Recent content by David V

And the worst of these monsters aren't monarchies at all. Look at Syria and Libya for starters, or Iran. Remember when Argentina invaded the Falklands, or when Belize became independent as a Commonwealth country while Guatemala claimed it? What were Argentina and Guatemala, both Latin American...

One remarkable thing for me is how people can be fascinated by royalty yet hostile towards the very idea of monarchy, even though monarchies have long proven better as a system of governance. Especially when we are in a polarised political environment, the role of the Crown is ever more...

Eisenhower was involved in approving Operation Keelhaul. That alone is unforgivable. And the fact Communism was forced onto half of Europe, including dad's old country (he fled in 1968) left me with a bitterness and rage. No side was angelic in World War II. The Soviets committed horrendous...

Wonderful words there! I think history education is sickeningly biased if it fails to recognise the evils of Communism and the fact that it was responsible for more deaths (Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Mengistu) than anything else man-made in history. I for one can never forgive Churchill, FDR and...

For Germans and Austrians, the best argument for monarchism is a genuinely reactionary one- namely reject the worst things of the 20th century that followed the fall of their monarchies. In Eastern Europe there is a desire to reject the horrors of Communism, and restoring monarchies in Serbia...

Bush? Any number of Latin American leaders over the years who not only showed little regard for their citizens but inflicted far worse abuses on them? I think today's politicians are arrogant, full of themselves and the fact that governments today exercise more real power than they did a century...

Maybe it's the Habsburg and Wittelsbach aficionado in me, but I've come to the view that the way German Unification was attained following the Austo-Prussian War wasn't all right. Especially when it led to the dispossession of such states as Hanover, for one. Of course, we realise what we have...

Pretty much so. You do wonder if Greeks' attitude towards their deposed royals is softening when they realise the political elites which brought down the monarchy are the same elites that have run the country into the ground.

The royals these days, as I've said, have far more in common with us than the politicians and businessmen who make the real decisions and run our lives, in fact the corporate and political class has grown more aloof from the people than ever before. Not only has history shown that worse regimes...

I'd like to see Serbia and Montenegro restore their monarchies simulteneously. It would be a symbolic rejection of the last 100 years of horrors. We realise now that it is not monarchies which have been the problem, but our political and corporate class who have more power over us than absolute...

Like Serbia, it is not an unrealistic prospect and a desirable one given the turmoil Georgia has experienced. But first, the Saakashvili regime will have to fall like his predecessors did.

Fantastic news. The royal house continues to another generation!

That would make a good genealogical project- find the possible claimants of those houses, and even of the Ten Kingdoms (like the Qian of Wuyue).

One thing I've been intrigued is whether it's possible that direct descendants of previous royal houses are still around today. Also remember that while the name China was used for many years, the term "dynasty" refers not merely to the royal line but to the name of the state- "China" wasn't...

He was not a great king, but I can think of worse monarchs, and worse rulers generally.