The Time Capsule: Why not have a royal family of felines?

Princess Kate is expecting. I read this on the cover of a check-out stand magazine; probably the same that last summer featured a grainy picture of the fair lass cavorting topless on some distant beach. 

What puzzles me is why we care. Why, for that matter, does Britain adulate these people?  They would do well to remember the Royal Family for what they were, which offers little reason to revere them.   

Even though they’ve been rendered harmless, even though there was an occasional benevolent king, this group represents a system in which in-bred tyrants were entitled to govern purely because their ancestors had.  In the U.S., we punish ourselves, continue to apologize and make atones for the fact that part of our nation, for a few-score years, practiced slavery. Do we think we invented it?   British monarchy engaged in and condoned slavery in far more brutal forms than we ever imagined and did so for centuries. There was a reason castles were built on dungeons. The slightest slight against nobility, whether intentional or not, could land a man in the hands of the Royal Professional Torturer, there to be dismantled throughout a period of days. Often the wife and children were invited to watch.  Entire classes of people were born into a status they could never, regardless of their abilities, rise above. 

One of the things I liked about our former system of Capitalism is it demonstrated repeatedly exceptionalism is not necessarily passed from parent to child. Our founding fathers created a nation in which a person of intellect and ideas, possessed of work ethic and grit and the willingness to take risks, might make a fortune. A couple of generations, though, and the heirs were likely to be penniless. With no need to do anything resembling work, they squandered till it was gone, re-distributing wealth without government intervention and somewhere the ambitious son or daughter of an uneducated immigrant was moving to seize an opportunity. It actually was a pretty good system—certainly better than that of the Crown.       

All this brings to mind Mark Twain’s suggestion, which was to retain the Royal Family but replace the façade of nobility with cats.  Turn the royal freeloaders out. Let them find a job or lower their lifestyle to a more conventional level of welfare. Coronate cats in their place. King Tom the lV could reign with Queen Kitty. Tom would probably, as kings do, grow bored, dispatch the queen to the dungeon or turn her over to the Royal Executioner for a cranial detachment. He would then be free to take up with a younger, more alluring feline—perhaps a commoner. From this union Royal Litters would be produced, each becoming tabloid legends.

I like Twain’s idea. Cats fit the role. They expect mere people to be subservient. Yet along with their regal, holier-than-all disposition comes more than enough sluttiness to fuel our interest. The commoner calico who became a princess would surely one day dump the dull and homely Prince Thomas, take to the alley and be gloriously and noisily debauched by a suave Persian or Siamese. The scandal would rock English-speaking countries. An adoring public would love it. If late one night the errant calico dashed in front of a speeding truck, we’d never hear the end of it.        

The king is dead. Long live the cat. 

Roy Marshall is a local historian and columnist for the Red Oak Express. He can be contacted at news@redoakexpress.com.