By Larry Romanoff for PRAVDA, January 14, 2022
Westerners seem to hold a fondness for monarchies; pleasant remembrances of times past, the pleasures of the "court", colloquial recollections of quaint beheadings and the capriciousness of rulings, and envious mention of the 'King's prerogative' on a wedding night. Altogether a generally uncritical recollection.
We tend to think of the British monarchy today, or possibly the smaller incarnations existing in Monaco, the Netherlands or Belgium, rulers who tend now to be not only civilised but also marginalised. But monarchies were not always thus, and rather too many disappeared in the smoke of revolutions because entire populations revolted against the frequent and unpredictable brutality of the rulers, the callous and cynical lack of concern for the populace, and general bad management.
Monarchies and Dictatorships
Monarchies and dictatorships are functionally very similar, differing primarily in the method of succession planning, both being a form of government where one person holds absolute power, the exercise of which was not always predictable. Both Monarchies and dictatorships tended to pass power to the next relative in line. The primary difference between the two is that monarchies often claimed a 'divine right' to rule, having been conveniently selected by God, whereas a dictator, sadly but still unashamedly, passed power onto his son. But the only real difference, certainly in the public imagination, is that dictators just didn't have the class of monarchs. There truly is something special about these hard-to-get divine appointments.
But our recollections are little more than us having what we might call a convenient and selective memory. We recall what we choose. For downright brutal inhumanity, monarchies have never had much to be proud of. King Leopold of Belgium killed 10-15 million people without hesitation. A Transylvanian prince, eager to explain something to his subjects in a way they could understand, had his soldiers gather 20,000 subjects and chop one arm and one leg off each one. Monarchies were equally as inhuman as were the worst of dictators, and the British were arguably the worst of the lot.
The British Royal Family
