Why Do We Give a Shit About Royalty?

A month ago the whole world was shocked (shocked!) to learn that there might be some racism lurking in the British Royal Family. Of course this isn’t surprising, the entire notion of a royal family is in-and-of-itself just an extreme form of racism.

Racism is making assumptions about the quality of a person based on their skin color or ethnic background. Royalty is the assumption that a person has the best qualities and is qualified to rule over others for life based solely on the circumstances of their birth. The Kardashians have done more to earn their position in society than any royal family.

So why does our popular culture place royalty in such high regard? How many movies hold up kings and queens, princes and princesses as noble people worthy of our admiration and envy? Disney in particular has been promoting this ideal to children for almost a century now.

One of Marvel’s best movies (the best?) is Black Panther, which is about the most advanced society on Earth that for some reason is still ruled entirely by a single male monarch. The plot is driven by the emergence of a long lost heir who is able to claim the thrown by beating his cousin in physical combat. Does anyone think it’s a good idea to limit the choice of the person who has complete control over an entire nation to whichever of one guy’s grandsons can win in a fight?

There are many other examples of movie plots (The Lion King, The Lord of the Rings, Aquaman) where there’s a bad king, but everything’s cool as soon as the good king takes over. The problem is that none of these plots resolve the inevitable issue of what happens when he dies and the good king’s asshole son takes over.

The only example I can think of where the whole “hey, monarchies don’t actually work” issue gets addressed is in Game of Thrones. (Spoiler alert.) The brilliance of the show is that it spends its entire run moving from one terrible monarch to the next while building up the “good” monarch-in-waiting, and when she finally gets the opportunity to seize power, she turns cruel. The series ends with the regional rulers choosing to elect the realm’s kings or queens going forward after the current one dies. Sadly this ends in something that looks more like the original Electoral College instead of true democracy, but it was nonetheless a clear rebuke of hereditary succession.

There’s no question that the messages presented in movies and TV shows influence the opinions of their viewers, so the makers of entertainment have a responsibility to craft the right messages. It’s time for American popular cultural to learn the same lesson that its founding fathers did almost 250 years ago: monarchies are bad.