2 of 24

Yes

Write now Article Tools

As an American, I can't think of anything more IRRELEVANT than the British royal family.
After all, they are the direct descendants of George III and George IV whom we struggled and died under in getting our freedom!

I remember quite well at the now Queen Elizabeth II's 17th birthday...I was at the time a guard on General Eisenhower, and Ike was in France, I was at the London American Embassy.

Admiral Harold Rainsford Starke, disgraced Pearl Harbor Harold, came around the corner and I snapped to my feet. "At least you are clean!" he grunted, and told me that I would carry a cushion BEHIND him that morning at the Windsor Palace with a five-carat Emerald on it, a gift for the 17th birthday of the Princess Elizabeth from Franklin Delano Roosevelt, our President. It was 1944.

On the way to the celebration, with flying bombs zipping overhead, and in the old Packard of the Admiral, he repeatedly told me of the great punishments that would arrive if I "screwed up".

We came to the palace entrance, and I dutifully followed Admiral Starke down the long corridor the the main throne-room, where a thousand English people and the King and old Queen and older Queen and Elizabeth and Margaret waited in a semi-circle. We got in a long line of gift-givers and the major domo struck his mace as he read off the Admiral's name. The Admiral bowed and announced the gift from President Roosevelt to the little Princess. Then I presented the cushion with the great stone glowing upon it in a glass box, the Major Domo took it, and I saluted, turned on my heel and followed the Admiral down the long corridor and out, where he turned to me and said: "I gotta lot to do. Find your own way back to the Embassy!" (27 miles!) I did. I paid for a cab!

The point of this true story is the folderol. Ever since Alfred the first King, the English, (note the word "English") had worshiped a king or Queen or both as representatives of God and might.

But in 1944 and certainly in 2008, there is no need for such pomp and circumstance and the continuum of hysteria of an auto accident with "Princess Di."
The time has come for Britain to take the 265,000,000 pounds ($500,000,000) represented by the expenditures of a family of twenty-seven and six thousand servants, and do away with it.

One will say and plenty of Royalists will say: "The British people NEED the family to respect and to turn to when things are bad."

What that really means is that the Queen and her Greek-German husband will ride by and wave when you are rioting from hunger...they will send an occasional grand-son into the battle fray for a week or two to salve the view from outside the palace.

My own family on BOTH sides are derived from England and the English of long ago. Both original ancestors, Edward Maria Wingfield, and Ambrose Cobbs, fled England as "second sons" having thus no inheritance, and arrived simultaneously in Jamestown, Virginia about 1607.

Eventually, the British were forced to relinquish America and we became a REAL democracy.

IT WAS AT THAT POINT THAT THE ENGLISH ROYALTY BECAME NO LONGER NECESSARY.
But it took the death of the old witch QUEEN VICTORIA for the power to finally arrive at the Parliament and its two houses.

Imagine, a German old lady, the daughter of a despot king, George IV, running England!

All of that is history. But for a family that escaped the British royal family under James I,my feelings are: put the present royal ones on a simple retirement pension, seize the holdings and sell them or make museums of them, and let England become a democracy.

Learn more about this author, William Cobbs.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.

Add your voice

Know something about Has the British Royal Family become irrelevant??
We want to hear your view. Write now!