Thoughts on Monarchy

Crown of King Christian IV of Denmark

The secret goal of many genealogists is to connect themselves to Royalty. I suppose I would have to include myself in this category. Based upon what I already know about my family, however, any "royalty" I'm connected to is likely a chieftain of a Neolithic agricultural village and therefore totally untraceable.

Part of the reason for this wish for royal roots is that we want to be connected to somebody important enough to make it into the history books. Or maybe we secretly want our own royal wedding. Pomp and Matrimony is a BBC World Service Documentary about British Royal Weddings of the 20th century. Read about the program and download it here.

For most Americans (and I mean United Statesians), no matter how much we admire prince and princesses and are dazzled by their pictures in magazines (think Princess Diana, the recent marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton), I don't think we'd really want an actual perpetual landed class and hereditary monarchy. Like me, many of Americans, are probably quite content to watch other countries' royals but are also kind of glad they are somebody else's problem. The pros and cons of monarchy are addressed by another BBC World Archive Documentary, For King or Country. Episode 1 presents the republican case based on the experience of Sweden (information & download here). Episode 2 presents the monarchical case, oddly enough mostly with evidence from the United States (information & download here).

Both of the presenters make good cases; but I can't help but thinking that the argument for monarchy might have been more compelling if more of the evidence had come from people who actually lived under a monarchical government.

image credit: Ikiwaner via Wikipedia.com