i think every remaining monarchy should be torn down. completely forgotten. the king is just a guy now, no more notable than any other. if he wants to attain celebrity he can do it on his own; if he wants to buy a house on the outskirts of leeds and take up gardening and substack book reviews, he can do that. if, God forbid, he wants to go into industry, rise to the ranks to become the director of developer relations or the VP of sales or some other such neo-baron, the option is open to him, and he can apply to oxford and cambridge and the university of birmingham on a business track like anyone else. not out of any republican principle, not to free the people from the dead hand of a spectacle they're free to ignore, but to free the king.
can you imagine? you're born with the sole purpose of trying to outlive your parents. until then, you're a minor character in the tedious celebrity you and they were born into. if you die before them, which can happen, your life was a waste: born a side character in a drama that once was a kingdom, banned by custom from anything but the stage, you never made it to the stage. if you don't, you become... the king! the protagonist of the global media, shuttled from bournemouth to belfast to stand and be the king, your every object transformation kink sext with your lover printed in every tabloid in the world. to play the role of King forever, not for money, not for fame, not for fun—not for anything at all, but because you were born into it.
the windsors are not a family business; they're older than business, more inescapable, from a time of primogeniture, inheritance, and caste. the king is born a prince and if he lives he's crowned the king. even if he abdicates, like Edward the Married-to-an-American (for whom he left the throne), he's still the former king. he was still born into the royal family. you can't choose your parents. nor can you ever shake them off. he tried.
i'm not surprised that his painting looks like hell, you know? it must be hell. the american press will float, from time to time, stories about malia obama smoking weed, or some such tedious thing, but for the most part they have discretion: if you don't seek out celebrity, it won't come to you. not so for britain and its king. some people are born into things they didn't ask for and don't want, born into a life that must forge itself into an instrument in service of goals they neither want nor can escape.
there goes Charles the Odd, chief lolcow of the world. of course his painting looks like hell.
