Saturday, May 07, 2022

200 WORDS ON - Monarchy























Once upon a time being monarch was a role conferred on you by your tribe. Based on strength of leadership, fighting prowess or possessing a semi-magical lucky charm. Monarchs came to a swift end if famine, pestilence or humiliation befell their people. Executed, buried alive in a bog or ritually dismembered to pacify the wrathful displeasure of the gods.

Overtime who was monarch became a hereditary position. It ceased being conferred on an indfividual by the people, but was 'divinely appointed' to one family. This self serving slight of hand made the monarch, as ‘god’s annointed representative,’ unquestionable.

From Magna Carta onwards, history details the protracted efforts to contain royal power and prerogative, putting boundaries around their 'authority to rule'. Increasing parliamentary sovereignty adjusted the monarchy into a constitutional role. Whilst retaining power through its wealth and as symbolic head of church and establishment.

In terms of a people’s right to chose this was a fudge. Leaving in place the monarch as the representative upholder of enshrined privilege. Its clear the only way citizens of a 21st century democracy could remove the monarch, would be to dismantle the whole hierarchy of self entitled elites of whom she sits as head.

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