WILL PRINCE HARRY’S “ABDICATION” WORK?

WILL PRINCE HARRY’S “ABDICATION” WORK?

Many commoners, I am sure, have at some time reflected on how nice it would be to be a king or queen, a prince or princess. It is a fantasy that we have been raised with as children, in fairy tales featuring a beautiful princess and her Prince Charming. Well apparently, being a member of royalty is not all that it is cracked up to be. Recently, Prince Harry and his wife Meghan were granted their wish to “step back” from royal duties.

Beginning in the spring of 2020, the couple will be allowed the freedom they covet — freedom from the mandatory pinning on of fancy hats and medals for state events, freedom from required royal overseas tours, freedom from the constraint that they live in gilded but gated palaces in the UK. But this freedom has a high price. Under an agreement with the Queen, the couple will be barred from cashing in on their titles, and can no longer call themselves “His Royal Highness” and “Her Royal Highness.” For some, this is a progressive move and for others, it is a tragedy. Although Prince Harry is currently seventh in line to assume the throne of England, that possibility is very remote.

I would surmise, that in a sense, Harry has abdicated his option to ever be King. Edward VIII becomes the first English monarch to voluntarily abdicate the throne after ruling for less than one year,. He chose to abdicate after the British government, public, and the Church of England condemned his decision to marry the American divorcée Wallis Warfield Simpson. Harry’s decision is kind of similar and was a shock to royal-watchers and to his own family

At least 36 royals have abdicated in modern times (1900 through today), including the latest, King Carlos of Spain in 2014. These three dozen or so abdications include 20 traditional abdications where another (usually a family member) is brought in to rule, eight monarchy abolishments (such as Emperor Nicholas II of Russia in 1917), seven times where the ruler was forced into exile (such as Egypt’s King Farouk in 1952), and once when the country ceded into an already-existing monarchy (Charles Vyner Brooke, the White Rajah of Sarawak, when the Malaysian nation became a British Crown colony in 1946). How’s that for a nugget of trivia that you can unleash the next time you are a contestant on Jeopardy?

For your further edification, here are 44 sovereign monarchies worldwide. Of these, six are absolute (Saudi Arabia and Vatican City are examples), 36 are constitutional monarchies and two — Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates — have a mixed constitutional/absolute form of government. More than a dozen of the 44 monarchies have Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II as their monarch, including Canada, and the other Commonwealth countries.

It will be interesting to see how Harry’s “abdication” will unfold. While he and his wife are seeking a more private and less formal way of life, I am not sure that they will ever escape the scrutiny of the obsessive public media. They are still royal personalities and I doubt whether they could ever live normally in a nice house in Edgemont, shop anonymously at Market Mall or take Archie Halloweening casually on their own street.

Today’s mass media are ruthless and their paparazzi mentality will not be diverted by the wishes of Harry and Meghan. I’m not sure that they might not have achieved their objective by just slowly removing themselves from the public spotlight over a few years. I think their dramatic decision makes them even more attractive media targets than would have been the case by them just slowly and discreetly fading into the sunset. What do you think?