weren't
| really ever wholeheartedly committed to the survival of the
| Weimar republic. They might not had been as keen to undermine
| at every opportunity had it been ruled by a monarch. Then
| again , the nazis might just have turned the emperor into an
| impotent figurehead (as happened in Japan and Italy).
| danans wrote:
| > Then again , the nazis might just have turned the emperor
| into an impotent figurehead (as happened in Japan and
| Italy).
|
| I bet that is exactly would have happened. The reality is
| that the advance of science and technology and general
| literacy was quickly eroding the traditional notion of the
| monarch having the consent of God or heaven.
|
| By the turn of the 20th century this was almost complete,
| and largely irreversible. From that point on, the only
| value left in the monarch in industrialized societies was
| as a symbol of a national ethnic identity for societies
| that defined themselves in those terms.
|
| Today, only the most extreme religious movements around the
| world see a return to monarchical society as a goal. Even
| the neo-fascists would prefer a dictator drawn from their
| ilk, not a king.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| There is an observation, though, that most European
| monarchies that turned into republics or dictatorships in
| the 20th century did so after losing a major war.
|
| Monarchist countries like the Netherlands, Belgium,
| Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the UK ... that either stayed
| out of the war mess or ended up on the winning side were
| more likely to keep their monarchy.
|
| Prior to the military conflagrations that started in
| 1914, vast majority of Europeans lived in monarchies,
| even though the democratization and personal emancipation
| process was well underway. The only republican countries
| in Europe at the outbreak of WWI were France, Switzerland
| and (very recently) Portugal. Well, and San Marino, yes.
| danans wrote:
| > Monarchist countries like the Netherlands, Belgium,
| Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the UK ... that either stayed
| out of the war mess or ended up on the winning side were
| more likely to keep their monarchy.
|
| If I'm not mistaken, those are also countries that had
| already significantly diminished the actual power of
| their monarchs prior to WWI. The UK in particular
| arguably started that process centuries earlier with
| Magna Carta. On the other hand, places where the monarch
| retained the most power, like Russia, saw their monarchs
| assassinated pretty early in the industrial period.
| bell-cot wrote:
| In a world where one can be "famous for being famous", where
| pretenders to titles and thrones can spend half a century
| pursuing Diplomacy as a semi-professional hobby, and where
| high-ranking government officials are often out of office
| within a few years, well-prepared pretenders can occasionally
| prove quite useful.
|
| And when they're not needed - it's not like they're being
| _paid_ anything, to keep waiting in the wings.
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