Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:The thing I appreciate about the English monarchy is that they withstood the revolutions that swept Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries. For all their faults, I feel that they served as a force for stability that helped the UK avoid disasters like the French and Bolshevik Revolutions, and helped the UK avoid insanities like fascism.
The Queen was kind of boring and ambivalent about change, which is pretty reflective of the British national character. It's served them pretty well.
Someone brave enough to take the contrarian position that overthrowing a monarchy is a disaster.
PP. I guess it depends on the monarchy being overthrown and the people doing the overthrowing. The Russian monarchy was bad enough that Bolshevism looked better, to some people. Given the disastrous state of Russia in 1917, I can't blame people for wanting a change. Of course, we can see with hindsight how badly that turned out.
The Brits have always kind of muddled on, taking a middling path. No one has been able to make a strong enough case (since Cromwell at least) that getting rid of the monarchy would lead to improvement. And, by the time the era of revolutions rolled around, the English monarchy had lost a lot of power compared to their Continental cousins.