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Among Europe’s Ex-Royals

theatlantic.com

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Re: Among Europe’s Ex-Royals

#31

Post by verisimi »

LAC-Tech wrote: post #22
verisimi wrote: post #2

Quoted post unavailable.

Comments like this irritate me to no end. The OP hand waves away centuries of good, bad and indifferent history, in many countries, with a single pithy comment, and people act like that's insightful. It's barely even worth acknowledging. Don't encourage sassy reddit one liners.

I, the OP, understand why you could be irritated.

In fairness to myself, as someone who holds to individual sovereign autonomy as the only morally acceptable governing principle, I was being consistent!

I don't accept the assumed right of government or of kings to rule over another, or me specifically. Our deferral to people we are taught are our betters, whose pronouncements we unreflectively accept as akin to the word of God, has always been the problem. The solution is individual autonomy.

You may disagree with my view of course, but my one line 'sassy' comment was earnest and in keeping with my position!

Re: Among Europe’s Ex-Royals

#32

Post by tsupiroti »

speeder wrote: post #6
verisimi wrote: post #2

Quoted post unavailable.

I am from Brazil... The monarchs here been very useful: 1. Pedro I declared our independence, and later helped Portugal with some crap and became known there as Pedro the Liberator. 2. Pedro II believed in technology, half of all railways in Brazil was built during his reign, he installed the second telephone in the world in Brazil (the first was obviously, Graham Bell`s one), built a research centre in the same plac…

The someone was Pedro's brother Miguel. After losing the war, he was banished and his descendents removed from the succession line, but they now claim to be heirs to the throne of Portugal (which nobody really cares about).

This all happened after the royal family escaped the French invasions to Brazil and Rio de Janeiro became the capital of Portugal. The story of Pedro, the independence of Brazil and the Portuguese liberal wars is really interesting.

Re: Among Europe’s Ex-Royals

#33

Post by dathinab »

diegoholiveira wrote: post #12
speeder wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am from Brazil... The monarchs here been very useful: 1. Pedro I declared our independence, and later helped Portugal with some crap and became known there as Pedro the Liberator. 2. Pedro II believed in technology, half of all railways in Brazil was built during his reign, he installed the second telephone in the world in Brazil (the first was obviously, Graham Bell`s one), built a research centre in the same plac…

> The advantage of democracy, in theory, is that there is less violence to choose who is the next ruler... That said our current president was stabbed during elections, a former president was in prison for a while, and politicians here have a knack of having very weird deaths in inopportune moments... I think you wanna say “the advantage of a republic” because a monarchy doesn’t mean lack of democracy. Many europeans…

They are not really monarchies, they are democracies with a small amount of monarchic elements.

Monarchy in my understanding implies the rule of the monarch.

The Monarchs in most EU countries do not rule, through some have some restricted political influence.

I think the UK might be an exception, where as far as I remember the royalty still theoretically holds pretty much all the power just politely decide to pretend they don't know they still rule. But that might be a misconception of mine.

Re: Among Europe’s Ex-Royals

#34

Post by ravi-delia »

evgen wrote: post #15
hulitu wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And before that ? When Franco was in power ? What did he do ?

The failed coup attempt was in 1981. Franco died in '75. Is history really this hard for some people?

Clearly the person you responded to wasn't asking what Franco did for that particular coup. Having ceded that one king did one useful thing, they pointed out that another was...perhaps less helpful.

Re: Among Europe’s Ex-Royals

#35

Post by B1FF_PSUVM »

tsupiroti wrote: post #32
speeder wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am from Brazil... The monarchs here been very useful: 1. Pedro I declared our independence, and later helped Portugal with some crap and became known there as Pedro the Liberator. 2. Pedro II believed in technology, half of all railways in Brazil was built during his reign, he installed the second telephone in the world in Brazil (the first was obviously, Graham Bell`s one), built a research centre in the same plac…

The someone was Pedro's brother Miguel. After losing the war, he was banished and his descendents removed from the succession line, but they now claim to be heirs to the throne of Portugal (which nobody really cares about). This all happened after the royal family escaped the French invasions to Brazil and Rio de Janeiro became the capital of Portugal. The story of Pedro, the independence of Brazil and the Portuguese…

Make that hugely amusing. The absolutist king, Miguel, had the common people's support. The liberals were basically a bourgeois minority.

It took a foreign invasion - Pedro travelled around in English ships, and his troops had a mercenary backbone - to "liberate" Portugal.

The more it changes, the more it's the same.

Re: Among Europe’s Ex-Royals

#36

Post by diegoholiveira »

dathinab wrote: post #33
diegoholiveira wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The advantage of democracy, in theory, is that there is less violence to choose who is the next ruler... That said our current president was stabbed during elections, a former president was in prison for a while, and politicians here have a knack of having very weird deaths in inopportune moments... I think you wanna say “the advantage of a republic” because a monarchy doesn’t mean lack of democracy. Many europeans…

They are not really monarchies, they are democracies with a small amount of monarchic elements. Monarchy in my understanding implies the rule of the monarch. The Monarchs in most EU countries do not rule, through some have some restricted political influence. I think the UK might be an exception, where as far as I remember the royalty still theoretically holds pretty much all the power just politely decide to pretend…

> They are not really monarchies, they are democracies with a small amount of monarchic elements.

The king is the head of state, so how this is not a monarchy?

> Monarchy in my understanding implies the rule of the monarch.

There are two types of monarchies:

- constitucional, like belgium, netherlands, norway and japan

- absolute: saudi arabia and the vatican city.

Re: Among Europe’s Ex-Royals

#37

Post by Biologist123 »

madaxe_again wrote: post #26

Small correction to the article - Alexander Karađorđević is not crown Prince of Serbia, but of Yugoslavia. I went to school with his sons, we were in the same house, same year - they went by “Prince” rather than Karađorđević - quite a few kids had fictitious surnames to avoid attention. They were regular and likeable dudes, liked skating, cars, hip-hop, bad 80’s movies, games. Nobody cared that they were princes, or…

Thanks for this post. Not standard fare for HN. May I ask - do you ever laugh at the weirdness of it all? That hundreds or even thousands of years ago, a bunch of cut throats and thugs started to give themselves cute names, and - cut to the present - all of the United Kingdom bows and scrapes in deference to their descendants who still sport those made up titles? From the inside - which more or less is your position as a baronet - does this feel more or less peculiar? Do you ever just think, WTF? How did we get to this?

Re: Among Europe’s Ex-Royals

#38

Post by solveit »

dathinab wrote: post #33
diegoholiveira wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The advantage of democracy, in theory, is that there is less violence to choose who is the next ruler... That said our current president was stabbed during elections, a former president was in prison for a while, and politicians here have a knack of having very weird deaths in inopportune moments... I think you wanna say “the advantage of a republic” because a monarchy doesn’t mean lack of democracy. Many europeans…

They are not really monarchies, they are democracies with a small amount of monarchic elements. Monarchy in my understanding implies the rule of the monarch. The Monarchs in most EU countries do not rule, through some have some restricted political influence. I think the UK might be an exception, where as far as I remember the royalty still theoretically holds pretty much all the power just politely decide to pretend…

> I think the UK might be an exception, where as far as I remember the royalty still theoretically holds pretty much all the power just politely decide to pretend they don't know they still rule.

I would say that it is the rest of the country politely pretending that the Queen actually holds the enormous power she is legally entitled to. It is the law that is a polite fiction.

Re: Among Europe’s Ex-Royals

#39

Post by jacquesm »

evgen wrote: post #15
hulitu wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And before that ? When Franco was in power ? What did he do ?

The failed coup attempt was in 1981. Franco died in '75. Is history really this hard for some people?

> Is history really this hard for some people?

No harder than civility is for others.

Re: Among Europe’s Ex-Royals

#40

Post by bonzini »

ravi-delia wrote: post #34
evgen wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The failed coup attempt was in 1981. Franco died in '75. Is history really this hard for some people?

Clearly the person you responded to wasn't asking what Franco did for that particular coup. Having ceded that one king did one useful thing, they pointed out that another was...perhaps less helpful.

Spain had been a republic for almost 10 years when Franco took power. For most of the years when Franco was in power the king had no real powers even though Spain was again formerly a monarchy. Once Juan Carlos was named heir to the throne, he publicly supported Franco while secretly planning the return of exiled politicians and resumption of democracy. He was pretty badass overall.

Maybe you're confusing it with Italy?

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