Royalty is ridiculous – this we all, including royals, know. Glued to their gowns the gapers may be, but the Disnoid trashiness of the spectacle in its modern pointless form is the main thing, especially after the death of Elizabeth, the only royal who seemed to mean something (but what?). The old kings (Juan Carlos, Gustaf of Sweden) are the moral degenerates you’d expect the idle meaningless rich to be ; younger kings (Charles, Felipe) are visibly embarrassed/annoyed by the whole enterprise. They want to mean something, but the whole point of royalty is that they are never allowed to.

The least unpleasant place to be in this dead living world is very safely distant from the throne itself. Baby Edward is clearly the happiest of the Windsors; when he ventures out on his few vague royal thingies no one knows who he is, and this lack of crowd and media interest allows him to pursue a modest and contented private life without, for instance, worrying hysterically about the physical safety of his children every moment they are on display in a world of violent crazies targeting royals just because. Remember the HUGE fuss Prince Harry recently made about royal security for his lot. He was right to fuss. Royals are serious targets – from the media (that’s how Harry lost his mother) as much as from crazed individuals with guns and knives. His grandmother was attacked while on horseback during a ceremonial function; a berserk man got into her bedroom. Etc.

The royal world’s most unpleasant place to be features in the title of the destined to be much-read SPARE by Harry.

You can see the problem currently in three royal houses: England, Denmark, and Norway. Harry claims that at his birth his father washed his hands of the insultingly stupid Diana, remarking that “my work here [shtupping Diana enough to produce an heir and a spare] is done.” This, and the internationally broadcast death of one’s mother in a traffic tunnel, cannot be a solid foundation for a happy life. Harry has suffered bitterness, resentment, and mental instability for years, and it’s not his fault that the strong-willed, highly intelligent, and absolutely non-royal woman who has stabilized him repels his royal family. If he can come to terms with having very little relationship with that family, he will continue to generate his own family, friends, and meaningful projects stateside.

The spare in Denmark is super-pissed because his mother the queen, in a gesture lots of other contemporary royal houses are also making, has stripped his four children of prince and princess titles, reducing them to the risibly low count/countess. The gesture acknowledges the pointless expensive absurdity of modern royal houses, and seeks to make them much smaller objects of republican discontent. Prince Joachim is taller, smarter, and more articulate than the crown prince, clearly believes he himself should be king on his mother’s death, and has not at all hidden his rage at his mother’s swipe at his kids. He’s moving his family to (where else) America, and seems disinclined to look back.

Norway is the most … baroque example of surreality among the surviving royal houses of Europe. The rightful heir to that throne, if you don’t count her lack of a penis, is Martha Louise, the elder of the king’s two children. Her brother seems a presentable, somewhat full of himself, king to be; but you can’t blame Martha for being a little annoyed about how things worked out. She too lives in the United States, with her New Age Shaman husband to be. Her failure to be lifted up to the throne of Norway has meant the freedom to pursue a large set of incredibly stupid beliefs and rituals in Los Angeles.