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Post by whollygoats on Jun 24, 2016 13:10:39 GMT
Really? How many aspiring princesses faced a fate of single-motherhood and penury as a alternative to marrying the heir apparent? Ha, ha, very funny. It's easy to be snide about glaringly inappropriate false dichotomies.
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Post by spaceflower on Jun 24, 2016 14:31:19 GMT
You can be both an unmarried mother and marry a prince. Mette-Marit married the Norwegian prince Haakon Magnus and she will be queen one day. But I don't think she was that poor.
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Post by kingedmund on Jun 25, 2016 14:16:26 GMT
I don't buy the 'they bring in tourists' line anyway. Says who? France gets loads of tourists - as many or more than us, I would imagine - and they did away with their monarchy. I simply don't believe that people come here because we have a Queen. Personally I think it must be hell. Imagine not being able to do anything at all, not able to have any real friends, not able to express an opinion on anything, ever. They are prisoners. None of my friends visited the UK or anyplace in Europe because of Royal Family's. My generation just doesn't pay attention to it at all. Once we get Randy's health on track we will be visiting one of these days. Into really interested in all that. We r going because I have friends in different places of Europe. So no. I don't buy it either.
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Post by whollygoats on Jun 25, 2016 14:48:40 GMT
You can be both an unmarried mother and marry a prince. Mette-Marit married the Norwegian prince Haakon Manus and she will be queen one day. But I don't think she was that poor. Any female can be an unmarried mother. My skepticism arises from the 'penury' claim. I find it highly unlikely that any member of any high profile and widely accepted royal family would engage a woman who were far enough from the social class of the royal family to make the possibility of that young mother being cast in to penury if she were rebuffed by the suitor from a royal family. The overwhelming majority of brides betrothed to royal scions come from wealthy titled families...or, just wealthy families.
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Post by Moose on Jun 26, 2016 18:30:06 GMT
I think that it is simply bred into the Royal family to mate with those of a similar social class. Much is made of the fact that Kate Middleton is supposedly 'middle-class' .. well, to me, she is not. She is from a very wealthy (albeit nouveau riche) family, she attended an elite school and, despite having working class relatives on her mother's side she has aristocratic connections on her father's (I believe she and William are actually distant relatives).
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Post by ProdigalAlan on Jun 26, 2016 18:52:50 GMT
It's understandable. Most people bond together with people they have a shared background and interests with.
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Post by Moose on Jun 26, 2016 19:37:26 GMT
*nods*.
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Post by whollygoats on Jun 26, 2016 22:31:50 GMT
I think that it is simply bred into the Royal family to mate with those of a similar social class. Much is made of the fact that Kate Middleton is supposedly 'middle-class' .. well, to me, she is not. She is from a very wealthy (albeit nouveau riche) family, she attended an elite school and, despite having working class relatives on her mother's side she has aristocratic connections on her father's (I believe she and William are actually distant relatives). My understanding is that 'middle class' means anybody not of the titled class with money. No papers, just money. This, I understand, has been a broadening trend in recent history, where titled aristocracy marries in to the wealthy emerging nouveau riche families...and things like 'life peerages' arose. Those are the 'uppity middle class'...the 'climbers'. The ambitious rise, the reckless are crushed upon the rocks of risk and bad judgment and sink. The rate of boil in the UK, of late, has been slower than in North America, where the aristocratic twit stuff doesn't tend to hold sway. We have an entirely separate 'class' issue. Hazier...a bit more delusional, too.
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Post by Moose on Jun 26, 2016 23:38:39 GMT
I think that the definition of class is rather different here in the UK. It's nothing to do with money - more to do with education, accent and to an extent location. Ain't saying I agree with it, just that that is what it is
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Post by whollygoats on Jun 27, 2016 3:09:55 GMT
I think that the definition of class is rather different here in the UK. It's nothing to do with money - more to do with education, accent and to an extent location. Ain't saying I agree with it, just that that is what it is Oh, I quite understand that, but it is my understanding that the toffs started marrying in to untitled money to get access to more money to support their unsupportable lifestyles. It evidently beats (or augments) charging admission to tour the manor and renting out the summer house to upstarts.
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Post by spaceflower on Feb 3, 2018 0:54:35 GMT
Prince William and Kate have visited Crown princess Victoria and Daniel in Sweden. The Swedish papers tell us that the British royalties are a bit haughty and stuck-up towards the royalties of Sweden. Britain was an empire, Sweden is small and insignificant. Therefore no British royalty bothered to visit the wedding of Crown princess Victoria and Daniel (a man of the people) whereas the Swedish royalty visited the wedding of William and Kate. Once Daniel and Carl Philip (Victoria's younger brother) were in London and met William. They greeted him but he did not return their greeting. He did not recognize them. This attitude among Britons (we are an empire) may be one reason for Brexit... Here is a picture of the two royal couples in Stockholm: www.vogue.com/article/sweden-princess-victoria-hosting-prince-william-and-kate-middleton
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Post by tangent on Feb 3, 2018 1:04:28 GMT
The Swedish papers tell us that the British royalties are a bit haughty and stuck-up towards the royalties of Sweden. How can they tell? I suspect the Swedish papers are imagining it. I doubt very much it has come from the Swedish people themselves.
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Post by juju on Feb 3, 2018 9:13:16 GMT
Newspapers are full of rubbish, they like to put a spin on things. I'm not a follower of the royals, but everything I've seen suggests that the younger ones are very down to earth and friendly. This idea that the British are all stuck-up is just a stereotype, like Americans being loud, Irish being drunks etc. I don't think people in Britain think much in terms of 'empire' any more. Like Trump supporters, the more right-wing brexit supporters talk about Britain being 'great' again, but they are in a minority. Even many brexit supporters acknowledge that we'll be worse off, and most sane people think it's ridiculous.
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Post by Moose on Feb 4, 2018 20:13:45 GMT
Yeah .. I am not a Royalist either but I just can't see William completely ignoring someone that he knew, whether they were royal or not.
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Post by spaceflower on May 19, 2018 11:03:29 GMT
The British are obsessed with their royalties, I read.
Today I'm obsessed too. Or rather obsessed with the frocks and hats the female guests are wearing.
No politicians or European royalties at the wedding of prince Harry and Meghan Markle. Only upper class and celebreties, like George Clooney and his wife Amal, David Beckham and Victoria etc.
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Post by whollygoats on May 19, 2018 11:05:00 GMT
Hey....When you're awake at 3 am, it's really nice that a bunch of swells there in Britland are willing to shovel a load of matrimonial hooey on to the telly.
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Post by whollygoats on May 19, 2018 11:47:54 GMT
Prince William and Kate have visited Crown princess Victoria and Daniel in Sweden. The Swedish papers tell us that the British royalties are a bit haughty and stuck-up towards the royalties of Sweden. Britain was an empire, Sweden is small and insignificant. Therefore no British royalty bothered to visit the wedding of Crown princess Victoria and Daniel (a man of the people) whereas the Swedish royalty visited the wedding of William and Kate. Once Daniel and Carl Philip (Victoria's younger brother) were in London and met William. They greeted him but he did not return their greeting. He did not recognize them. This attitude among Britons (we are an empire) may be one reason for Brexit... Here is a picture of the two royal couples in Stockholm: www.vogue.com/article/sweden-princess-victoria-hosting-prince-william-and-kate-middletonSweden? Never an empire? That's not what the Poles say. I suspect the Lithuanians, Danes, Estonians, Latvians, and Norwegians all have variant means of challenging such a spurious assumption. Let's not even bring the Finns in to the discussion, if we wish to remain civil. Does the name Gustavus Adolphus ring any bells? Or, how about Axel Oxenstierna, doesn't he count? This little easy-to-find snippet on wiki might be helpful in jogging your memories of the history classes you dozed through: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Empire
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Post by spaceflower on May 19, 2018 12:23:07 GMT
That was a very long time ago. The British empire lasted longer and was bigger, Ireland, Canada, West Indies, Kenya, South Africa, India, Burma, Australia, New Zealand etc. Not to mention the 13 colonies which became USA.
I bet the Estonians suffered less during Swedish rule than under Soviet. Norway was in a union with Sweden, they were not a colony. The union ended peacefully in 1901. The Finns were Swedish citiizens with the same rights as other Swedish citizens. The Russian empire took Finland from Sweden. The Danes under Kristian II (called Kristian Tyrant in Sweden) occupied Sweden, not the other way around. Later Sweden took Skåne etc from Denmark. Sweden and Denmark fought 11 wars, I can't see this as a proof of a Swedish empire.
Above all, this was such a long time ago so that it is not a part of our image or self-identification. There is no Swedish commonwealth.
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Post by whollygoats on May 19, 2018 16:27:48 GMT
Every empire has its day. The Swedish one was descending whilst the British one was ascending. And, Sweden, too, established colonies overseas; in North America, even.
Just because you don't happen to think Sweden was as imperious as the Britons, doesn't mean they weren't masters of an empire....they were. Whether the Swedes were rather better imperial overlords than somebody else is beside the question...They were still imperial overlords.
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Post by spaceflower on May 19, 2018 22:01:49 GMT
Well, being an empire seemed just to give the Swedish people a lot of suffering. Soldiers dying abroad, or coming home maimed. Their women struggling to survive on their own. Prisoners of war in Russia for a long time. And if Sweden was an empire, then Denmark was too (Norway, Iceland and Greenland). And of course Netherlands, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Russia, Turkey were also empires.
But my point was that the British royalty seems uninterested in European royalty. The ought to have the same experiences and problems to share. They are also related. But maybe the British royalty don't acknowledge their relatives abroad. I read that king George V refused to give his first cousin tsar Nicholas and his family asylum. So he, his wife and five children were all executed in Siberia instead.
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Post by Moose on May 19, 2018 22:12:41 GMT
I think there were other ROyals from different countries at the wedding today, though I did not watch it myself. Maybe the Queen just thinks she is better than them It must be difficult knowing who curtsies to who.
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Post by tangent on May 19, 2018 22:20:39 GMT
I watched the wedding and found it more interesting than the coronation in 1953, when I was 9.
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Post by whollygoats on May 19, 2018 22:36:30 GMT
Who knew the Swedes had such a chip on their shoulders?
I would have never guessed. I would have figured that they'd be smug about not being dragged in to Europe's twentieth century donnybrooks and wouldn't give a fig about whether their useless aristocracy was being snubbed by worthless royalty from elsewhere. I'm beginning to suspect they need something more productive to fret about....
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Post by tangent on May 20, 2018 10:23:38 GMT
Returning to the original subject, decrying the Royal Family and wanting to get rid of the monarchy would appear to be cool these days, and being a royalist is decidedly uncool especially if you are a Labour Party supporter. And yet, I noticed that the nine most popular articles people were reading on the BBC website yesterday were about the royal wedding. It seems strange that royalty remains hugely popular but the majority of the population don't like to admit it. Unless, of course, only royalists read the BBC website.
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Post by whollygoats on May 20, 2018 11:34:59 GMT
Returning to the original subject, decrying the Royal Family and wanting to get rid of the monarchy would appear to be cool these days, and being a royalist is decidedly uncool especially if you are a Labour Party supporter. And yet, I noticed that the nine most popular articles people were reading on the BBC website yesterday were about the royal wedding. It seems strange that royalty remains hugely popular but the majority of the population don't like to admit it. Unless, of course, only royalists read the BBC website. Tangent....Just to remind you: People slow down to gawk at gruesome auto accidents, too. Is that because gruesome auto accidents are 'hugely popular' and they support them? Doubtful. I think it far more likely that most people enjoy a spectacle, whether they approve of it or not.
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Post by tangent on May 20, 2018 14:35:28 GMT
Delighted or disgusted, people will look at things... but not if they're bored.
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Post by Miisa on May 20, 2018 15:26:54 GMT
As circuses go, this is pretty benign and light-hearted, and the masses will famously always need circuses, let people enjoy this. If they are not provided with entertainment they will make it, and often not so positive stuff. You may wish to argue that it is in their best interest to invent it themselves, but I am not so sure. I will take the royals over the Kardashians any day.
I suspect the American vs. European take on this is more a focus on individuals (basically libertarian) over society as a whole (socialist) than so much a republican vs. monarchist view.
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Post by spaceflower on May 20, 2018 19:42:14 GMT
And I will take the unpolitical royalties over Trump any day, when it comes to unite people.
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Post by spaceflower on May 20, 2018 19:48:05 GMT
Who knew the Swedes had such a chip on their shoulders? I would have never guessed. I would have figured that they'd be smug about not being dragged in to Europe's twentieth century donnybrooks and wouldn't give a fig about whether their useless aristocracy was being snubbed by worthless royalty from elsewhere. I'm beginning to suspect they need something more productive to fret about.... I see a pattern. The British royalty does not want to invite any European royalty, they prefer their own upper class and Hollywood celebrities Many Brits do not want to be part of EU, they prefer to turn to USA and the Commonwealth Many Brits want to leave ESC, they are not interested in Europe any more (though still geographically a part of Europe)
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Post by spaceflower on May 20, 2018 20:00:03 GMT
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