the way of duty

Given what we know about the general, hard-eyed ruthless professionalism of the royals, I find it difficult to believe that the royal pregnancy was not exactly timed to be precisely as it was; a fine festive story followed, on the Anniversary of the jubilee, by the arrival of a new asset.

I remember thinking a while ago that the Middleton family was a sort of back to the roots exercise for the Royals: there was something about the clan, a bit over self-promoted and overspent, that harked back to the families of minor German principalities, a combination of eking out and display once designed to get the princess Huffen-Puffen-Altenbonkendorf a royal match, now the province of striving Home Counties clans. As princess Kate pukes manfully in hospital, the royals are thinking to themselves that these arriviste but sturdy folk make better Germans than the ruins of the native aristocracy – a good spot after the Diana fiasco.

I say this in a pro-royalty context. Just think if the royals had proved Lyndon LaRouche right and gone into organised crime instead.

Comments

[nick s]

The von Mittelstadts of Neuburg-Dummkopfländ adding a bit of chin to the gene pool.

Perhaps that's why William was dispatched to St Andrews instead of Oxbridge.

[Charlie W]

You're incinerating that taxpayer funded privately provided assisted conception was used?

[jamie]

I incinerate NOTHING! I was tyhinking more of not natural in the sense of not conceiving in their own time, but yeah, a little assistance would make sense.

[CMcM]

I'm hoping it *is* a IVF assisted pregnancy resulting in multiple births - identical quins would do for me. So no one could track which one came out first and then they'd fall to squabbling over it throughout their childhood. Factions would form in the popular press. When they reach 18 we could put them in a Big Brother style house and expose their failings on prime time TV till Davina McCall crowned the last one to be voted off the programme. A Thoroughly Modern Monarchy for Modern Times, eh?

[ajay]

CMcM: sounds vaguely like "Kind Hearts and Coronets". Would all five be played by Alec Guinness?

(But an IVF-multiple wouldn't result in identical siblings; it happens because multiple zygotes get implanted during an IVF cycle, and a lot of the time more than one of them 'takes', as it were. Identicals happen when a zygote splits.)

[CMcM]

Ajay: that's the problem with folk like you: you turn up and take all the magic out of the world with your relentless literal rationalism. How is it even possible to discuss a subject like royalty if you do that sort of thing?

[ajay]

Ooh, get you, Bagehot-boy.

But you're right that a few rival claimants would do great things for the monarchy in these days of reality TV contests (and indeed Game of Thrones). Perhaps some of them could raise their standards in various depressed areas, assuming the tops don't fall off.

[belle le triste]

I'm a Plantagenet Get Me Out of Here

[Richard J]

The model of the Turkish seraglio works quite well here - immure the heirs in glorious seclusion until that fateful encounter with the velvet rope.

Strictly Come Strangling.

(That said, the title needs working on owing to unfortunate autoerotic implications.)

[ajay]

I'm a Plantagenet Get Me Out of Here

David Starkey is on the line, he sounds unhappy about the rebranding job you've done on his book about the Princes in the Tower.

[CMcM]

The Only Way is Saxe-Coberg-Gotha?

[des von bladet]

The Heiring Cupboard.

[belle le triste]

Come Reign with Me

[Chris Williams]

Primogeniture Suspect.

[nathan]

coronation st

[bert]

Add to the competitive element by having different fathers for the different claimants. Hewitt Do You Think You Are?

[jamie]

be kind of funny if the kid turns out to be a bit, well, ginger, wouldn't it?

[Seeds]

It had better not be ginger, Queen warns Harry

[belle le triste]

It had better not be eldritch

[Ken MacLeod]

With any luck we can turn that Onion piece into a crisis for the special relationship. Bonus points for a US-flag-burning royalist riot in Grosvenor Square.