She wasn't doing it from the kindness of her heart. This was her job, she was obscenely rich off of taxpayer money and she could retire any second she wanted to. You make it sound like she was sentenced to sign paperwork for her entire life, when the reality is she consciously chose to do so every day and in exchange she and her family was granted an immense wealth. It's not even remotely something that would warrant complaint. I'm not saying this to be snarky, just pointing out that although maybe parts of her job was boring, stressful, and unfulfilling, this is what she signed up for. And her "compensation" was unimaginable amount of money and power in the form of interpersonal relations.
> she consciously chose to do so every day and in exchange she and her family was granted an immense wealth
This! Saying that wealth and status is a burden for XYZ always elicits a "but they can give it all up in a singe day if they want to" response from me.
Plenty of monarchs have done just that including her very own uncle.
In the Top10 in every ranking with regards to real estate asset management.
Also all the planes and trains and cars. Top notch brand of each for the last 70 years were provided by the State.
If you can quit a job but you choose not to do so, in what sense did you not "sign up for it"? Her own uncle Edward VIII abdicated so he can marry Wallis Simpson without controversy. This has nothing to with anti-monarchism, I'm just pointing out that she was the queen only through her own free will.
She could have retired 40 years ago and never worked another day in her life if she’d wanted to. Charles would still have been King and her family would have been no worse off.
She was rich because she was part of the royal family; it's not the case that she was part of the royal family and then independent of that had private wealth. There was never a possibility of her being poor as long as she was the queen.
That ‘private’ wealth was acquired because she was head of state
>she became Queen as a result of birth.
It is true that failing to live up to her responsibility was a path she could have chosen. She did not, and that is greatly to her credit. Choosing not to abandon your responsibility is a far cry from "signing up for it."
They are not popular concepts these days, but the ideas you're grasping for are duty and service. She did her duty and she served her people.
Also, the Royal Family is not in receipt of taxpayer money. The Sovereign Grant is funded from income generated by the Crown Estate.
I think it's totally fair to feel that they have a life of immense luxury and privilege off of wealth that belongs to the people, while so many people in this country are wondering if they'll have heating this winter.
That's true, back then she'd have to move to the Bahamas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallis_Simpson#Second_World_Wa...
I can’t begin to imagine how many times she must have had to bite her tongue over the last 73 years.
There seems to be a reflexive, emotional and partly irrational hatred of the UK monarchy spending heavily and having assets and money, along with certain public benefits (which by the way are carefully circumscribed) by people who barely bat an eye at the fact that the absolute largest sources of resource and tax spending on a vast range of immensely expensive but often wasteful and even pointless things are perfectly modern government institutions that have nothing to do with monarchs. It's an absurd sort of blindness.
What the UK government spent on the idiocy of the Iraq War alone far exceeds all public funds given to the Monarchy in decades, but hey, let's complain about Elizabeth and the castles that have been in her family for centuries.
I found your point valid. Where other al say she was had no choice and did well under circumstances. I rather saw her end the monarchy all together, or at least step out of it herself.
Tourists would still want to see Buckingham Palace and visit the royal gallery even without a sitting royal family.
She didn't, Louis XIV is still up there.
Which was a giant diplomatic incident. It wasn't without consequence.
I'm not sure if it is in any way clearly defined what should happen to the Estate should Britain choose to become a Republic, but I suppose the actual result would be that it would be taken over completely by the government.
But _formally_ it is still considered property of the Monarch.
If I were moderating myself I would now point out that the burden is on the commenter to disambiguate intent: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so....
I couldn't care less which side you guys are on re monarchs! If you want to make thoughtful critique, go for it. Just remember that the bar for that is rather high when it comes to a topic so filled with bombast as this one.
The idea that we'd be trying to preserve the royalist status quo and the elegance of railway travel is just so silly that I can't believe I have to say that. Clearly it was my mistake, though—that was no splash-free dive.
It's generally understood by constitutional scholars that the Crown is essentially governmental rather than private and the Crown Estate would go with the government rather than the royal family if the assets were split up on the creation of a republic.
The Queen also had extensive private wealth, including Balmoral Castle which (unlike the royal places) was hers personally rather than as monarch. IIRC it was bought privately by either Victoria or Albert rather than via the Crown Estate. This mattered after the abdication of Edward VIII, where the property of the Crown passed to George VI as the new king, but the private possessions of Edward stayed with him. I think Balmoral and Sandringham had to be bought off him so they would stay as royal residences. Presumably most of that private wealth will be bequeathed to Charles, though we won't find out: the Queen's will is, uniquely, private by statute.
It's so strange that this even needs to be said out loud. It's not edgy to say that someone born into her position has benefitted from it. For a place that claims to be a meritocracy, the UK has some strangely dissonant beliefs.
Basically he never wanted to be King, and seemed totally unsuitable for it anyway.
I've never heard of one.
Technically, I can take drastic action to negate things I received as an accident of birth if I don't mind getting flak for doing it, but it makes no sense at all to claim that on that basis my parents, physical appearance or manhood were all stuff I signed up for of my own free will.
I would like to choose the duty of being fabulously wealthy and literally immune to criminal or civil prosecution, too.
His actions among others weakened British image in the world. He was also a nazi sympatizer.
> ultimately taken from the people and maintained via favourable tax laws
Taken from the people and maintained via favorable tax laws. UK inheritance tax is 40% (over the threshold, which is so low as to be meaningless next to the royal estate). With 5 royal deaths since Victoria, Charles III would have less than 8% of what he actually does if that 40% were taken each time (which is obviously vastly oversimplifying to make a point).
I recall (possibly faulty memory) from a documentary I watched once, that the bureaucracy stopped providing him with certain daily government briefing documents out of fears for national security.
In our current world wealth and royalty is preserved by free will and is nothing comparable to your manhood (which you can also give up if you want to, people do)
Sure, I wouldn't necessarily be up for a lifestyle change involving playing Survivor with consonant-loving maniacs I wasn't actually related to and have never heard of before! However the Queen's situation is the exact opposite: she had a life built around being heir to the throne and whilst it was technically possible to give the middle finger to everyone in her life instead of fulfilling the role she'd been assigned at birth, that's a bit different from implying monarchy was the job she wanted or even a net positive.
Odd that a subthread which started with someone praising the late Queen for choosing not to run away from obligations requires so many followups pointing out that she could have run away from them...
> your manhood (which you can also give up if you want to, people do)
Well yeah, that was the point. You can change almost anything you're born with; the ability to give something up [at significant cost, and without necessarily getting a better alternative] clearly isn't remotely sufficient to describe it as something you "signed up for".
It’s not edgy to explain something everyone already knows. The royal family benefits from the taxation of UK citizens.
“For a place that claims to be a meritocracy, the UK has some strangely dissonant beliefs”
Are you.. States-splaining.. to me right now?
“Elizabeth was not a passive victim of her birth circumstances.. the UK has some strangely dissonant beliefs”.
I don’t know if you’re from the US or not, but if so this is the most ironically hypocritical thing I’ve ever read.
This goes in pair. You praise someone for the choices they make, it doesn’t make sense if it wasn’t a choice at all in the first place.
I think she was a brilliant and intelligent person, she proved it in so many occasions, and she didn’t become Queen or stayed for so long just because of social pressure and “daddy told me to”. So yes, I’m assuming it was a net positive for her, and that she dedicated her life to something she wanted to do.
Sure there are many shitty parts coming with the throne and the toxicity surrounding the whole royalty system, but I give be the benefit of the doubt on having done the right choices in her life.
While, technically, the constitutional crisis would have been caused by him marrying a divorcee and being the head of a state religion that didn't approve of remarriage with living ex-spouses, the circumstances were likely important in motivating a hard stance on the policy: it involved the sort of situation that an apologist might have given as an example of why remarriage should not be allowed. Even current Church of England rules would not allow the marriage.
It is interesting that the story is often simply portrayed as him wanting to marry a American divorcee, likely leading to the sense in many readers unfamiliar with the circumstances that he wanted to marry someone who simply had had prior marriages, quite possibly with ex-husbands who were still in the US.
What would exactly be the problem here? A lot of the people that the queen supposedly represent live in a one room flat.
Correct
>I don't see how choosing that was to her credit.
I can see that.
I don't see how that's true at all, and I've never seen any evidence to support it. Simply asserting it does not make it true.
> He was also a nazi sympatizer
Wouldn't that make him abdicating a good thing for England?