Accidental Lessons from Hollywood on Monarchy

The 1939 film "Juarez", a biopic of Mexico's most famous president, is well worth looking at for monarchists, even if that seems odd. Juarez is upheld as the 'Abraham Lincoln of Mexico' and this point is driven home hard in the film to the extent that Juarez is rarely seen on-screen without a portrait of Lincoln in the background. It is a love letter to Benito Juarez and makes no apologies for that. However, it does not vilify Emperor Maximilian and Empress Carlota either. Being all about deifying Juarez, it certainly is against the monarchy and their very presence in Mexico, however, it spares the idealistic couple and focuses its wrath on the French Emperor Napoleon III. From the perspective of this film, Napoleon was the real villain, a wicked tyrant on a mission to eradicate democracy and republicanism in the New World whereas the handsome young couple, Maximilian and Carlota, are pitiable dupes; good people tricked into an "evil" enterprise by a manipulative Frenchman. Because of this, the Emperor actually comes off as a rather sympathetic figure. For a broad overview of the film, you can read a review of it here.

For me, one part of the film, two scenes, really stand out as being worthwhile, though they will be of most benefit only to those who know their history and in light of the events of our own time. In the first, Emperor Maximilian comes to meet with the captured rebel General Porfirio Diaz in his prison cell, in an effort to convince him to take a message to his president, offering to make Juarez the Prime Minister of the Mexican Empire. Emperor Maximilian has some very good lines as he makes the case for having a free and liberal society with a benevolent monarch at its head as a sort of safety valve. He presents such a good case that he seems to have won Diaz over and convinced him that the Emperor is a man of sincerity who wants the same things for Mexico that Juarez wants and Diaz goes to deliver this message to the President along with his offer to make Juarez his premier and allow him to run the government of Imperial Mexico. The next scene is Juarez, with kindly bemusement, listening to the naive, young general who has been duped by Maximilian. Juarez then starts preaching the republican gospel to Porfirio and showing him the error of his ways.

This scene, coming after the heartfelt speech of Emperor Maximilian in the previous one, is enough to make any monarchist who is familiar with the history of republicanism, and Mexico in particular, roar with laughter at how Hollywood inadvertently shows just how painfully wrong Juarez was in all of his speechifying on the glories of democracy. In the first place, they make much about the constitution that Juarez wrote, however, any honest historian of the period knows that Juarez himself violated the constitution he wrote on numerous occasions. Part of what makes constitutions ultimately worthless is that they can only do good if they are adhered to voluntarily, which could be done without them, and they have no power on their own to prevent anyone from violating them. Even the United States is proof of that and it has a record better than most republics in that regard.

Juarez explains to poor, ignorant, Porfirio that Maximiliano duped him. When Diaz explained how honest and sincere the Emperor was, Juarez responds that, "virtue is a powerful weapon in the hands of an enemy" which is meant to sound "wise" but is absurd if you think about it for more than a second. It essentially says that Maximilian is wrong regardless of whether he is wicked or virtuous. He says that the unbridgeable gulf between himself and Maximilian is "democracy" and that this is the right of men to rule themselves. He explains that since a man never rules himself into bondage, freedom flows from democracy like the rivers flow from the mountains, just as naturally and serenely. This is, of course, quite hilarious given that Mexico itself democratically voted itself into bondage more than once. The PRI, for example, held tyrannical control over Mexico for the better part of the last century. Yet, the current President of Mexico was the leader of the PRI, voted back into power after a break of only two non-PRI presidents. It is also extremely laughable in the context of Juarez, a man who came to the presidency not by election, speaking to Porfirio Diaz who would go on to lead a rebellion against Juarez, then run for president himself, winning on the promise that he would serve only one term, only to then rule as dictator of Mexico for the next 35 years!

It is quite a howl that virtually everything Juarez and Diaz talk about in these scenes as being the major problems of their country; too much land owned by too few, a privileged elite prospering while the masses are impoverished, freedom of speech being suppressed, even selling out to foreign influences (such as the French) are ALL accusations made by many against General Diaz himself during his hold on power from 1877 to 1911 (with a small break in there). At the end of the scene, Juarez says, again -so profoundly, that when a monarch misrules, he changes the people but when a presidente misrules, the people change him. A perfect ending really, given that the liberal-democratic leaders of North America and Western Europe are doing precisely what Juarez said the wicked monarchs do, they are changing out their peoples for a new batch that will keep them in power. Irony doesn't begin to describe it. And yet, what is the final cherry on top of this heaping bowl full of republican hypocrisy? The fact that Juarez, the native Mexican fighting against an Austrian Emperor, was played by Paul Muni, real name Friedrich Meshilem Meier Weisenfreund, a Jew from Galicia in what was then Austria-Hungary. So, yes, instead of giving the part to a Mexican actor, Benito Juarez was played by an actor from Austria.

Oh Hollywood, you really are too much sometimes...

The Popes and the Emperors

As is not entirely unprecedented, I recently came across an historical fact about monarchy that is, evidently, somewhat controversial and I had no idea that it would be. This came up in response to my listing of a few facts about the history of Christianity and the Roman emperors, some of which I have talked about here before as a way of illustrating how central the imperial power was to the early Church. I was surprised, however, to receive some “push back” on the last fact I listed which was that for the first roughly six hundred years of Church history, every pope was the subject of the Roman emperors. I was told that I was “dreaming” this up but, rest assured, I am not. Evidently, this is something that needs to be talked about as, upon reflection, I think I might have an idea of where denial of this fact comes from, specifically for Catholics.

In the first place, you can check pretty much any historical source and find that the basic fact is just that; a fact. Starting with St Peter, every Bishop of Rome up to Pope Stephen II in 756 was, officially, a subject of the (later East) Roman Emperor. St Peter and the earliest bishops of Rome were all direct or indirect subjects of the Roman emperors. This was true whether they liked it or not but the fact of the matter is that they never made any objections to this. They were bound by Roman law and obeyed it so long as it did not force them to do anything contrary to Christian doctrine. They were loyal to the Roman emperors and never taught Christian people to be rebellious or called for a revolution to overthrow the Roman emperors. They did, as was written in the Bible, call for everyone to love their community, be good Romans, “fear God and honor the emperor”.

During the reign of Emperor Claudius, as had happened before and would happen again, the Jews were expelled from Rome and mention is made of this in the book of Acts concerning St Paul. Originally, the Romans considered Christians to be a sect of Judaism and St Paul, who was ethnically a Jew and a Roman citizen, became frustrated in trying to convert them and decided to accept their rejection and direct his efforts towards the Greeks and Romans. Later, in the reign of Emperor Nerva, we can see more evidence that the Christians submitted to imperial authority by the fact that they petitioned the emperor to stop forcing them to pay the tax that Jews had to pay as they were a different religion. At that time, the state still did not recognize Christianity as a valid religion but Emperor Nerva did order that Christians not be forced to pay the tax since they were not Jews. Official recognition of the Christian religion would not come until the issuing of the Edict of Milan by Emperor Constantine the Great. Later, Emperor Theodosius the Great would make Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire.

However, even during the reign of Emperor Constantine the Great, the emperor played an important part in Church life and it is hard to imagine this would have been the case if the Bishop of Rome rejected his authority as emperor. One could also look to the Emperor Gratian who handed his title of ‘Supreme Pontiff’ over to the pope which, again, he hardly would have done if the pope was objecting to his authority. In fact, it would make no sense for the pope to accept such a title unless he first recognized that the emperor lawfully possessed it and thus could hand it over to him. Indeed, in the early days of the Church, before rules had been standardized for such a process, the Roman emperors played a part in the selection of popes. Much of the history in this period is sparse and often debated but some argue that Pope Julius I was, for all intents and purposes, appointed by Emperor Constantine the Great. It is more widely conceded that the imperial power played at least some part in the selection of subsequent popes and in efforts to resolve disputes over who the pope should be.

The underlying point though is that the bishops of Rome were by virtue of being born in the Roman Empire or, later, baptized as Christians, subjects from birth of the Roman emperors and that did not change with their election or selection for the papal throne. When the last remnants of the Western Roman Empire fell with the forced abdication of Romulus Augustulus, this did not legally change. With no emperor in the west, quite understandably, the Eastern Roman Emperor assumed sole authority for the whole Roman world and still regarded the popes as his subjects in the temporal sphere and as shepherds in the spiritual sphere (though the East Roman Emperor never recognized Romulus so that the exiled Julius Nepos was regarded in the east as the “last” West Roman Emperor until his death). This culminated in an era which I have previously heard plenty of Catholics complain about but never deny which was the so-called “Byzantine Papacy”.

This term has been used to describe the period dating from the time that the East Roman Emperor Justinian set out to take back the territory of the Western Roman Empire from the various Germanic tribes which had conquered it. Emperor Justinian, during this time, basically came to Rome, fired Pope Silverius and appointed Vigilius to take his place. As you can imagine, this caused some controversy but, while many have little positive things to say about him, Pope Vigilius is regarded as a valid pope, included on every list of the bishops of Rome. Subsequent papal elections were confirmed by the Byzantine emperors which, I can imagine, some may find an intolerable idea but this is probably due simply to ill-will generated by the eventual east-west schism since this idea never really went away. After all, in the Roman Catholic west, ultimately a number of monarchs held the power to veto papal candidates they found objectionable, meaning that whoever was chosen must have been passively approved of (otherwise his election would have been vetoed). In fact, this imperial veto was used for the last time in the conclave of 1903 when the first choice, Cardinal Mariano Rampolla, was vetoed by Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph, resulting in the election of Pope St Pius X.

The so-called “Byzantine Papacy” did not end until the reign of Pope Stephen II in 756. Prior to that time, the gains of Emperor Justinian had been rolled back and what was referred to as the Duchy of Rome (legally part of the [eastern] Roman Empire) was under threat from the Lombards of northern Italy. Constantinople was unable to help and the Pope turned to the King of the Franks, Pepin, son of the famous Charles Martel, to come to his rescue. He did so, the Lombards were defeated and in the subsequent peace treaty, only the “Romans, Franks and Lombards” were signatories, the Byzantines being left out completely. After the Lombards broke the treaty, attacked again and were defeated again, the King of the Franks ceded territory he had conquered from the Lombards to Stephen II which subsequently became the Papal States. Legally speaking, and this is why I warn Catholics about always trying to play the “legitimist” game, all of this territory was still part of the empire, having been basically stolen from the Byzantine emperors as the last Roman emperors still standing.

Their power, however, was gone and would not be coming back. From that time on, the popes would look to the west rather than to the east. However, that they had previously been imperial subjects cannot be argued against. Into the reign of Pope Stephen II, if not slightly longer, records were still dated by imperial years and imperial coins were still minted and dated according to the East Roman Empire. The ultimate change, of course, came when Pope St Leo III crowned another Frankish monarch, Charlemagne, “Emperor of the Romans” on Christmas day in the year 800. Again, if one chooses to play the strictly “legitimist” game, this was out of order as it had never been up to the Bishop of Rome to decide who the Roman emperor should be. This is, however, all I have been able to come up with in determining the root reason of why anyone would deny that the popes prior to this time had all been subjects of the Roman emperors in spite of the obvious history. I shall relate my theory and you may comment below as to whether you think it holds any water.

In the east, Church and State were firmly united. In the west, they were united as well but also fairly consistently at odds with each other and I think the perception of this has grown worse in modern times. The idea developed in the west of the “two swords” approach with the emperor (this being the German emperor) having the secular sword and the pope having the spiritual sword. However, the popes maintained that their sword was bigger than the emperor’s sword and that they could take away his sword if they wanted to because they had given it to him in the first place. I think this is magnified in our time because, basically, *everything* is or can be argued from moral grounds so that any issue can be considered a moral issue and thus falling under papal jurisdiction. All I have been able to come up with, to put it another way, is that there is a revulsion by some Catholics to the idea that the Bishop of Rome could ever, even in temporal terms only, be “subject” to a higher power, again, even if that power is only higher in terms of worldly power and nothing at all to do with spiritual power.

The Church was born into the preexisting Roman Empire. As such, the Roman emperors came and went and the earliest Christians and Christian bishops, had nothing to say about the matter. When the Pope crowned Charlemagne, this created a new western empire, which eventually became the German empire (First Reich) under the magnificent Kaiser Otto the Great, and a sort of “new world order” of which I am rather fond. However, it also led to a succession of troubles, most famous being the “Investiture Dispute” as the popes and the German emperors quarreled over where their powers began and ended. This is because this new imperial system had been handed down by the pope and what the pope gave, naturally, the pope felt he could take away. This is something no pope could or ever tried to do with the east because the eastern imperial succession predated his own, going all the way back to the first Augustus who was the Augustus before Christ was born. The Byzantine (East Roman) emperors had to be converted, confronted or submitted to, they could not simply be dismissed or overruled by the popes.

I think, at least this has so far been all I can come up with, the underlying reason for any denial that the popes were ever subjects of the Roman emperors which, like it or not, is an objective fact. It seems to me that some have become too attached to the idea of the popes being temporal sovereigns as they were in the era of the Papal States and since the recognition of the State of Vatican City because this has been so heavily emphasized as being absolutely essential to the independent function of the papacy as an institution, that it would be impossible for Catholicism to function without the popes being a power unto themselves. Personally, I do not think this view an incontestable one. Certainly it did not prevent any and all secular influence and I cannot be the only one who was outraged at the number of clerics implicated in child sex abuse crimes who escaped justice by being transferred to the Vatican establishment and thus beyond the reach of any secular government. However, the fact is that the papacy did exist for quite a few centuries without any secular power of their own, as subjects of the Roman emperors and it did not mean that they were simply the tools of Rome or Constantinople. What it did mean was that they had only their personal piety and courage to rely on. Those who were persecuted, exiled or martyred, I think, shows that such devotion was not unknown just as, I think, the amount of secular praise heaped on the current pontiff shows that independent sovereignty does not prevent a pope from giving in to popular trends or influence from beyond the Vatican walls.

For Further Reading:
Centrality of the Roman Empire
Church and Empire
Christian Empire
The Tiburtine Sybil & Imperial Prophecy
Christ and the Emperor Tiberius
The Story of the Byzantine Empire

In Defense of Modern Monarchs

Monarchs today, specifically those in the western world, are increasingly taking criticism from the more right-leaning sections of society which have traditionally defended them. This is bad, in my view both for them and for society and I fear could be the beginning of something disastrous for the cause of traditional authority (just add it to the list). They are not, you will notice, being defended by the left-leaning sections of society as you might expect for anyone or anything being attacked from the right. You might have even thought you heard the left defending them but, sorry, you did not. The left will say they agree with a royal who agrees with them on global warming or open borders, tolerance and diversity and all that, they will applaud Prince Harry for marrying a mixed-race, divorced actress from America but they *never* defend the monarchy itself because they know, even if many on the right have forgotten, that monarchy by definition goes against their fundamental worldview and can never be reconciled with it. When modern royals parrot the leftist narrative, the leftists simply applaud them cutting their own throats.

What tends to upset people on the right today about modern royals is just a little contradictory. On the one hand, they do not like what many royals say and do but there are also those who do not like them because, as they say, they don’t actually “do” anything and are purely ceremonial. Personally, I have a problem with all of these things as well and wish that it were not so and these criticisms are not coming out of thin air. Most of, if not all, of the things that upset the right-wing critics of modern monarchs upset me as well, the difference is that none of it turns me against monarchy in general or any particular monarchy either. Modern royals have been placed in an extremely difficult position. They were told from birth that they must be above politics, can say or do nothing political only to then have the ever-expanding left-liberal state make absolutely everything political. They have also been taught in the same schools and by the same professors as the liberal elites who are making such a mess of things. Similarly, when they attend church, be it Protestant or Catholic, they hear the same narrative about diversity, inclusion, environmentalism and so on which their pastors, whether appointed by the Pope or politicians, are told to preach.

They do live in a bubble and these days it is a poison-filled bubble. Keeping all of this in mind, they are also told that they must “do” something to justify their position as the idea of a hereditary birthright is unthinkable in this day and age combined with the natural human desire to pursue some activity to avoid leading totally empty lives. Because the liberal elites who rule us do not, of course, actually mean the things that they say, modern royals have found that championing traditional or right-wing causes leads to condemnation for being “political”, this leaves only fashionable left-wing causes which they are allowed to pursue as the left certainly doesn’t object to this nor, these days, does the mainstream right or the so-called “conservatives” which pass for this in Europe today. All of this means that while I find many of the things that modern monarchs do or say unpalatable, it also means that I can find little room to blame them personally for it. It does not make me despise them but pity them and desire to rescue them from this left-liberal prison they have been born into.

The enemies of monarchy are happy to applaud royals when they do something detrimental to traditional authority or the survival of western civilization but they do so not because they believe in monarchy but because this is all part of their plan to undermine the most fundamental elements and institutions of western civilization in order to turn people against it. In other words, they want the defenders of traditional authority to believe that their cause is not worth defending at all and so they might as well give up. It reminds me, as I mentioned in a recent film review, of the scene in “1898 Los ultimos de Filipinas” which shows the Filipino rebels trying to persuade the Spanish garrison to surrender by telling them that their own government never showed much concern for them, forgot about them and sold the whole place to the Americans or, in other words, that they were fighting for leaders unworthy of their sacrifice. If it means ending opposition to them, these people will say or do anything and just as they have infiltrated and twisted the entertainment industry, education, government and the churches it is foolish to think they would stop short of their takeover of all culture and society at the foot of the monarchy.

As such, when the royals of today say something that infuriates me, I do not blame them but rather those who actually rule us as modern royals are in their power, unfortunately. When it comes to moral issues, if the King of Spain, the King of the Belgians, the Grand Duke of Luxembourg or the Princes of Monaco or Liechtenstein say something I find objectionable, I do not blame them but rather the Pope who is set above them and who, in the past when popes were crowned and acted like popes, was called, “the master of kings and princes, the ruler of the rulers of the world”. Similarly, when something like this comes from the Queens of Britain or Denmark or the Kings of The Netherlands, Norway or Sweden, I blame the politicians who pay and appoint the leaders of the churches who are supposed to pass on proper moral teaching to royals and commoners alike. One could also then cast an accusing eye toward the voting public who put these people in office and submit to their rule but that leads us to the other point, that royals today are simply ceremonial figureheads unworthy of serious consideration. Perish the thought!

No monarch in Europe today, save arguably the Pope as Sovereign of Vatican City, has much if any actual power. Some may have a slight degree of influence but that varies with governments and issues. Even the monarchs in Europe with the most power, the aforementioned Princes of Monaco and Liechtenstein, are not quite so powerful as they may appear. They are sovereign states but not really independent states given that they are micro-states which frankly couldn’t survive a grape embargo. They can exist only because their powerful neighbors allow them to. The huge population of Monaco would not be able to survive for a week without the food and other vital resources France allows to be passed through her borders to the tiny principality. Lest anyone think that one of these monarchs could stand up and defy the prevailing world order, consider the fate that befell countries like Rhodesia or South Africa which did the same, countries with things like farmland, room for livestock, mineral resources and fresh water. If Rhodesia could not survive the hostility of the international community, I fail to see how anyone could argue that Liechtenstein could.

It is clear then that modern European monarchs reign but absolutely do not rule. Why then should we care about them? We should care about them for the same reason that the republicans care about them; because of what they represent. For hardcore traditionalists, I would point to the many child monarchs of history who I have admitted before to having a fondness for. Obviously, it is not ideal to have a child monarch, the ideal being to have a mature, wise, moral and courageous monarch but, as I have related in the past, child monarchs have something to teach us. When Frenchman dropped to one knee before the 5-year-old King Louis XIV or when wrinkled Vietnamese mandarins kowtowed to the 8-year-old Emperor Duy Tan they knew perfectly well that such children had no power and would not actually be ruling the country but that, then as now, others would be ruling in their name. It was, rather, what they represented that was important, all of the culture, religion, traditions and the history of the nation that was bound up in the bloodline represented by the tiny child draped in regal robes before them.

One could view modern monarchs in much the same way as you might view an historic building such as an historic cathedral, once held sacred but which is today no more than a tourist attraction. The Palace of Versailles is another example, once the magnificent residence of a sacred regal line but which is today pimped out by the French republican government like a prostitute. The fact that trashy American celebrities can rent it out or that it can be used to host obscene and grotesque “art” exhibits should repulse us all but it should not make us wish to burn it down or allow it to crumble through neglect because it has been tainted by the wickedness of our time.

When I was a child, and it seems I may have been the last generation to experience this, even living in a very old republic far distant from any actual monarchies, my imagination was filled with castles, knights and kings (especially castles, I really had a thing for them in my earliest years -which hasn’t entirely gone away). I could not say specifically where this comes from but in my earliest memories I had the image firmly implanted in my mind, presumably from story books and cartoons of the good king being deceived by his wicked and manipulative prime minister. I can distinctly remember, though it was ages ago, before I had any knowledge at all of how modern monarchies worked or even if actual ones still existed, of the prime minister always being the villain of the story who had to be thwarted so that the good king, who naturally loved his people as a parent naturally loves their children, would see the true state of affairs and set things right. Later on I found out what a prime minister actually is and how the system actually works but I also do not think that trope to be entirely unfounded and I would urge monarchists, traditionalists, the rightfully disgruntled on the political right-wing, to view modern monarchs in the same way; as prisoners of a corrupt and wicked political elite who are manipulating them and who the truly loyal must rescue them from.

Church and Empire

Today, liberals love to talk about the “separation of church and state” as being something great, something which ended religious wars in the western world and which they take sole credit for. The more atheistic liberals think this is good because it prevents the state being dominated by organized religion and the religious liberals like it because it prevents the churches from being dominated by the government. In this regard, the religious liberals have a powerful arsenal to defend their case by pointing to the state churches of northern Europe which preach a pale, so watered down as to barely qualify as Christian form of Christianity and which practically no one attends as opposed to the United States where, while still rapidly declining, church attendance is comparatively robust. However, the problem with both arguments, though the atheistic liberals in particular, is that no separation of church and state really exists in the western world, even in America. To go even further, such a thing has rarely existed even from the beginnings of Christianity.

In virtually every major religion, church and state have almost always been very closely linked if not, in some cases, one and the same. This is true in Confucianism, Shinto in Japan, Buddhism in places from Mongolia and Tibet to Thailand and of course it is also true in Islam. Traditionally, it was true of Judaism, in a way even more so than in Islam as it was a religion, a way of life and a people. For Christianity the proponents of the separation of church and state usually point to Christ’s command to, “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s” as some sort of “proof” that Christianity uniquely requires a separation of church and state. Of course, that is both silly and nonsensical as religion tends to be about setting standards for what is right and wrong, what is good and evil and obviously no one is going to be okay with thinking that the way they do things is good but that the way the government does things is evil. In historical terms, Christianity did not remain separate from the state in the slightest for very long at all.

Emperor Constantine the Great

Christianity first became a legal religion, recognized and tolerated by the state, when Emperor Constantine the Great issued the Edict of Milan in 318AD. One only had to wait until 380AD for Christianity to become the official state religion of the Roman Empire by the order of Emperor Theodosius I. Yet, even before that happened and to be a Roman was to be a Christian, church and state were not kept separate at all. Emperor Constantine the Great, the first Christian Roman emperor, saw Church “interference” in the state with the Emperor changing Roman laws to reflect Christian morality such as by abolishing death by crucifixion, ending gladiatorial games and making Sunday a day of rest. Likewise, the Emperor also intervened in religious matters, most significantly by calling the First Council of Nicaea which famously produced the Nicene Creed which provided a simple definition of what Christianity was and what all Christians were expected to believe. It is also important to remember that all of this was done well before Emperor Constantine had actually been baptized as a Christian himself (something he waited to do until he was on his deathbed).

It is evidence of how far modern Christianity has drifted from its original, traditional, roots that all of this is mostly unknown to modern Christians but the Roman emperor was seen as an extremely significant, even essential, figure for the Christian religion. The early Christians and Medieval Christians certainly understood this which is proven by the long tradition, today almost completely unknown, of prophecies, visions and other miraculous events concerning the Roman emperors. Regular readers will know as I have talked about these before such as the Emperor Augustus being revealed a vision of the birth of Christ, the Emperor Tiberius being moved to forbid any persecution of the Christians or the Emperor Marcus Aurelius putting a halt to such persecutions after witnessing a miracle in battle called down by Christians within his army. There was even a legend in the Middle Ages that Pope St Gregory the Great had momentarily resurrected Emperor Trajan in order to baptize him and spare this model ruler from the torments of Hell.

Emperor Basil I

As I have said before, whether one believes these stories or not is irrelevant to the central point. If you do believe them, obviously the Roman emperors had a spiritual significance for Christians from the very beginning, of both the Roman Empire and the Christian religion. However, even if you do not believe them and think they were invented later, that they were invented still shows just how significant the Christians of the early Church and Middle Ages considered the imperial line to be. The emperors were not seen as purely secular figures with no connection to religious matters. It is worth remembering that, after the Council of Jerusalem, the first seven Ecumenical Councils of the Church were called not by the Pope or some eminent Patriarch but by the Roman Emperor, indeed, all seven were called by the Eastern Roman Emperor. Likewise, the eighth Ecumenical Council was called by Emperor Basil I as well as the Pope, the ninth (Lateran I), called by the Pope after the “Investiture Dispute”, dealt with the imperial role in appointing bishops so that, even when church-state relations had been bad, there was still no getting around the fact that the emperors were major figures in the Christian religion. Lateran I was also attended by the King of France whose position, likewise, was inseparable from the faith of his country.

The fact that the Investiture Dispute happened in the first place is evidence of the fact that church and state were not separate and that no one could imagine them fully being so. This occurred during the imperial reign of the Salian Dynasty but was to come up again, in a way, during the subsequent reign of the Hohenstaufen Dynasty. Emperor Frederick I (Frederick Barbarossa), feeling himself affronted by Pope Alexander III, earned the eternal wrath of the Catholic Church by taking the side of Anti-Pope Victor IV against him. However, he had initially tried to remain neutral, advised the bishops in his lands to do the same and refused to recognize either papal claimant, calling for a council to be summoned to decide the matter. When Alexander III refused on the grounds that the pope cannot be subject to the decisions of a council (and being rather unpopular likely fearful of the outcome), it was only then that Emperor Frederick gave his support to Victor IV. He did this because of the long history, again, going back to Constantine, of the Emperor being so significant a figure in the Church. In his view, if the Church could not sort out its own problems, the Emperor must step in to decide the issue.

The coronation of Charlemagne

This was the root of the problem, however, as the popes did not wish to be subject to a council or any other authority, nor did the emperors wish to agree to the idea that they owed their crown to the pope who could then take it from them if the pope so wished. Unfortunately but not surprisingly, such disputes, were effectively political and not of a religious nature really. In the earlier times when councils were called by the Roman Emperor, and when even the popes were regarded by the eastern emperors as being one of their subjects in secular terms, these councils dealt with heresies or other questions of a religious nature. For the Roman Pontiffs and the German monarchs of the “Holy Roman Empire”, on the other hand, politics was usually at the root of the issue. That being said, any political dispute could always be cast in a religious light even if for no other reason than that it came down to a question of authority and as the pope could always cite that the law of God was above the law of man and that he was the sole arbiter of the law of God, his ruling on any matter at all had to prevail and so he made any issue a religious issue simply by being involved in it.

Although doctrinal disputes certainly exist, it is also true that a major foundational reason for the very existence of two distinct versions of the Christian religion, one eastern and one western, is due to the fact that the Western Roman Emperor was eliminated and only the Pope remained whereas, in the east, the Emperor carried on being the one expected to maintain discipline in the Church, summon councils and so on as had been the case before. When a new version of the empire was revived in the west, with the coronation of Charlemagne, it was initiated by the pope and later disputes arose because what the pope had given, the pope felt entitled to take away, in addition to the fact that he had gained land, subjects and political power and was thus a political player for the first time. The popes, though they tried, could never have the same sort of disputes with the eastern emperors given that their reign extended back to the original Roman Empire, predated the papacy and was not therefore in the gift of the pope to give or to take away. What neither ever did was to presume you could have one or the other and still have traditional Christianity as it had been handed down to them.

Emperor Justinian

Even when Pope Gelasius I (492-6) first tried to define the limits of the two powers, “which govern the world: the sacred authority of the bishops and the imperial power” it was at a time when the western half of the Church was displeased with the eastern half and while this was later used in the Middle Ages to bolster the papal case against the German rather than Byzantine emperors and could be considered a prototype of the ‘separation of the church and state’ argument, the fact which should be most obvious is that the pope was admitting that the imperial authority was a given, that it had its limits as he saw them, but it was there nonetheless and could not be denied or disregarded. Not long after, the issue of imperial authority was at the root of one of the earliest, if not the very first, contested papal elections with one faction more loyal to the Emperor in Constantinople and wanting reconciliation and the other more comfortable with the Gothic kings and wishing to maintain their ground in the east-west dispute. Many of the Roman/Italian nobility wanted to reconcile with the east while the lower classes tended not to. This was all the more noticeable when the Latin and westward-looking Justin came to the throne in 518, followed by his nephew Justinian in 527, who brought back the flavor of the old Roman Empire and served to highlight the Germanic origins and habits of the Gothic kings.

This period, specifically because it was so troubled, inadvertently highlights the importance that the imperial monarchy had for the Church. Whereas the Gothic west had largely fallen under the sway of the Arian heresy, King Theodoric the Great being an Arian, the east remained more solidly of the old faith. Pope John I, though old and frail, was dispatched to Constantinople to persuade the Emperor to stop being so harsh and discriminatory toward the Arians. Imagine that for a moment, the Roman Catholic Pope went to the Byzantine Emperor to plead the case of the Arian heresy! How successful he was seems to be somewhat in dispute, some accounts saying he did get the Emperor to back off the Arians somewhat, others saying Justinian committed to nothing substantial and sent him home. In any event, it did Pope John little good for King Theodoric had him arrested soon after returning, fearing that he had been plotting with the Emperor against him to retake Italy and the frail, old pope died in captivity. Nonetheless, there was some balance, there was recourse if one side got out of line.

Coronation of Emperor Otto the Great

The benefits of this arrangement were certainly seen in the time leading up to and around the year 1000 when the Church, certainly in the west, had become infamous for its corruption and depravity, yet this was also when great monarchs provided an impetus to change. It was the time of High King Brian Boru of Ireland, King St Stephen of Hungary, Emperor Otto the Great of Germany, St Vladimir the Great the Grand Prince of Kiev who converted the Russians, King Canute the Great of Denmark and King St Olaf II of Norway. At a time when the papacy had sunk to its lowest point, it was the pressure of Emperor Otto III which brought a pious and determined man to the Petrine Throne (Sylvester II, also the first French pope). Had it been left solely up to the clerical leadership of the time, Christendom would likely not have survived as so many of them had become far too weak and corrupted. Some may, perhaps, find something familiar about this situation.

I have said before and will go on saying that for the majority of Christian history none of the faithful would have been able to imagine having Christianity without an emperor as an integral part of the picture. I am also firmly convinced that it is no coincidence that Christianity is in such a sad state today when an emperor or even anything of the sort has been absent for so long. The enemies of all I hold dear about western civilization certainly recognized that taking down the imperial power would aid in taking down the spiritual power as well. This is not, however, to say that they are solely responsible. If everything had been working as it should have been, I don’t think they would have stood a chance. In the west, the papacy certainly did a great deal of damage to the traditional hierarchy for the sake of politics only to find that not long after the empire ceased to exist in any way other than a name the papacy itself no longer had much real influence either, having frittered it away by constantly shifting positions. Now the spiritual authority of Christianity is, I think, in real danger of being lost and there is no emperor to come to the rescue as in the days of Otto III.

Emperor Valentinian II

Hopefully, the above will demonstrate one more reason why Christians should take monarchy seriously and not see it as something set apart from religion. Even if your monarch is far from the Christian ideal (as most are these days), rest assured that this is nothing new. Even when Julian “the Apostate” tried to restore Rome to paganism, it did not cause Christians to abandon the idea of having an emperor. Christianity was a product of the Roman Empire, Christ was born in the reign of Augustus, died and was resurrected in the reign of Tiberius, and so it went with His followers. St Paul preferred to appeal to Nero rather than place his fate in the hands of the Jews and, according to Josephus at least, Nero’s wife may have been a Christian. The religion won recognition under Constantine and became the official religion of the empire under Theodosius. For some, reading the funeral oration of St Ambrose of Milan for Emperor Theodosius or Emperor Valentinian II may be enough. We can see there and in numerous other ways that from the beginning, Christianity, born of the empire, was seen as being inseparable from it and the empire inseparable from the faith. If those early Christians were right, it can only then mean that the majority today are very wrong to say otherwise.

More along these lines:
The Tiburtine Sybil & Imperial Prophecy
Christ and the Emperor Tiberius
Christian Empire

The Reactionary Dilemma

It is a sadly all too common problem for monarchists to be their own worst enemy. Part of this is that, unlike the revolutionaries with their rigid ideologies and the simple fact that it is easier to burn down a house than to build one, monarchists are not united on what their ultimate goal is. I have also noticed lately a rather negative effect which comes, in part, from the rise of the Alt-Right which is to condemn anyone who does not agree with you as a sell-out or, as they like to say, a "cuck". Usually this involves condemning anyone who wants to take things one step at a time toward what both probably agree on being the ideal ultimate goal. These rigid types never want to actually engage as they view any sort of activity as cooperating with "the system" or making compromises. Often, in my experience, this is not the case at all but rather a recognition that one has to start from where we are now to get to where we want to be and that simply waiting around for the "miracle" to suddenly make everything the way it was in the pre-Revolutionary era.

Some monarchists do not wish to go there, true enough. Some would be happy to simply return to the more classically liberal constitutional monarchies of Nineteenth Century. The more reactionary, which I mean to address here, wish to go back even farther to the pre-Revolutionary era. The problem is one which many of the 'internet-reactionaries' embody even if they do not realize it. They do not see how much "Enlightenment" thinking has permeated every part of western society and influenced how people think. It has even influenced how they think, even if they do not realize it. It has caused many to view monarchs the same way they view politicians; basing their loyalty on whether or not they agree with them and reserving the right to choose a different monarch if the current one does not share their views. Personally, I would love to see all of this change as it is hard for me to think of a problem, which today is a crisis, that does not have its roots in the "Enlightenment" (though there were monarchs who went along with that and they were not all bad, some were even great).

The reactionary dilemma, however, is that you cannot undo the work of centuries in a day or a year or even a decade. It took the west a long time to reach the depths it has currently sunk to and it is going to take a long time to dig our way out. That also means we are going to have to work toward getting up to a level that is not our ideal but which will be a step toward reaching the broad, sunlit uplands. This was something the French monarchists, at least some of them, recognized but did not deal with terribly well. Any reactionary will have likely heard the phrase, "You cannot turn back the clock". That is true but, as Bonnie Prince Charlie said to his highland chiefs in a very bad British movie, "I have not come to turn back the clock. I have come to wind the clock." The destination can, in itself, be problematic. If you are to go back to exactly what was lost, it only stands to reason that it shall be lost again in exactly the same way. The French restoration ultimately came to ruin because they could not come to an agreement on how many of the changes made by the revolutionary and Napoleonic regimes they were willing to retain. The famous refusal of the Comte de Chambord to take the throne because he would not accept the tricolor flag is indicative of this. Rather than try to change France back to a more traditional mindset, he refused to accept being king if that mindset was not abandoned at the very beginning.

That mindset, did not change, as we know, and over time France became more and more republican rather than monarchist. The revolutionaries have had this problem as well though they seem to have better mastered how to deal with it. I have, in the past, pointed to the example of Spain under Generalissimo Franco and I think it is educational to look and compare that case with another. Franco, a man I regard as a hero and someone who may well have saved western civilization itself, was in power in Spain from 1936 to his death in 1975. The Kingdom of Spain would not exist today if he had not been. However, what he failed to do was get his ideas and his values to truly take root in the culture and the population. Were it otherwise, when elections were held after his death, the National Movement would not have fared so poorly (it also did not help that they divided their support by splitting into two feuding camps, something monarchists should be all too familiar with). Today, adherents to his politics are still a very small minority with no immediate prospects of ever gaining power again. Now, compare that to the situation in Russia. The Soviet Union was one of the most murderous and incompetent regimes in human history, it was forced on the Russians by a relatively small faction (many of whom were not even Russians) and yet, in spite of all the horror, the Communist Party is today the second-largest party in Russia. Obviously, the Communists were much more effective at getting their values and ideas to take root than Franco was able to.

There plenty of other examples one could cite. Perhaps an even better one would be Mongolia, the first Soviet satellite state. Very few in the west are familiar with Mongolian history but be aware that the Communist regime there was easily one of *the* most brutal and oppressive in the entire world. Their goal to totally eradicate traditional Mongolian culture and remake the country along the lines of Soviet Russia, particularly under the leader Choibalsan who saw himself as the Mongolian Stalin, was more intense, more vicious and more thorough than I suspect you could even imagine. They stamped out religion in a country which had been one of the most devoutly religious on earth, a Buddhist theocratic-monarchy for their few years of independence before the communist takeover, they wiped out traditions to the point that no one was left who remembered how certain ceremonies were performed, some families even forgot their names by the time it all ended. However, during all that time, the ruling communist party was the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party. In 1990, with the fall of the Soviet Union, they allowed multi-party democracy. Can you guess what happened? The Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party simply adjusted its name to the Mongolian People's Party and won the vote to remain in power from 1990 to 1996, was back again from 2000 to 2012 and was voted back into power again only last year. They were so successful in influencing the thinking of the people that even when the people were given a choice, they chose to stick with the communists, no matter how horrible and detrimental they had been to the country.

Some reactionaries, I have come to accept, never want to actually accomplish anything, being far too happy to be nostalgic and pour scorn on everything around them. Myself, I would like to actually win and live in a world without politics, protests, race wars, pressure-groups and globalists. I would like a world where every people has their monarch and every monarch works to make his people as powerful and prosperous as they can be. However, if that is going to happen, we have to learn what works and what does not. We cannot simply go back to exactly the way things used to be because, the way things used to be ended in disaster (if they had not, we would be conservatives rather than reactionaries). There must be some adjustment. Don't be just like what used to be, strive to be better. In order to do that, I can see no alternative but working to change the culture, change the ideas and values of people. Tearing down the last vestiges of the monarchical order because they are not up to your standards will not accomplish that. Counter the "Enlightenment" thinking from the ground up. We do have, as I have said before, at least some room to be optimistic about such a campaign because the current state of affairs does not really seem to be pleasing anyone. The revolutionaries and the liberals alike both promised a utopia and they have obviously failed to deliver it. That is to our advantage but we must do the hard work of steadily changing the values and ideas of our friends, families, neighbors and then going on to education, entertainment and the wider culture. What we have now is not working, use that to your advantage and go forth and change some hearts & minds.

Charlottesville and the Need to Do Better

As most of you are no doubt aware, there was a bit of dust up in the city of Charlottesville, Virginia on Saturday. The original issue was the proposed removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee from Emancipation Park (formerly named Lee Park but re-named recently for the sake of tolerance and diversity). A disparate group of White people came together under the name “Unite the Right” to hold a demonstration in protest to the removal of the statue. It is worth bearing in mind that General Lee himself was not a slave owner, thought slavery was wrong and had opposed secession. This group included people with varying view points from simple pro-White advocates to actual White supremacists (Neo-Nazis and KKK). Some were, in my view, good and some were clearly bad. However, they agreed on the subject that the statue should stay where it is and they obtained a permit from the city to hold their demonstration.

That was when the problems began. Shortly afterward, the city revoked their permit and “Unite the Right” had to appeal to the courts which did finally rule that they had civil rights like the right to assemble and the right to free speech and so ordered the city to reissue their permit. However, as soon as it became known that these people would be holding their demonstration, leftist groups, “Antifa” among others, called on all of their supporters to rally at Charlottesville on the same day to shut down the event. The original demonstration was scheduled to begin at noon but, long before that, a state of emergency was declared as violence broke out between the two sides and so it was cancelled. The police had been ordered to “stand down” and so it is no surprise that a brawl ensued, injuring many and leading to the death of one woman who was hit by a car that sped into a crowd of leftist counter-protestors.

A few things should be clear from the facts of this situation. On the one hand, the organizers were clearly unconcerned about what sort of image they presented to the American public (or were intentionally ‘clowning’) as you cannot hold a demonstration, preceded by a torchlight procession, with Roman salutes and swastika flags and then cry “unfair” when the other side calls you a bunch of Nazis. These people guaranteed that the statue will be removed and that no one with any official position will go anywhere near them. Secondly, it is also perfectly clear that even if they had been goose-stepping down Emancipation Park in brown shirts, they had gone through the legal process to do it and had every right to be there. The Antifa types who came to challenge them did not, the police and civil authorities did not do their duty and have heaped all the blame on one side. It also, needless to say, made no difference to the mainstream media that the leftist counter-protesters had such flags on display as that of the Soviet Union (which killed more people and invaded more countries than Hitler ever did) as well as one or two of the Spanish Republic, that leftist regime which put more people to death in a few months than the supposedly notorious Spanish Inquisition snuffed out in as many centuries.

I can imagine two different things coming from this; those who made up “Unite the Right” will shrink away into obscurity having again portrayed themselves as simply the Nazi Party USA (one of the organizers was Richard Spencer who some may remember from his “Hail Trump! Hail Victory!” speech) or this will ratchet up the extremism on the part of the White identity types who can reasonably say that while others have been allowed to demonstrate, they were not and that while others have been allowed to speak, they are not. Racial or ethnic advocacy groups are allowed for everyone but them and thus there is no need to bother with staying within the law. The law only applies to certain people. So, I am not much of a prophet, I think it will either get calmer as more people just accept the situation or it will not if they choose to fight back.

No doubt some are already wondering what any of this has to do with traditional authority or the cause of kings. Well, for one thing, it displays the hypocrisy of the liberal republican form of government, as I have mentioned numerous times in the past. All of their “liberty” and “fairness” and “rule of law” only seems to apply in the abstract, never when it really matters. You have rights until a crisis arises and President Lincoln suspends habeaus corpus, President Wilson puts you in jail for playing German music or President Roosevelt confiscates your property and puts you in a concentration camp. You have the right to elect you leader, until you elect a leader the ruling class disapproves of and then he is blocked at every turn. You have the right to free speech and assembly until someone shows up, causes a brawl and then the whole thing is shut down on the grounds of being unsafe. You can say what you want, unless the powers-that-be determine what you are saying is “hate speech” in which case they can shut you down. Fail to enforce immigration laws and you’re a “sanctuary city” but fail to issue a marriage license to a gay couple and you go to jail (see Kim Davis). Liberalism sounds so great in the abstract but in practice it means, liberty for “us” but not for you.

Secondarily, I also noticed a number of people on our own side making the case, and God bless them for it, that monarchy, traditional values and authentic Christianity are the only things that can “unite the right”. Unfortunately, and this is where we need to do better, I could not agree. Yes, me, the “Mad Monarchist” could not agree that this was a truthful statement. Why? Because the fact is, we are not united even among ourselves and I certainly know as I get the angry messages almost on a daily basis. For some, usually the Catholics, it is a sectarian issue as only Catholic monarchies will do. Even there, many problems arise over what the definition of “Catholic” is these days. The ones who tell you it is perfectly simple are also the ones who usually say Pope Francis is of course not Catholic at all. See the problem? Monarchists do not agree on the map, they do not agree what people deserve to have their own countries and for many of those who do, they cannot agree on who should be the monarch of those countries. The best example of this is the royalists of the various branches of the House of Bourbon. In France, Spain, Parma and the Two-Sicilies, in every case there is division over who should be the monarch now or who should be the monarch if there was to be one.

This is a source of tremendous frustration for me and if you want to know more about a particular example, illustrating what this leads to, I refer you back to my past article, ‘France: Republican By Default’. Monarchists probably get tired of my scolding but it is something that must be learned because the republicans have certainly learned it and used it to their advantage. President Adolphe Thiers referred to the republic as the form of government that “divides us least”, which was sadly true and should make every monarchist deeply ashamed. There were also more mocking comments comparing the Count of Chambord to George Washington as the “Founding Father” of the Third French Republic. Likewise, republicanism in Spain first reared its ugly head due to the inability of Spanish monarchists to unite behind one monarch. After fierce fights between the rival branches of the Bourbon dynasty, it was decided to start over from blank paper and bring in a monarch of the House of Savoy. Yet, the old divisions refused to be reconciled, ending in King Amadeus abdicating in disgust and going back to Italy at which time the First Spanish Republic came into being. Once again, two Bourbon rivals refusing to reconcile on who should take the throne ended up with there being no throne at all.

I could go even farther and say that many monarchists have become so entrenched in their partisan divisions that, were it up to them, the western world would be engulfed in near total anarchy since no agreement, no treaty, no decision by governments or crowned heads could ever have validity. This comes into play, for example, concerning those countries which, in my experience, many monarchists outside of those countries think should not exist at all. The Kingdom of Belgium, for example, should not exist according to many monarchists. Never mind that the crowned heads of Europe all agreed that it should, that doesn’t matter to them. The Kingdom of Italy, likewise, should not exist according to many (non-Italian) Catholic monarchists, never mind that it was finally endorsed by the Pope with the Lateran Treaty by which the Holy See recognized it and in return the Kingdom of Italy was made an officially Catholic monarchy. No, for many, the Lateran Treaty is worthless paper and even the disgraceful depths the Italian Republic has sunk to is not enough to make these people think maybe the Savoy monarchy wasn’t so bad after all and just maybe Pope Pius XI and Pope Pius XII knew what they were doing.

If you cannot agree on who is a monarch, who should be a monarch or which peoples are even deserving of a country, I find it hard to believe there could ever be any appreciable unity on actual matters of policy. Concerning the United States, I am not even sure what is being proposed. Again, I have seen plenty of diversity of opinion among monarchists as to whether the United States of America should even exist. For the record, though I would have opposed independence in 1776, I regard the United States as being valid ever since His Britannic Majesty King George III saw fit to recognize the independence of the 13 former colonies. I don’t have to be best pleased about it, but it happened and I accept such agreements as binding. American monarchists do not agree on the status of the country itself, is there agreement among American monarchists on any significant policy? The protesters of “Unite the Right” probably do not agree on all that much among themselves but they do agree that the majority White/European population of the United States is being displaced and they all oppose this. Could monarchists in this country agree or disagree with that position with any appreciable amount of consensus? Unfortunately, I tend to doubt it.

Mark Steyn (a Canadian United Empire Loyalist) once said something to the effect of, mainstream society will be debating trans-gender bathrooms when the mullahs nuke us. If monarchists do not shape up, we will be arguing over whether the Duke of Bavaria should be the King of England, whether the Duke of Calabria or the Duke of Castro should be King of the Two Sicilies whenever Italians stop wanting their own country, whether a Habsburg or a Hohenzollern should be German Emperor whenever Germans finally stop wanting to be a republic or whether the man in white in the Vatican is really the Pope or not when the last descendants of western civilization are killed off. By and large, proper western civilization has already collapsed, what remains to be seen is whether the people whose inheritance it is will have a future or not. I don’t want monarchists left out of that struggle but, as I said to all those who criticized the (very easily criticized) “Unite the Right” crowd; where were you? Where was your demonstration?

Believe it or not, there have been some, or at least something of the sort but, again, because we are so divided, they attract a mere handful and thus no one pays attention to them. Recently, I commented that the problem with many royalists is that they don’t want to join the fight unless they know and approve of what the result is going to be, which is rather like refusing to play a game unless you already know you’re going to win. I was told that the “traditionalists” (for lack of a better term, I know it’s tossed around a lot) simply don’t want to commit suicide in a hopeless fight. That may be true and it may be that I have too pessimistic of an outlook. I have heard that the younger generations are more traditional than the more current ones but, to me, that hardly seems a difficult record to achieve and the swiftness from which we have moved from class equality to racial equality to gender equality to ‘people are born gay’ and now ‘people are not born male or female’ must have blinded me to the underground surge of traditionalist values that are about to burst forth in the coming years. In any event, as I’ve said before, being a Texan, I favor fighting every battle like it’s the Alamo. Which is to say, fight every fight as if it is your last, never mind about whether you can win or not. Personally, the utter and absolute hatred I have of the enemy, makes any fight worth it no matter what the odds are.

The bottom line is, we need to shape up, we need to improve and we need to stop fighting among ourselves and start fighting the enemies of all we hold dear. Those enemies still want to see “the last king strangled with the entrails of the last priest” and they don’t care who that king or priest are or what their opinions or dynastic branch is. We really need to put our divisions aside, draw a line in the sand and say the enemy will go no farther. From there, we push on but, as I know I’ve said before (sorry for being repetitive), right now we should at least be able to agree on the need to stop the bleeding before the patient dies.

Henri, the Unhappy Prince of Denmark

Prince Consort Hendrik of Denmark recently made it known, and the Royal Palace office in Copenhagen confirmed, that he does not wish to be buried alongside his wife Danish Queen Margrethe II. He has said that he does not wish to be buried in his native France so, we presume, he does wish to be buried in the Kingdom of Denmark but not with his wife the Queen. The Palace confirmed that this was because Prince Henri is unhappy with his title of "Prince Consort" and this is nothing all that new. For many years now the word has been circulating about how Prince Henri was dissatisfied with his title and that he resents not having been made "King of Denmark". The official statement from the palace said that the Prince did not appreciate not having equal status with his wife and this is something that has come up with him before. In 2002, he left Denmark in a huff after his son the Crown Prince hosted an official reception in the absence of the Queen since, as heir-to-the-throne, he is second in the royal hierarchy. This offended Prince Henri though he did finally return with the Queen granting to their children a new hereditary title based on that claimed by the French family of her consort. So, again, this is not exactly coming out of the clear blue sky, this is something Prince Henri has been upset about for many years now.

Most of the comments I have heard or seen have been extremely critical of the Prince to say the least of it. Given that, let me say at the outset that, yes, I think the Prince is being childish and that his devotion to his wife should outweigh any question of titles when it comes to where he spends his eternal rest. That being said, this is an issue that the monarchies of Europe have set themselves up for. First of all, we should consider precedent and recognize that this issue has come up before though not in Denmark where Margrethe II was herself almost unprecedented in that she is the first queen regnant Denmark has had in a great many centuries and only the second in the entire history of the western world's oldest monarchy. However, other countries have had to deal with this issue. In the Kingdom of Portugal, the husband of a queen regnant was always titled "king". The French, Germans, Italians, Poles, Belgians and so on never had a queen regnant. England has and the first (not counting Matilda) was Queen Mary I whose husband, King Philip II of Spain, was also titled "King of England". Queen Isabella II of Spain was married to the Duke of Cadiz who was titled "King Consort". Queen Juana of Castile married Philip "the Handsome" of the Habsburgs and he became King Felipe I of Castile, delivering Spain to the House of Habsburg. Her mother, Queen Isabella I of Castile, was of course married to Fernando of Aragon who was a king in his own right. Lord Darnley, husband of the ill-fated Mary Queen of Scots, was titled King Consort and Queen Victoria of Great Britain & Ireland had wanted to make her beloved Prince Albert "King Consort" but the government would not hear of it and so he had to settle for "Prince Consort" instead. The Habsburg domains have had one female ruler, Empress Maria Theresa, and her husband, the Duke of Lorraine, was ultimately elected Holy Roman Emperor. However, none of the English queens since Mary I have done the same, likewise all of the consorts of the Dutch queens have been 'prince consort' and not kings.

So, it has been done, it is only that it has not been done lately. The reason, in the past, was due to Europe being rather more Christian than it is now (which is to say it was Christian, or at least was serious about trying to be). In the vilified days of old, husbands were expected to be the head of their family, the master of the house, in other words the 'boss' and so it was often not thought appropriate that a husband should have a title subservient to that of his wife. Yes, that was then, this is now and this was never an issue in Denmark before but I point it out simply for the sake of context. Prince Henri's desire is not unheard of, just rather unheard of for this century. However, plenty of things are accepted these days that would have been unheard of in those maligned centuries past. Yes, again, I think Prince Henri is doing himself no favors with this petulant behavior but I dare say this will come up again and probably more frequently in the future.

After all, look at it this way: most of the monarchies of Europe have done away with male preference in the succession because the west has abandoned the traditional, Christian, view of the family. This has happened in the name of the 'equality' of the sexes (though obviously not of age but don't get me started on that issue). So, as queens shall become more common in the future of the European monarchies with Spain, Belgium, The Netherlands and Sweden all set to have female monarchs next time around, the egalitarian mentality will beg the question; why is a woman who marries a king given the title of 'queen' but a man who marries a queen is only given the title of 'prince'? Personally, I would not expect anyone to care that much as few seem to care about men being treated unfairly compared to women. Whenever that happens, the feminists suddenly turn all 'patriarchal' and say, "be a man and stop complaining". However, Prince Henri has objected and I would not be at all surprised to see some in the future take up the issue simply as a way of forcing more innovation on the remaining monarchies or just as an excuse to accuse monarchy of being inherently opposed to egalitarianism (which it is). So, yes, by all means, ridicule Prince Henri for his un-gallant behavior but also ask yourself; in this age of supposed equality, why do the girls get to be queens but the boys do not get to be kings when they get married?

Personally, I think it is just another example of the idiocy of the whole egalitarian mindset and particularly of the outright absurdity of trying to enforce "equality" on a monarchy, but, maybe that's just me...