My money’s on George William Albert Wayne Jason Tiger
Charles. Whatever he’s called, as a committed republican who finds the whole
notion of monarchy painfully embarrassing, I ought to object to his predestined
role, but to be honest, I can’t be bothered. The monarchy has no power, its
prerogatives are an illusion, an allegedly elected prime minister controls the
government and kings no longer ride out at the head of their feudal armies.
Today’s monarchs are there to cut ribbons and put on fancy dress for state
occasions. It’s a rather sad uncreative role to force on a poor baby from its
birth. What if George William Albert Wayne Jason Tiger Charles really has it in
him to be an experimental physicist? A brain surgeon? An outspoken crusader against landmines?
Tough. He’s doomed to cut ribbons and put on fancy dress, because The People
like the monarchy, and they like it especially because it doesn’t mean anything
at all.
Not so long ago some people still nursed the idea that the
monarchy and all its voodoo paraphernalia did matter, so we had the unedifying
spectacle of Prince Charles being mated with an approved young virgin of the
right class instead of the woman he wanted to marry because he, and those
around him, genuinely believed that the kingdom and the heavens would fall if
the genetic purity of the line was not maintained. Now, even the royals
understand that the nation would shed many a tear but otherwise would survive
without a tremor if the entire Royal family were obliterated, so William was
free to marry the daughter of a costermonger from the Old Kent Road – or whatever. I quite
hope George William Albert Wayne Jason Tiger Charles will turn out to be gay
and marry a man. That would put a hawk among the hereditary pigeons.
It’s ironic (surely not planned) that the royal birth comes
in the middle of the BBC’s production of the White Queen, in which the arrival
of royal babies is presented as the source of unmitigated woe and strife. I can
only wish that I didn’t make replica antique furniture for a living. Watching
the White Queen, all I can do is scream “Why, why, why is all the furniture
Jacobean, when it’s supposed to be the 15th century?” Like Walter Bagehot’s monarchy, it remains a
mystery.