Spare Me
The old English method of dealing with spare royal brothers
I have an instinctive soft spot in my heart for monarchies (or possibly it is in my head). Without going all Curtis Yarvin about it, I do think they are a reflection of the natural order of things in a way that democracies are not. In short, they can be “truer” than the myriad systems that have replaced them.
To be sure, a democratic republic is nice, if you can keep it (h/t Ben Franklin). And I want all the democracy I can get. Like everyone else, I am all for the democracy that benefits me. Living in a country with a surfeit of democracy-sort of-it is easy to take it all for granted. So we are all good small-D democrats here; but we may invest more in the concept than it can actually support.
Back in the day when we believed in God, Americans were particularly prone to claiming that our democracy was divinely inspired. And as such, we had a mission to take it to (inflict it on?) the rest of the earth (see John Winthrop, Woodrow Wilson, George W. Bush, etc.) This has proven to be a bit of self-serving mythologizing on our part. But like our English cousins with their Whig Interpretation of History, we discovered that we could jettison the worrisome structures of theology and proceed along nicely with a secular utopian cultus (see the Treaty of Versailles, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and…well, I’d better stop there.) Nothing going on here but the natural culmination of the progression of Progress in a progressive society. But, have we fooled ourselves into thinking that this is natural? And if it is natural, then maybe the end result is the opposite side of the Kandinsky than we imagined.
Doing so, we are ignoring several caveats, contra Progress.
The ancient Greeks, who played around with the concept, never considered it the Ideal.
They also knew that like all human constructs, it had a lifespan.
And accordingly, decay is just as inevitable as ascendency (see #2.)
This brings me back to monarchy, which is, even considering the ceremonial, feather-flufferies of today, a bit more primal and basic. The fact that the institution is a relic of the past is, in the way I look at things, one of its strongest attributes, the very reason it appeals to me. Except in the area of dental care, the Past is almost always better. But monarchies are not on the rebound. I’m afraid what we’re facing is a good bit rougher than that. And some American Orthodox Facebook converts will have to adjust to the reality that there will be no Romanov tsar in Russia’s future, though the non-hereditary ones they have had since 1917 will continue much as before. The best that can be hoped for is that those remaining do, in fact, remain. Which brings us to situation with the Prince of Montecito.
My alleged sympathy for monarchy has never been with the stuffed-shirt Windsors, or the Saxe-Coburg-Gothas or whatever they called themselves before that. I prefer the mad, the bad, the good, and the vamps; romanticized and quirky rulers along the Ruritanian model. There was mad King Ludwig of Bavaria, and bad King Bomba of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and The Leopard. You had Good King Boris stopping the trains so he could board and take over the controls, while later obfuscating to the Nazis and hiding the Jews. Then there was Queen Marie of Romania who knew a thing or two about striking a dramatic pose, whether in her green and gold Celtic-Nordic-Byzantine boudoir, as a nurse on the front lines, or as a canny player at the Treaty of Versailles. Finally, there were the insanely inbred Braganzas and Spanish Habsburgs, carrying-on as if they were modern-day Ptolemies.
So this may explain my lack of enthusiasm for the deadly dull British royal family up to this point. I think I started losing interest over 300 years ago when Parliament opted to ditch the foolish but colorful Stewarts for their nearest Protestant kin and go German. I mean, since when has being foolish ever been an impediment to being crowned king? They made a poor bargain, I think, in their insistence of having dullards over Papists. Then in the 19th-century, Victoria just doubled-down on the whole Teutonic thing, with generation after generations primarily devoted to protecting the family firm.
Of course, the late Queen was the best of the line in a long, long time. I respected and admired her class and dignity, changing when she had to do so, but never seeming to. I have always sympathized with Charles, understanding that he was given an almost impossible lifetime role—the heir-in-waiting of a nonagenarian mother. An introspective and quirky intellectual, marred only by the extravagances that were his birthright, he would have made a great king of Ruritania, or Grand Fenwick. Unfortunately, he is stuck with Great Britain. But now my lukewarm sympathies have blossomed into something more, all brought on by the unnecessary and narcissistic tactics of Charles’ youngest, Mr. Meghan.
I have paid no mind to the roll-out of Spare. My approach was the same as the rest of his family, to ignore the hub-bub as much as is possible. I did take time to watch South Park’s take on things. I find the title of their spoof—”Waagh!”—to be a spot-on more appropriate title. I also read Andrew O’Hagan’s recent review in London Review of Books. The writer is, in many ways, sympathetic,, describing the book as “a cartoon strip of saucy entertainments and shouty jeremiads masquerading as a critique of the establishment,” but concluding, “it simply couldn’t be more riveting.”
He credits the Prince with shining a light on the dysfunction of the royal family. Well yes, there is that, I suppose. But why should we expect differently, as most of our own families fall into that same category as well? We just don’t have to deal with what happens when a thousand years of history and several billion dollars are added to the mix. I mean, the lad could have to work through his loss and family dysfunction in a Slough council house, or a trailer park in the Mississippi Delta.
O’Hagan is simply amazed at such a book. He writes:
There has never been a book like this, with its parcelling out of epic, one-sided truths. Most royal biographies…were made airless by vapid writing, spurious genuflections before royal protocol, cringing vanity masquerading as public service. Harry does much less of that. He goes in for a Las Vegas-style treatment of the royal problem, with multiple sets, many costumes and guest appearances by everybody from Carl Jung to Elton John. There are overshared war experiences, bouts of snotty complaining, daddy issues, mummy issues, brother issues, bedroom-size issues, whose-palace-is-it-anyway issues, arguments about tiaras, Kate Middleton issues and todger-nearly-dropping-off-in-Harley-Street issues. Harry notarises his pees, his poos, his sweat and his bonks…Harry wants to love. He wants purpose. He’s nobody’s ‘spare’. He can never quite say it out loud,,,but he’s pissed about being number two, and he takes all the unfairness and makes of it a Molotov cocktail…You can’t help agreeing with him half the time; the other half is spent worrying how he’ll ever make it through his life, as he mistakes his need to end his pain with the need for a global reset.
At one point, O’Hagan informs us that the Prince has never read a book in his life. His ghostwriter uses the famous Faulkner quote, The past is never dead. It’s not even past, as the books epigraph. The young Prince asks, “Who the fook is Faulkner? And how is he related to us Windsors?” At another point, the Prince notes that he cares “less than nothing” for his ancestors. He has always seemed to project a likable enough image, in a laddish sort of way. And being a thinker of deep thoughts has never been in the job description of the British monarchy—his dad being rather an exception. But these statements betray a density heretofore unimagined. Many people have never read a book, though most probably do not wear it as a badge of honor. And considering his great privilege—a privilege based entirely on his ancestors and not one whit upon what he has done, and a privilege that made it possible to meet and wed someone like Ms. Markle—his statement about his ancestors is breath-taking in its dull-witted lack of self-awareness.
And so, King Charles’ approach is correct. The ginger Prince is “open” to talking with the family, “to help them understand their unconscious bias.” We all know what this type of “dialogue” means coming from one who feels victimized. It means that you talk and talk until you agree with them. It is pointless to disagree with those who carefully nurture their sense of victimhood, the perpetually aggrieved, whether it be your crazy cousin or the former President. I would think that there could be no grievance great enough to prevent a son’s attendance at his father’s coronation. But for the Montecitos to do this, they would have to contend with the attention direction at the Coronation, and not necessarily on them.
So yes, move them along and out of Frogmore to their exile in grim Montecito. Move your ungrateful no-account brother in there, instead. I understand that he is deeply chagrined at the grinding poverty he will face having to live in Frogmore Cottage. He should feel lucky if he is still on the King’s Christmas card list.
Royal discontents have done just fine outside the British Isles. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor had their pied-a-terre in Bois du Boulogne. Princess M had Mustique. And now the Harry and Meghan have Montecito. The only reason anyone gives him the least notice is because of his accident of birth–the particular family in which he was born into. It is not without irony, that he will now spend the rest of his life, talking, promoting, explaining and (ghost)writing his justifications for discrediting that very family which made the life he leads possible. In the old days, the banality of royal lives was largely hidden from view behind the mystery of the monarchy. No longer.
Royal spares have often presented problems. Edward IV’s younger brother, the Duke of Clarence, ended up being drowned in a vat of malmsby wine. But Harry wouldn’t know about that sort of thing.