I was looking at some pictures (they were unavoidable) of the queen’s lying-in-state, and I noticed an odd thing.
The pikemen are outstandingly obvious, but who are the guys with sticks? I zoomed in a bit, out of curiousity, and noticed that the ends of the sticks are slotted. They’re not sticks they’re longbows. I guess it’s important to have a token force of 4 longbowmen protecting the queen’s body in case 15,000 armored French knights on horses come storming through the chunnel.
If you look closely on their right hip, they appear to have some kind of trick wossname (I’m all a’quiver) holding a ritual 4 arrows. So if it’s 16 French knights, they’re going to have a fucking bad day. I bet those guys can actually shoot those things.
Meanwhile, I have nothing else to say about the endless coverage of the royal death, except “oh my god you fucking Mountbatten poseurs please stop wearing military uniforms covered with ‘I am a royal’ medals. It’s not impressive, you look stupid and you’re probably charging the government for the tailoring when you’re all filthy fucking rich and can buy your own lamborghinis and blow and cosplaying outfits.” Basically, all that bling says they’re cosplaying interesting people.
By the way, did you catch the cool-ass law the royals put in place, which basically says, “if we had to pay inheritance tax like hoi polloi, it would financially impact us, so we exempt ourselves, haw haw haw!” You remember the old adage “no taxation without representation”? It should be updated to “if you don’t pay taxes, we fucking ignore you, you over-bred twits.”
Those will be from the Royal Company of Archers.
* insert random joke about a Beefeater being a vegetarian, here *
It must get very boring standing vigil, but it is one of the traditional things done by ceremonial honor guards. I did a brief search on the subject, and found that everybody seems to have honor guards, though some aren’t as ceremonial as others.
The longbow is pretty cool, although not suited to close quarter combat. I hope they have a saber handy for the Normans that evade the rain of 4 arrows.
As with many things people say about the monarchy, the inheritance tax thing seems to be mostly bullshit founded on motivated reasoning. It’s weird to find myself defending the monarchy, but I like these things to be clear, and it really irritates me when people grab on to these ideas and use them like argumentative cudgels.
What little I know on the subject seems to indicate that since 1993 there has been a restriction on inheritance tax levied on assets passed from one sovereign to another. This gets a bit complicated, but it basically means that anything inherited from Elizabeth by anyone other than Charles will be taxed as usual. The bulk of the royal inheritance is the crown estate, which is not exactly ‘owned’ by the sovereign, but rather held by them on behalf of the crown. I find it best to think of the crown as a kind of holding company, in which case paying inheritance taxes on its assets would be comparable to a ceo being required to pay inheritance tax on corporate assets when they take over the position from the previous incumbent.
It’s apparently true that the sovereign is not legally required to pay income tax, but they do it anyway, ‘voluntarily’, because they like not being guillotined. Which is a hell of a lot more than you can say for most of the other wealthy parasites of the UK. All in all, the monarchy seems to come with a bunch of responsibilities and very few advantages, compared to merely being disgustingly rich without a crown.
Have you seen the video by Tod Cutler where they shot a bunch of arrows at replica armour? I think they’ll need more than 16 arrows to deal with the knights.
It’s all a bunch of wank, so if it’s going to happen we should just add more ridiculous British outfits. Add a ww2 dude with a sten, some others on horses with fancy feathered caps
Definitely true. If it were a choice between being them or being an anonymous, publicly unknown person with one hundredth of their wealth, the only rational choice is the latter. Being royal may not be objectively hard work, but it is work, and crucially it’s work you can’t simply walk away from. Harry has had a go, but wherever he goes he is still who he is, he’s still his mother’s son (although quite obviously not Charles’s).
@#6, sonofrojblake
It’s not as if Harry actually attempted to give up royal life – just royal ‘work’. Certainly I never heard of any attempt on his part to take up some kind of productive work, or to abandon the trappings of elite/celebrity life. He simply tried to have his cake while also eating it – something his class of parasite believes they are entitled to do. That he was unable to avoid the depredations of the british media while doing so is unfortunate for him, I suppose.
Given the degree to which the british legal system will bend over backwards to protect the privacy rights of the elite, I have no doubt that if Harry truly wished to give up his royal lifestyle he would be able to obtain a sealed name change – and simply move to another part of the world and try to earn a living using whatever skills his life has left him with. He would need to avoid conspicuous wealth and celebrity, no galas or fundraisers, no high-society vacations where the paparazzi might notice him – but absolutely nobody would think that a ginger gas engineer coming by to adjust their combi-boiler in Newcastle was really the prince in disguise.
But since that would entail giving up the easy life of luxury and glamour that he believes he’s entitled to – it would never happen. He can piss and moan about the tribulations of being a royal for the rest of his life, but he could walk away at any time he wanted to. He just doesn’t.
@#6, sonofrojblake
yeah, but you aren’t an an authoritarian fuckhead who thinks they should be at the top of the stack so they can Lord it over everyone else
imo, children raised in these situations just end up messed up. being raised in massively unequal societies is not good for kids.
It’s a weird situation all round really.
1) Everyone who meets the sovereign is required to genuflect.
2) Except that it’s not a legal requirement and more or less can’t be.
So in order for these two things to coexist the sovereign must never meet anyone who will not genuflect. The requirement restricts their behaviour, not anybody else’s. It’s far from the only example.
It took me a long time watching various non-subjects of our
late Queen and now his Majesty screaming about the monarchy and our system to come to the conclusion that they don’t know a fucking thing about it and that they may be envious of whatever they do not understand.
@#4 & #9:
Riiiiiight. Whatever you gotta tell yourself.