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Patriot gains Patriot gains
(3 months later)
An old Observer hand who lives near Hampton Court and occasionally acts as an official guide recently took a bunch of his former colleagues round the palace. It was, of course, fascinating – the vastness of the beds, the sumptuous nature of the clothes, the rugged caverns of the kitchens – but it also served as a useful  reminder of how much real power a royal once had. As some Victorian once said of Shakespeare's Cleopatra: "How different, how very different from the life of our own dear Queen." During the Jubilee last summer, keen believers in democracy were inclined to be sniffy about the monarchy, but it's not as if our royalty nowadays are dictators or invading warriors or given to chopping off the heads of people they dislike. (One of the possible queens who refused Henry VIII's advances said if she had two heads, she'd be happy to let Henry chop off one of them.)An old Observer hand who lives near Hampton Court and occasionally acts as an official guide recently took a bunch of his former colleagues round the palace. It was, of course, fascinating – the vastness of the beds, the sumptuous nature of the clothes, the rugged caverns of the kitchens – but it also served as a useful  reminder of how much real power a royal once had. As some Victorian once said of Shakespeare's Cleopatra: "How different, how very different from the life of our own dear Queen." During the Jubilee last summer, keen believers in democracy were inclined to be sniffy about the monarchy, but it's not as if our royalty nowadays are dictators or invading warriors or given to chopping off the heads of people they dislike. (One of the possible queens who refused Henry VIII's advances said if she had two heads, she'd be happy to let Henry chop off one of them.)
Monarchies such as ours or Holland's or Sweden's are just an excellent centrepiece of anyone's affection for the land they live in – symbols, not tyrants – so we don't have to promote David Cameron into a sanctified hero or a pitiless tyrant, or get Prince Charles to run Parliament. And there's a lot to be said for having a token family to watch that does not involve a film  star, a footballer or Homer Simpson.Monarchies such as ours or Holland's or Sweden's are just an excellent centrepiece of anyone's affection for the land they live in – symbols, not tyrants – so we don't have to promote David Cameron into a sanctified hero or a pitiless tyrant, or get Prince Charles to run Parliament. And there's a lot to be said for having a token family to watch that does not involve a film  star, a footballer or Homer Simpson.
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