Kings and Classes

MIDDLE CLASS GIRL MARRYING INTO MIDDLE CLASS FAMILY

A recent TV programme gave details of the family of Miss Kate Middleton who will soon be marrying Prince William.  This shows a totally normal though boring family and on the female side goes from coal miner to Princess in four generations.  (This is surely a proof of "Social Mobility" - a non-problem if ever there was one.)  But the Royals?  How dare I call them middle class?  Alors mes enfants.  Un peu d'histoire.  (Pay attention, Dave.)

The last King of England to be English was Richard III.  After that we had the Welsh who were hard working expansionists and ended in a burst of glory from a woman.  She was childless so we had to have the Scots.  The first one gave us the Bible tho he believed in witches while the second one collected paintings and had his head chopped off.  The third Scottish king was much more fun, had many mistresses and presided over a sudden burst of scientific enlightenment.  Next we had a very disappointing Roman Catholic who was succeeded by a Dutchman.  Then came the Germans and they have ocupied the position of sovereign ever since.

The Hanoverians were eccentric in a kingly sort of way and one succeeded in going mad, another was very fat and collected paintings, a third spent a happy time in the Navy and was a patron of every brothel in the Carribean.  After this we had another woman who married a German with a enthusiasm for the modern industrial world.  Up to this time they had all been fairly aristocratic but in Victorian times they started to slip and were sneered at by the oldest families in the land.  We still have the Hanoverian court but they have been steadily going down in the class struggle. One of them had a beard and collected stamps while another married an American divorcee but their interests are now straightforward middle class.  They engage in outdoor sports, shun the arts and are devoted to dogs and horses.  None of them is wildly eccentric so they go down well with populace as a whole who are either middle class themselves or aspire to be middle class.

When George Orwell remarked that he was lower upper middle class, he was of course making a joke.  As a friend of mine remarked, "There are more classes in England than there are in India."  At least we don't have 'untouchables'; we just waste a lot of time brooding about our own position. I wish the young couple well and hope she has a boy.