Saturday, 30 April 2011

The Life of a Princess

This might make me sound like an old grouch (like you, Ocean!), but I just don't get the life of a prince and princess.

Everybody here is "so proud" of the young prince, his lovely bride, they are discreet and elegant and kind and I don't know what else. And from this day hence nothing they do will have any impact at all other than creating photo ops for the press.

Actually I gather Prince William will continue with the Search&Rescue team he has joined for a few more years. Good. But after that?

The UK Royalty, while a huge part of the local culture, is still only ceremonial. You have a busy schedule on which you get very little if any say at all. You travel around the world meeting foreign dignitaries for lunch. You adhere to a strict protocol of what you can and can not say.
You don't have any decision making power. You are not producing. Your opinions are never expressed.

I get that you live in great comfort, of course, but the perks seem to end there.

Having said all of this: recall that I grew up in Switzerland, where not only is there not a monarchy, there isn't really even a head of state in the sense of a prime minister or president. Switzerland is a rare country where you grow up with no focus at all and ever on a major political figure, we just don't have that.

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