Posted on 03/12/2005 7:06:27 PM PST by NZerFromHK
Prince Charles' visit to New Zealand inevitably provokes questions about his future suitability as King of this country.
Charles is an unusual personality, not easy to pin down. There is a lack of clarity about him; a certain hesitancy. As the heir to the throne, he is in a perennially impossible situation; damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.
As he once said, plaintively, "There is no set-out role for me. I'm really rather an awkward problem."
That awkwardness has eased somewhat since the death of his erratic wife and the decision, finally, to marry his first and real love, Camilla Parker-Bowles.
But the knives have been sharpening. There has been some talk of installing Prince William after the death of the Queen; jumping a generation as it were and leaving Charles to Camilla and his plants.
Even if Charles wanted to turn the throne over to William, the choice of succession is not his to make. Parliament would have to agree to allow Charles to leave, then pick a new King - as it did when Edward VIII abdicated in 1936 - and that would cast the entire idea of monarchy out into open, rancorous and possibly fatal debate.
Charles has prepared and is still preparing to assume the throne. It has been a lifetime vocation and he is not going to give it up now.
It might be a bit of a wait, however, because his mother is unlikely to give it up voluntarily either and she, like her mother, is in this business for the long haul.
Prince Charles is not a glamorous, compelling personality but he is much more balanced and astute than the poisonous British press chooses to project him.
Charles has never been greatly interested in the Commonwealth. He is not an internationalist by nature or experience and he confines his initiatives and his interests within a relatively narrow range in Britain. In the absence of any reputation for anything else he is saddled with the image of someone who talks to vegetables and denigrates modern architecture.
As and when Charles does become King his main preoccupation will be consolidation at home. There is no coherent republican movement in Britain yet but that would change rapidly if Charles III gets off on the wrong foot.
Much the same goes for the wider Commonwealth connection. Because the Queen is such a hard act to follow it may be impossible for Charles to preserve that tenuous loyalty and stem what might turn out to be an irrepressible ebb tide of support for keeping the sovereign at the top, if at all.
Thus, the future of the sovereign as the titular head of the Commonwealth rests largely on next the King's PR performance.
Fortunately, Charles is no Canute. He is not going to try to preserve the monarchy as a gilded anachronism, a glorified theme park offering more pomp than circumstance.
He is very well aware of the fine line between solemn respect and high farce. He has personally tiptoed along that line and been deeply hurt by the consequences of stumbling on the way.
He knows that the monarchy will probably survive. It has, after all, endured devastating wars and spectacular divorces, abrupt beheadings and humiliating exiles and come up smiling benignly over its subjects, who have shown a remarkable capacity to put up with all this.
His lengthy affair with Camilla Parker-Bowles is something that has had to be managed with infinite patience, not just by him but by the Palace establishment as a whole. The Windsors are not fast movers when it comes to such matters.
Everything is weighed, grocer-like, before the ancient machinery of change is activated. The last time this kind of thing happened it all ended a bit messily with Edward VIII opting for a divorced commoner over duty, and all the catastrophic consequences that followed for the collective solidarity of the monarchy.
That affair left a mass of scar tissue on the delicate Windsor corpus. It's no wonder the palace is distinctly bashful when it comes to reconciling the absorption of a divorcee mistress with defending the faith.
There has never been much clarity as to Charles' attitude towards countries like New Zealand - older Commonwealth dominions which are still ostensibly loyal to the Crown - but which are increasingly seeking their own identities out from under the old British cultural blanket.
An opportunity arose to talk to him about this when he visited New Zealand early in 1997.
A dinner had been arranged in Christchurch for him to meet a variety of outdoor-oriented people, mainly Canterbury farming grandees and captains of local agro-industries. I was included as a conservationist.
The conversation was not scintillating. Not even the best of Canterbury's new pinot noir could liven it up, although I noticed the Prince of Wales was downing more than his fair share.
Pretty soon I was able to engage Charles in what amounted to a private conversation and I steered the subject round to constitutional matters.
Because he seemed to be particularly open and affable I asked him what his reaction would be if, as King, he was told that New Zealand wished to remove him as Head of State and become a republic. One eyebrow shot up. Had I gone too far?
"I take it you assume that will inevitably happen," he replied, with just the hint of a wry smile.
"I do, and I support it," I said.
"Well, to be frank, I think it would come as a great relief to all of us," said Charles. "It would remove the awful ambiguity we have at the moment. It seems to me that it would be a lot easier for everybody if you all had your own completely independent head of state.
"I certainly never want to be dragged into any constitutional disputes in New Zealand or anywhere else. I simply can't imagine how difficult it would be to be faced with having to dismiss a New Zealand Prime Minister."
Perhaps he sees the writing on the wall already. Certainly he will have felt the colder winds of rejection as a future King while in Australia.
In New Zealand the reception may be kinder, more muted. But he will know it is only a matter of time before the rupture occurs and that there may never be another King of New Zealand.
Royalist or republican, I just cannot get it how one could agree on anything with that brainless idiot. He even didn't understand the simplest and most direct rebuke Prince "The Polite" Charles gave him when asked about a possibility to lose New Zealand, this Crown Jewel:
"Well, to be frank, I think it would come as a great relief to all of us," said Charles.
Which means, one pain in the a$$; less... And our "socialist" reads it as:
Perhaps he sees the writing on the wall already.
What a clown!
That was just a demonstration of the power of American women!!
Since Charles does have children - the parliment could skip a generation and go to William as the heir, instead of a younger brother.
Or, they could make it more interesting by having William and Harry joust for the title!
Well .. good luck with the new family idea. Quite frankly I don't care what they do.
Well, like I said, it was really just some ideas to freshen things up a bit. I'm sure there are lots of ideas out there.
The main thing is to just keep changing!! ;-)
The librarians take destruction of books very seriously.
As you apparently found out.
As you apparently found out.
I did! I'm going to keep practicing with that axe. Maybe, just maybe, I can someday be your Royal Executioner or something!! ;-)
They could repeal the law that bars Catholics from the succession and go back to the person with the best genealogical claim to the throne--a member of the Wittelsbach family, I believe (former kings of Bavaria), descended (like the House of Windsor) from the Stuarts.
Seems like a good idea to me. What has the Monarchy done for New Zealand lately?
Wouldn't work. You know you faint at the sight of blood.
Anyway, all I want is a blazing fire in the library of the old stone castle. You know I hate to be cold.
Isn't that really the House of Hanover? During World War I it was rather awkward for the royal family of Great Britain to have a German name when Britain was at war with Germany.
NOTES: Christened: Albert Edward; called, "The Peacemaker" Reign: 1901-1910; It is not always realized that Queen Victoria was the last sovereign of the House of Hanover and King Edward VII was the first of the House of Wettin or the House of Saxony. Edward VII, in an outburst of anti-German feeling engendered by the First World War, changed the name of his "House and Family" from Wettin to Windsor in 1917. Edward gave his name to the Edwardian period.
When Queen Victoria died in 1901, her son the new Edward VII already belonged to another house - Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. And it was the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha that was renamed Windsor in 1917 under George V.
In fact, both the House of Hanover and Saxe-Coburg-Gotha survive to this day. The House of Hanover descended from the Duke of Cumberland (George III's son) and the current Prince Ernst August is the only direct male descendent of George III. Saxe-Coburg Gotha is descended from Prince Leopold's son Prince Charles Edward (cousin of George V). Interestingly, the House of hanover still maintains good and close relations with the current British royal family, but Saxe-Coburg-Gotha isn't as Charles Edward became a Nazi SS-Waffren member when Hitler came on the scene.
Monarchy is an anachronism, and is antithical to democracy. "Constitutional" monarchy is a useless and expensive symbol of a bygone age.
Eff 'em all.
So Prince Harry isn't the first close relative of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles to wear a NAZI uniform and swastika.
There are other examples as well. Prince Philip had a former brother-in-law, Prince Christopher of Hesse, who was an ardent Nazi and was a Lufewaffe pilot. He died in Italy when his fighter was shot down by an Allied plane.
But perhaps in an interesting twist, Prince Christopher was heard during the Battle of Britain that he wished to "bomb the Buckingham Palace and kill King George VI and Queen Elizabeth" (QE referred to the late Queen Mother and not the present Queen). It was said that the only bomb ever hit the Buckingham Palace was dropped by Christopher himself. (Source: Bradford, Sarah (1989), King George VI) In other words, the descendents of Queen Victoria who stayed in Germany and became Nazis were no friend of the British royal family - they don't care if they are cousins to each other or not.
So my guess is yes, it is technically true that there were close relatives of the British royal family who were Nazis, but don't think that they were still buddy-buddy to each other.
Why in the world does New Zealand need to be 'ruled' by anyone, let alone a monarch half a world away? Times have changed. Democracies are made up of sentient people quite capable of making their own decisions.
This is partly due to history. Up until 1960 or even 1973 New Zealand still considered itself a virtual overseas offshoot of the United Kingdom. Even today, it is still not uncommon to hear some New Zealanders will still sedcribe living and working in Britain for some period of time as "Colonials going to the Home Isles". Until 1977 if you held a British passport with the right of abode in Britain, you could land in Auckland Airport on the next Air New Zealand flight and demand a New Zealand passport.
A sense of national consciousness probably only developed from the late 1970s I think. But there are still many people saying that we should keep the British monarch as they consider British and New Zealand political heritage and constitutional arrangemnts to be one and the same. if you land in New Zealand today, you are still struck at how much our public affairs spheres are influenced by London and the British Isles - American influence is still minimal at this level. It is a bit like Canada I suppose.
One of the less noted tidbits about New Zealand and other "old" Commonwealth countries is their formal de jure independence dates are very recent. Formally independence for NZ did not come until 1947 although Britain largely left New Zealand self-governing after 1870s and 1907. Even in WWII New Zealand's diplomatic contacts with the United States was still formally conducted via Whitehall (British Foreign Office) in London.
Sorry, looks are pretty meaningless. If he were stunningly brillant or talented in some way, I might be impressed. But his face? Who cares?
:o) Charles has done tremendous amounts of work in his many, many personal and state-royal charities. Diana overshadowed him so much because SHE was "STUNNING....STUNNING," absolutely useless for anything else but clothes and camera but "STUNNING....STUNNING."
I would rather have a dozen Charles representing my country, rather than one Diana. After all, the royals are supposed to serve their people, not simply be a clothes horse. Mind you, she was a stunning clothes horse, but a pretty useless one.
Those are not disadvantages. Monarchy has stabilty, democracy instability.
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