Will the House of Windsor Turn into a House of Cards?
What happens to British society when the class structure that underpins it is challenged?
Imagine a society founded on a class structure with the (white) British royal family at the top as determined by birth and by blood. A biracial woman enters the top of the pyramid by marriage, negating both the birth and blood requirements society had previously been told were preconditions. Because she lacks those prerequisites, she’s considered unworthy. Because she’s proud of her own heritage and regards herself as equal to others at the top of the pyramid, she’s considered ungrateful.
The town criers called out from the lower tiers of the pyramid. “I’ve never met her — but I look at her and I think ‘I don’t think I’d like you in real life,’” said one. “We Brits prefer true royalty to fashion royalty,” proclaimed another. Shouts of “she just doesn’t speak our language,” came whistling on the wind. But at the top of the pyramid, the cries were met with silence. Were they too far away to hear it? Were they too disconcerted to know what to reply? Or did they use the cacophony from below to muffle the echo of their own whispers as they murmured the same things? The loudest gossipmonger was impossible to ignore as he oafishly admonished her to “go back to America.”