As an American recently living in the UK, the idea of the monarchy is alien and foreign and completely un-American. I guess all those 4th of July fireworks has conditioned me to reflexively reject the ideas of unelected kings and queens.
Monarchy and slavery are two sides of the same coin. Ancient and peculiar institutions developed during a pre-industrial agrarian society. It is the last remaining and accepted vestige of medieval European Feudalism.
The Monarchy is also a religious office as the Queen is the head of the Church of England and its Anglican and Episcopalian branches around the world.
William and Kate arrive in Jamaica to be met by protests calling for reparations from British monarchy
www.theguardian.com/…
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge arrived in Jamaica tonight amid protests and impassioned calls for them to apologize for the monarchy’s role in slavery.
Campaigners and leading politicians on the Caribbean island said Prince William and Kate’s visit was “ill-timed and ill-conceived”.
The island nation is odds on to be the next British realm to dump the Queen as head of state, following on from Barbados which last year officially became a republic.
www.mirror.co.uk/…
The Queen has ruled over Britain longer than any other monarch and has seen more cultural and institutional changes throughout her reign than any other monarch. She has been the head of the Commonwealth since she ascended to the throne back in 1952. It has long been an integral part of her life - but now the monarch has been rocked by the declaration of independence by Caribbean nation Barbados.
www.express.co.uk/...
At it’s height of power, the British monarchy once reigned over a vast globe-spanning colonial empire. After a series of independence movements, most of the newly freed far-off nations kept the tradition of monarchy under the auspices of “Commonwealth”, a political association of 54 member states, almost all of which are former territories of the British Empire.
In the UK, the British monarchy traces its origins from the petty kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England and early medieval Scotland, which consolidated into the kingdoms of England and Scotland by the 10th century. England was conquered by the Normans in 1066, after which Wales also gradually came under the control of Anglo-Normans.
So, after a 1,000 years of existence I believe that the monarchy will end with the death of Elizabeth II. The Commonwealth will all peal away, followed by the home nations of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales as they all slip away from the UK.
In the end it will just be the Republic of England.