When Monarchy Served a Purpose

I think I may have already made clear my position that I can't see the monarchy surviving till the end of this century.

A figurehead monarchy only serves a useful purpose if it is magical and mystical, obviously anachronistic, but free from human scandal and party politics.

When the Man Who Talks to Plants ascends the throne, and a Ginger Prince who may or may not be a Windsor gets a Duchy, the whole thing will look pretty silly.
If it doesn't already.

I think it still served some purpose fifty years ago, as a unifying symbol for Empire, and as a more upmarket substitute for a ceremonial President.
Not now though.

Still, looking back at history, it wasn't always that way.
For large parts of human history, it wasn't just a useful system, it was the best system.

Governments, like economic systems, must serve the needs of the state of development of a people at a time.
In an era of mass communications, when you and I can know so much about the state of the world, we can all have a say in how things are run.

But out forefathers had most of them not been further than their county town. You could have told them that the French were blue, and they'd have believed it.

Five Hundred years ago, people's worlds were smaller. Knowledge on most things was transferred by word of mouth.
You couldn't learn on the internet.
You couldn't learn by doing a college course.
You learnt by watching and working with, someone who knew.

Thus, most children learnt their trades from their fathers.
Who else would bother to teach them something for nothing?

Even nowadays, we wouldn't want our pipes fixed from a plumber who had no experience of fixing pipes.
One of the downsides of our system, is we are comfortable, however, with an entire cabinet taking office, none of whom have any experience whatsoever of holding any government office at all.



This was the advantage of absolute monarchy. An averagely intelligent man might still be an effective Monarch, because actually, he KNEW so much about running countries. He'd watched his father do it ever since he could remember. He knew little secrets no one else did. Things history doesn't know. Family secrets about the families which ruled other states. In those days, politics was personal.

In fact, looking at the ruling dynasties of most countries, it is hard to state that rulers chosen by heredity proved any worse than the ones we have chosen ourselves. Some were OK, some were excellent, some were abysmal.

England was lucky in a sense, in having successful, vigourous families on the whole, where the original talents of those who had initially made those families prominent survived through generations- The Plantagenets must surely be a good example of a dynasty which tended to produce winners.
The Capetian monarchs of France, less so, especially as time progressed.

Of course, the most successful dynasty of all time, must be the Habsburgs. In spite of inbreeding and a tendency to madness, they survived and prospered and in fact, the members of the dynasty with real talent, especially artistically, overshadows the ones with a tendency to dribble.

But perhaps the best of all examples of monarchy at its most successful, is the Sun King.
OK, he possibly ISN'T a great example of heredity- his father was a little shy of sex, and it's possible his real father was the man in the iron mask, but the fact is, this man was everything a King should be.

A quick look at his pictures show why. This was a man who never felt awed by anyone. At age five he KNEW he was King- apparently, he started referring to himself as Louis XIV whilst his father lay dieing.
Louis learnt from the masters- having his childhood and teens to watch Mazarin and Fouquet, experiencing the mob violence of the Fronde.
And when he took the reins on the death of Mazarin, he decided he, and only he, would rule France.



It is said that Louis never once forgot his deportment. He might be laughing and joking in private, but should the door of the chamber open, he would freeze, like a statue, into the demeanour of a King.

He cultivated the worship of his person, and he got it. The people of France had a REAL King, and they loved it.

Nothing happened in France that Louis did not know of. He worked an eight hour day and read all documents concerning government, something many monarchs didn't.

The important point was, he never allowed himself the luxury of thinking Kings could be men, just like everybody else.
Something his successors forgot.
For the problem with Louis XIV was, he had created a France which was utterly dependant on its King.
And most Kings are just not that good.

Kings, in their day, were as much dependant on popular goodwill as governments are now. The difference was, the mechanism for assessing popular satisfaction was less finely tuned.
A monarch could govern until the mobs overthrew him, and another rose over his beheaded corpse.
For its day, it was the best system that society could hope for. I don't think we should look back at the system in its day as being evil, or the class structure it maintained as being immoral- in its day, it was the only way society could work.

Someone had to organise armies, others had to till fields.

But, like Astrology, it serves no real purpose today.