When we say kings, queens and monarchy, we immediately think of sword fights, public executions, men in tights with music playing in the background with parallel fifths and fourths, a fat, arrogant man sitting on a throne surrounded by gold looted from conquered cities. We think that those days of kings and queens are in the past.
However, they have never been so close to us.
Once one of the most powerful nations now drowning in its own economic slump powered by unnecessary inflation, the U.K., in fact, has a queen as their leader.
Today was Queen's Day (actually to be King's Day from now on because the current queen has left the throne for his son), a special day in the Netherlands to celebrate the birthday of their queen and the previous queens.
So, opposing contrary belief and our conditioning, kings and queens do play an important role in our society.
And you could argue about what's wrong with that. The glitch in this system is that nobody wants to give up their supreme and unquestioned power; moreover, everyone wants to obtain that power. Because when you're the king or the queen of a nation, you are at the top, you don't take orders from anyone; only mere suggestions posed at "your grace", and, well, if you don't like their suggestions, Off with their heads! OK, maybe not necessarily decapitation in 2013, but you get the gist.
The honorable and right thing to do is to give up the throne when you've had enough time under the limelight and enough glory to carry on with you, to pass on the throne to your descendants to let them rule the country for a while, not to cling on to it until you can barely walk and until your son gets to the age you should have left the throne at.
But again, being drunk from the wine of power is irresistible, and the wine is just too, too sweet to give up.
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