A Life Without the Monarchy

You know you have problems when even your habits (good or bad) are over taken by exam preparation. I've been writing two blog posts a week for quite a while and I was starting to find it something of a habit on Monday and Wednesday nights to sit down, write a post and then see what people thought - this did not happen on Monday. For those of you that have found themselves looking out for my posts (and I know that there are at least a few) you will have been scouring your Facebook feed, looking in desperation for what I promised a few people would be an interesting post. It wasn't there, as I imagine you will have noticed by now, and for this I apologise. It wasn't until I was settling into bed for a well deserved sleep that I realised I had forgotten something. I had a strong taste of mint in my mouth so I realised that it can't have been my teeth and so I quickly realised that I was without a blog post - that and I could hear the sound of crying coming from some of you die hard readers as you refreshed your feed over and over again. I'll try and not do it again without prior warning but my head is fairly mushed up with other stuff just now so no promises! Today's, I can happily inform you, will be on your feed. In fact that's probably how you got here so of course it was. I've been looking forward to writing this post for a multitude of reasons, some of which I am going to cover in this, my (recently changed) views on the British Monarchy. 

If you weren't watching the Royal wedding on Friday then what exactly were you doing? You can't have been working because David Cameron said so and you can't have been watching another channel because it was on everywhere. For about two weeks before the wedding I held firm and said that I wasn't going to watch it on the grounds of it being a waste of money blah blah blah. I sat down to have my breakfast and ended up watching the coverage right up until dinner time. I sort of felt that I would be a little left out if I didn't at least watch the main part but I ended up sitting in front of the TV all day, hanging on Huw Edwards' every word. And it turned out to be quite an enjoyable watch. It was the fact that it managed to captivate the nation that captivated me more than anything else. Despite what I had been saying in the lead up to the big day, I ended up enjoying the pomp and pageantry of the occasion. Moral of the story: don't just moan for the sake of moaning.

The reason why I was skeptical about the whole thing was borne out of the work that I have been doing for the 2nd semester of university. I've been learning about the role of the Monarchy in the UK constitution and, at times, I've found myself asking "what is the point in the Royal family?". I then realised that I was starting to sound like a Republican which in many respects I was fairly interested in. I researched this thoroughly just in case I was confronted on my new found stance and it was all very interesting. On Friday when I woke up that was my opinion; by lunch time the idea of having a Royal family had grown on me. For once there was no fighting or death in the news (although America had a fairly bad day on Friday weather-wise) and everyone, meaning the 'commoners', was happy - I, by extension, was happy as well. Some of the sights and some of the things that I heard people say on Friday made me realise just what a morale boost this had been for our country. At a time when we are subject to more pressures than ever (socially, economically etc) the Royals lifted the spirits of millions of people - who can lay claim to being able to do that other than Lionel Messi?

So it turns out that I quite like the Royals. Maybe from the boring point of view of constitutional law their role is fairly flimsy (or at least that's how I've seen it at times over the last few months) but their importance to our society is much, much more than that. Any one that tells you that they didn't enjoy the wedding on Friday for the most part is lying. Even if you tuned in just to gawk at our newest Duchess (that commoner girl) then you were, in a round about (and perverted) way, appreciating the Royals. Not only would it be a major shift in our constitution to change to a republic but it would rip out, what I believe to be, a part of the hearts and minds of the British people. Also, how good did we look to the Americans on Friday - the jealously was palpable on Fox news at times.

Thanks for reading,

Martin