The Queen's Hidden Cousins

[poliphilo]

In 1987 we found out that the Queen has two cousins who were shut away in a mental asylum (or whatever those places used to be called). The Bowes-Lyonses told Burke's Peerage that they were dead- a decision the family later attributed to "vagueness". Last night we found out about it all over again. There was nothing much to add. One of them is still alive. No-one from the Royal Family ever visited her before 1987 and no-one has visited her since.   

I used to be a fervent anti-royalist. Now I'm just an anti-royalist. Once I might have fulminated, now I shrug. Trying to topple the monarchy is like shying at a coconut that has been nailed in place. People will go on loving the Royals no matter what.  

And to be fair, it wasn't just the Royals who had unenlightened views about the mentally disabled. We all did. Only if we expect the Royals to give the nation a moral lead (which is absurd- though it's part of the job description) can we really get all worked up about this particular example of them doing the wrong thing. They behaved as most of us would.

Comments

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

They behaved as most of us would.

I think that's letting them off a bit lightly - certainly as regards their behaviour since 1987, by which point attitudes towards people with learning disabilities were very different from what they had been in the 1930s.

And as for providing a moral lead, the idea is fairly absurd - but if you're going to be agree to be the patron of Mencap, then it does add an extra twist of hypocrisy to the absurdity.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

If I'm easy on them it's because I can remember- and place myself in- a time when the subject of mental disability was still taboo- and only to be dealt with through jokes about loonies and loony bins. The programme made me feel a little ashamed of myself.

The Queen Mother- c'est moi.

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

I expect the problem with having "loonies" in their particular lineage is that everyone knows they are inbred, and genetic taints are really not a good idea in a monarchy.

At least one modern royal had porphyria - Prince William of Gloucester, who died in a flying accident in 1972' Got it from George III. And then there was the haemophilia. Started with a mutation in the embryological development of Queen Victoria (unless somebody who shouldn't have been her father was her father) and spread through the crowned heads of Europe. Lizzie II and Phil the Greek are cousins...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The younger generation seems to have been given permission to seek out fresh bloodstock.