Why are people happy to be ruled by Kings and Queens from FOREIGN countries?

originally posted by: flammadraco
The Royals do not rule the British populace. Suggest you read up on Cromwell for some understanding of the British political system and monarchy.

Then what is the purpose of their existence?
What feeds their wealth?

a reply to: ThinkingHuman

They're great for tourism
The Queen is head of the Commonwealth
Great historical heritage

Can you imagine President David Cameron as an alternative

originally posted by: flammadraco
They're great for tourism

The Queen is head of the Commonwealth

Great historical heritage

Can you imagine President David Cameron as an alternative

Your laughable response is good for a joke - but it proves that there is no good serious answer!

The Commonwealth countries have their own governments, they don't need a far-away FOREIGN queen.

Also ArtimisE failed to respond to my challenge that people want to have a king/queen - whether it be for tourism purposes (there would be more price effective alteratives) or any other.

Giving wealth to Royalty is like dropping it in the River Thames. You must be brainwashed to do it!

Because deep down most people are still mindless peasants.

What I find stranger is a place like N.Z., where we all immigrated to get as far away as humanly possible from the class system. That ruled with absolute tyranny and open disgust of common people for hundreds of years.

Then we wave a flag when they visit. ????

So if you live in, and were born in, America, and one of your great great grandparents was born in what is now Germany, that makes you a German?

a reply to: flammadraco

Or Bliar? Or even Obama?!!!

originally posted by: ThinkingHuman
Line of sccession of the British Throne: (... meaning year of death)

George, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg (House of Hanover, Germany) … 1641
married Anne Eleonore of Hesse-Darmstadt (Germany) … 1659

Their son Ernest Augustus, Elector of Brunswick-Lüneburg (Germany) … 1698
married Sophia of the Palatinate (Hanover, Germany) … 1714

Their son George I (born in Hanover, Germany), who became King of Great Britain, Ireland, and Brunswick-Luneburg after the death of Queen Anne in 1714, … 1727
married Sophia Dorothea of Celle (Germany)

Their son George II King of Great Britain (born in Germany) … 1760
married Caroline of Ansbach (Germany)

Their son Frederick, Prince of Wales (estranged son, luckily passed before his ascending the throne) … 1751

The second son of George II and Caroline, George III, King of Great Britain, Ireland, Brunswick-Luneburg (succeeding George II) … 1820
married Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (Germany)

Their son George IV, King of Great Britain, Ireland, Hanover … 1830
married Caroline of Brunswick (Germany)

Their son William IV, King of Great Britain, Ireland, Hanover … 1837
married Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen (who had no children)

The son of George III: Edward, Duke of Kent & Strathearn … 1820
married Victoria, Princess of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld (Germany)

Their daughter Victoria, Queen of Great Britain, Ireland, India (succeeding William IV, reigned for 63 years) … (died) 1901
married her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (Germany)

For two centuries all the Kings and Queens of Great Britain have been 100% German blood, all the way down to Victoria and her children. To this day, the British Royal family is of the German House. It was renamed “House of Windsor” to make it sound more British – but that does not make it more British.

So why do the British people revere their foreign Royalty? My answer is they are brainwashed.

You do realise the royal family hold no political power right? The position is purely cermoninial.

They are not even allowed to write there own speeches or express there oen opinion.

originally posted by: ThinkingHuman

originally posted by: charles1952
Royalty is revered because they serve as royalty.

That’s like saying a stone serves by being a stone.

They sacrifice themselves for their country and people,

I feel the opposite way, the Royalty start the war because they want more power – the people do not want to invade some country far away. The people do not benefit from territory acquired. The people, be they soldiers or innocent civilians are KILLED – while the Royalty usually survives with their ego bruised.

What do they contribute? A sense of continuity,

It is fake continuity if they don’t actually hold power to ensure that continuity. If they DO hold that power then who says they are not the monster-kind?

national pride,

again a fake national pride, because they’re all from Germany or some other country, whatever the case may be.

a rallying point above daily partisan bickering.

They don’t care if the left wing or the right wing wins – as long as they remain in power. That makes them above daily politics but the appearance of being above politics is also fake.

What gave them the right? The people did.

By definition, the people have no right to vote.

Where are the mass marches of millions of Britons demanding an end to royalty?

Because they don’t want to be killed or injured or imprisoned by police.

You reaffirmed my conclusion that the people are brainwashed into believing something fake.

Your point failed when you said about royalty starting wars.

In the UK they cant. Only the democraticaly elected UK parliment decides foreign policly.


Royal family just sends its family members out to fight, which is more than can be said of prime ministers and presidents.

originally posted by: ThinkingHuman

originally posted by: flammadraco
The Royals do not rule the British populace. Suggest you read up on Cromwell for some understanding of the British political system and monarchy.

Then what is the purpose of their existence?
What feeds their wealth?

There main job is to act as ambassadors.

But they do wonders for tourism.

There castles and palces they own bri g in more money than the tax we use to upkeep them so they are good value

originally posted by: crazyewok
There main job is to act as ambassadors.

But they do wonders for tourism. There castles and palces they own bri g in more money than the tax we use to upkeep them so they are good value

oh? Then what are the Ambassadors doing?

Then it must cost a fortune to visit those dinosaurs in the middle of nowhere. Care to provide any backup for your claim?

a reply to: ThinkingHuman
Some people just need to be lead, and the idea of being part of something bigger just thrills some.
To die for king and crown is actually a want in some minds.
Silly...

No one is ruled by kings and queens any more, though a few countries still continue the tradition.

I can understand the bemusement of Canucks and Aussies at being 'ruled' by Queen Elizabeth but it makes no material difference to their lives, as it doesn't for Brits themselves.

Britain is a republic in terms of how it is governed.

Queen Victoria was the last monarch to have any influence.

a reply to: ThinkingHuman

Get real! I loathe it! Do you think I want some leaching family, who now has the audacity, because they are above the law, to trolley out Diana's son because he looks so like his Mother and some pretty skinny dolly and their beautiful young son as a means of saying 'Look we are lovely people really - just not like you lot who pay for us, one way or another.

What keeps them sitting pretty is one thinbg only the wealth put in the keeping of the Royals. This lot certainly haven't earned a penny of it and it actually belongs to the nation, yet funnily enough its only the Royals who get to utilise it.

Their lavish and obscenely wealthy lifestyle has been cut back a little on the surface, but that's only because technology has advanced and more modern trains, planes etc are so improved they prefer to use them.

I suspect they will stay in power because they are also the front for Rothschild who manages the Queen's 'loosely put estate' When that happens you see the rot dripping. The benefits of the people paying the vast sums for security for this little trolley load of leaches and their sycophants and their snobbish titles etc is very persuasive to the petty snobbishness of many subjects to think they might get a look in on the celebrity front. We know though from experience they kill if you offend them.

So don't you dare think I am brainwashed or stupid! You are lucky they don't encamp on your White House lawn or wherever you live because when they go abroad, all we see are other nations all waving their soppy little flats and beaming and fawning. I do wonder if its not propoganda to make us feel lucky they consider living here - but Britain is wealthy as a country, its just that her people don't see much of the wealth and privilege we earn.

a reply to: CJCrawley

I don't think you connect the vast hidden costs and the loss to the treasury the Royals carry out. Look at Charlie boy, he hides much of the wealth he gets from the Duchey of Cornwall and the Royal budget and switches at convenience to avoid tax. He gets a royal purse, yet he eared - and this is what he showed in his books something like £19,000,000. Did dthe tax payer really need to give him some form of allowance on those earnings? This was exposed a short time ago on the tv when someone complained about this and actually called it obscene that he got away with it Especially with the cuts to our services we all endure. Prince Andrew uses his position as a Royal to gain money wherever he is sent and has had to account for his finances, but I doubt much was recovered that should have gone to the Treasurey.

We are still hated in many places because of Queen Victoria's greed and lust for power. No care was taken over who got rounded up and killed - women and children over the gold rights in South Africa. Its one of the darkest ages for the people over whom she ruled. We don't often mention all the wealth coming into this country yet the population stayed in disgusting housing, impoverished and servile as they ever have been. Few Royals have ever looked after the people, again one of the best is Elizabeth 1st who wouldn't pay to help the soldiers lying in the streets dying of the wounds and illnesses they contracted by supporting her throne against Phillip. Her father had plundered the monasteries and nunneries where those men would have been cared for.

I remember during a college course that we were told that the Queen actually still has the right to veto anything Parliament wants to discuss - so that right exists quietly yet influential as ever and we are mostly ignorant of it. She is the cousin of Cameron - again who instantly she asked awarded her some £47,000,000 extra from the tax payer, no wonder she asked for him to be Prime Minister - most of us hadn't even seen him before he suddenly popped up and clearly only has his classes's interests at heart, despite being the groomed pretty boy of politics. Sorry I couldn't agree with you less on this issue.

a reply to: ThinkingHuman
In the first place, they don't mind because it doesn't matter.
Everybody knows that they are figure-heads without political power.

Secondly, I think you're underestimating how much the individual sense of national identity depends more on place of birth than on ultimate ancestry.
When I was a boy, several of the families around us descended from Dutchmen who arrived in the country to help drain the Fens. Yet these families were not Dutch but English. They had been around for generations, and their language and culture was as English as everybody else.

Similarly there is a tendancy in imported royal families, after a couple of generations, to identify more with their adopted nation than with their place of ultimate ancestry.
George I and George II were Germans. George III was not, being born in Britain and feeling British.
When a journalist commented about Britain being ruled by "an alien and uninspiring court", George V famously grumbled "I may be uninspiring, but I'll be damned if I'm an alien!" He did not feel German. He felt English.

Even the Anglo-Saxon kings came ultimately from overseas. As did the people they ruled. In the last analysis, the whole population has ancestors who came from overseas. So if that's going to be the criterion, we're all a bunch of foreigners anyway.

a reply to: flammadraco

I would wonder if the Commonwealth does not open yet another door for immigration. I also know that when a friend of mine worked as a Dentist, his 'commonwealth partner paid less tax due to his status.

I don't see any point politically in paying for the EU and the Commonwealth especially when it comes to an aid budget that always stays maintained despite the cuts in this country,.

The historical heritage was not so great for the people of this country and if you were here in the 1970's etc you were not even allowed a form which acknowledged you as an English person, yuou had to tick the British box whilst the Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish could acknowledge their heritage. We English were told we had no heritage
to acknowledge until so man y people scored their papers putting English in that the point was capitulated.

I am not being rude or unpleasant to any one here, its just this one gets my soapbox out every time and my wife has to grab me off the roof I am so republican. Shiloh

a reply to: ThinkingHuman

First of all; yes, there is some 'foreign' blood in the Royal Family's lineage, but then again the same can be said for large numbers of British people - should that mean they should all be discriminated against?

Secondly; The Royal family do not rule the UK.
The UK is a Constitutional Monarchy.
en.wikipedia.org...
The Queen is Head Of State with a purely ceremonial role.
The Royal Family do not interfere in political matters - if they ever did then I think it would be their death knell, a lesson some of their predecessors learnt to their cost.
Parliament is the legislative body and it is well established that it is has ultimate authority over The Monarchy.

As for cost; it was estimated in 2012 that maintaining The Monarchy cost each person in the UK approximately 52pence a year.
Now bear in mind that if The Monarchy were abolished they would have to be replaced with another Head Of State, possibly a President, that would probably cost just as much.

But would such a President represent as much as a figure head and be viewed as such a focal point for national identity and cultural heritage?

Personally I'm pretty much apathetic towards The Royal Family - as long as they keep their nose out of the governing of this country and continue to cost relatively as little as they do then I'm not particularly bothered about them. They have absolutely zero impact or effect on me and my life or those who I care for.
They are a quaint anachronism of a bygone era and are like a favourite eccentric Aunt who gets dusted off and brought out on special occasions and then put back away from view for the vast majority of the time.
And every now and then they do provide a reason for the country to forget its woes and take part in a bit of communal celebration, regardless of how irrelevant or trivial the reason may be we all need such things every once in a while.

As for The Commonwealth.
She serves as a reminder of the bond that runs deep between our nations.

As a slight aside I have noticed that it tends to be non-UK members who seem to be somewhat obsessed with The Royal Family - I wonder why?

Oh, and one final thing - do you consider first, second and third generation Pakistani's, Indians, Afro-Caribbean's etc British?

originally posted by: CJCrawley
No one is ruled by kings and queens any more, though a few countries still continue the tradition.

I can understand the bemusement of Canucks and Aussies at being 'ruled' by Queen Elizabeth but it makes no material difference to their lives, as it doesn't for Brits themselves..

The only power the Queen has over Australians is she appoints the Governor-General the Prime Minister nominates.

a reply to: Shiloh7

Sorry I couldn't agree with you less on this issue.

Which bit don't you agree with?

The French earn considerably more millions in tourism without their Royals than we do with our royals. Even the Germans earn from their Royal palaces due to tourism probably more today than the UK.

Their palaces are maintained and beautiful and you can see everything and people flock through the styles virtually every day. Some are even free. You can't here and its more the trinkets that earn the money than the Royals themselves bring in. Could you imagine letting the public go round Prince Andrew's vacant house near the gold course built with its dubious planning consent that no one else could ever had obtained?