Hampton Court Palace and Royalty: I Don't Quite Get It

They have a Queen here. I find it all extremely un-American. They've been at this having-royalty for a long, long time in England and it seems that the locals still aren't tired of it. Lots of European countries had this system back in the day but most of them have either abandoned it completely or have back-burnered their royalty to a status more akin to that of a talent-less celebrity. Not so the case here; the royals are 100% A –list. Americans are a sucker for the royals too. We might not go quite as crazy as the Brits, but based on the news coverage of the most recent royal birth, we have an inordinately healthy appetite for the lives and loves of royalty.

Personally, I've never been too interested in British royalty. My early exposure was limited to the soundtrack recording of the movie Camelot, the Adventures of Robin Hood, which pitted a scrappy outlaw against the monarchical establishment , and then when I was in high school, the marriage of Prince Charles and Lady Diana. I guess I can see the fairy tale appeal of Charles and Diana in satisfying a certain kind of vicarious fantasy-fulfillment for girls raised on Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty.  But frankly, I found the stand-in for Price Charming to be a letdown.

I was casually sympathetic toward Diana during the whole Camilla Bowles/divorce scandal. It seemed like she was a nice enough person who fell in with a bad crowd and then just wanted out.

That fairy tale came to a happily-never- after end with her tragic death – killed by paparazzi. At the time to me it seemed an awful lot of hue and cry over a car accident. About 100 people are tragically killed in car accidents every day in the US and Elton John doesn't phone-in a lyric rewrite for any of them.

And so my confusion remains: What makes the UK royals so special? These are just really rich people who have done nothing to earn their position besides springing forth from the right loins – not any different than Paris Hilton or any other socialite, trust-funder, professional shopper. And yet when they get married or have a baby it’s considered international news.

We went to Hampton Court Palace over the past weekend – one of England’s premier royalty theme parks. It is a pretty sweet crib, beautiful and majestic.

I was hoping to learn a bit about the history of the monarchy – maybe to help me to better understand what’s so appealing about these kings and queens. Well, in case you didn't know, Hampton Court Palace was most famously inhabited by Henry VIII.

Henry VIII is at the top of Kings and Queens I had ever heard of. I did a little research to bone up on Fatty McKillyourwife and a few other famous royals from history:

Henry VIII:

Despotic douchebag, serial murderer and religious reformer – although arguably his interest in single-handedly converting an entire country of Catholics into Protestants was motivated by a personal agenda to swap the used up old wife for a new one with a more likely uterus. That second wife was the famous Anne Boleyn, who he beheaded a couple of years later. He got married again less than two weeks after the head removal to his third wife who later died in childbirth. He waited two years, then married another gal, but had that marriage annulled, married again, cut her head off, then married a sixth time to a woman who to outlived him, and therefore managed to not get her head cut off. (An interesting side note: on one particularly sympathetic website, it’s stated that he “agreed” to the beheading of two of his wives. I didn't know kings were so suggestible.)

Henry VIII didn't just cut off ladies heads and get divorces. He had many “accomplishments”, although several of them could be interpreted as pretty nasty. For example, he started several wars with France. In his defense I think this was just something that the British did as a matter of course for much of their history, so it could just be chalked up to force of habit.

He also increased the power of parliament and took the holdings of the Catholic Church and returned them to Rome. Oh wait, no. He kept them for England, actually. A little Robin Hood action there – steal from the rich and give to the slightly less rich.

Richard the Lionheart:

I knew him as the “good King” from Robin Hood. He is mostly renowned as the military leader of the Third Crusade. OK, I’d say that’s a somewhat dubious claim to fame: religion-fueled aggression against Muslims. In the whole Muslim vs. Christian meme, it’s safe to say Richard’s popping down from Europe to wage war in the Middle East didn't do much to help prevent the subsequent 800 years of ill-will.
   
Queen Elizabeth I: 

She was the daughter of Henry VIII and his first murder victim, Anne Boleyn. So, that’s bound to make for a stable and well-adjusted attitude toward love and marriage. Perhaps not coincidentally, her nickname was “The Virgin Queen”. She got to be Queen after one rival was murdered and she herself was imprisoned by her own sister for a year. Her claim to fame, besides not getting it on, was ruling for a long time (44 years) during the aptly named Elizabethan period, which is well-known for the aptly named Elizabethan drama.

More examples abound of murdering family members, betrayal, persecution of Jews and Muslims and other atrocities on the parts of British royals and yet they remain a fixture of the British culture and a point of national pride. Go figure.

Of course, Americans are no stranger to this kind of selective blindness. After all, we do have a mass murderer on our $20 bill.