`Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II (b. April 21st, 1926) represents dynasties historically traceable at least back until the 5th century AD; notably that of Elesa, of whom Alfred The Great was a 13-greatsgrandson, and the Queen is, therefore, a 49-greats-granddaughter. If the historicity of some early Scoto-Irish and Pictish kings were acceptable, the lineage could be named to about 70 generations," says the 1981 Guinness Book of Records.
Fifty generations? Even 70 generations? Well, it's a long time to wait for a bus but in human history it's scarcely a breath. After all, everybody alive today is the result of thousands of generations of human breeding. Indeed, if the historicity of some early fish and microbial life forms were included, the lineage snakes back millions of generations.
Everybody's million-greats-grandparent was a fish or a microbe, it seems, although few make much of a fuss about such genuinely exotic ancestry.
You never see, for instance, outsize portraits of excessively confident-looking marine creatures on the panelled walls of "stately" homes. Sure, you can see all those Johnnycome-lately emperors, empresses, kings, queens, princes, princesses, dukes, duchesses, marquesses, marchionesses, earls, counts, countesses, viscounts, viscountesses, barons, baronesses, baronets, dowagers, infantas, lords, ladies, knights - the whole panoply of feudal self-aggrandisement. But, quare fish aside, no seriously ancestral creatures - no algae, no amphibians, not even a primate. It's all so nouveau and so speciesist.
Because of this narrow perspective, feudal titles continue to make news. Tony O'Reilly, aka Dr A.J.F. O'Reilly, a northside Dubliner, who in other circumstances might have ended up being known as "Anto', will now, he says, "sometimes make use of the title", Sir Anthony O'Reilly. Well, that's up to Tony, aka Dr A.J.F., aka Sir Anthony, although excessive use would surely see psychotherapists advising him not to forget his "inner Anto". After all, the future of the institution which handed out his latest title looks as rocky as the mile of Cornish coast which Sir Anthony handed over to Maggie Thatcher in 1987.
Since early December, Britain's Guardian newspaper has led a campaign for a referendum on the future of the British monarchy. Given royalist sentiment, the hugely pro-royal media (mostly for a variety of self-serving reasons) and the average age of people most likely to vote, the monarchy would probably win at present. But even such a win would be a loss.
The people having chosen, sovereignty would have passed from a queen to (brace yourself) "her subjects".
"Subjects"! So "Britons never ever shall be slaves?" Fair enough. Nobody should be. But "subjects"? That's rough. In fact, it's so rough that more than 60 per cent of British people want to become citizens. But spellbound by an infantile fairyland of crowns, thrones, sceptres, jewels, curtseying, kneeling, palaces, protocol, pomp, patronage, fancy dress, demeaning rather than due deference, even walking backwards to emphasise the condescension exuded and servility expected, millions of decent people (with millions of generations of ancestry) have been made to feel that they are being ungracious or too pushy ("above their station") when they express doubts about royalty and its propaganda.
Worse still, they are regularly told they are anti-British. Yet the truth is dawning on more and more people: it's the royals and royalists who are anti-British, holding back one of the world's great countries from developing into a true 21st century democracy. In place under an Act which institutionalises religious and gender discrimination (Catholics and other non-Protestants cannot become monarch and the principle of male primogeniture discriminates against females), the British monarchy has done far more damage to Britain since the end of the second World War than the Suez crisis, the Argentine generals and the IRA combined.
Principally, the damage has resulted because the rigidity of the culture of monarchy has prevented Britain from modernising to its own best benefit.
Victory on the coat-tails of the US and, more starkly, Russia, in the second World War enshrined worn-out, old ways not best suited to the second half of the last century. Imperial stability became post-imperial paralysis.
The result was that the monarchy's culture of genetic hierarchy and patronage prolonged class abrasiveness which stymied modern industrial production and industrial and social relations for decades.
In earlier times, monarchy, it might be argued, was ideally placed to provide a centralised power desired, even needed, by new nation states, especially in the 16th and 17th centuries. But as a child learns to ride a bike without stabilisers, it's high-time for wannabe-citizen subjects to depend on their own sense of balance and judgment.
Abstract implications for the North aside, perhaps it shouldn't concern Irish people greatly - we have, after all, more than enough of our own problems and hypocrisies. But it is actually sad to see our nearest neighbour so mired in its own myth.
There are other connections between Britain's decline and its monarchy.
Euroscepticism, xenophobia and English louts on the rampage at major football tournaments are not accidental or random phenomena. They, along with the strut and swagger which frequently accompany them, are traceable to the infantile fairyland whose festering, condescending and archaic spirit poisons the desire and requirement to reform. Slavery was a "tradition" but that was no argument for maintaining it. Likewise with "subjecthood".
That is not to delude ourselves that in this State we have an ideal meritocracy. We have nothing of the sort. But few Irish people nowadays openly praise cute hoordom, stroke culture and the glic mentality which found full expression as the "golden circle". Of course, a new breed of strokers will emerge - probably more from business than from politics - and will attract the usual "real world" sycophantic, "fair-play to-ye" acolytes. Few however, will argue that any cosy cartel actually has a right to rule.
And that is the nub of it. The problem is not with the Windsors, Mountbattens or Battenbergs (whatever their real names are) themselves. It is with the concept of their right to rule, often euphemised as a right to reign by their supporters. From where did they get this right? They used to say, and apparently the current queen hasn't dismissed the notion, "from God". Divine right, then? Look, there's neither need nor point in satirising such lunacy. These are not the Middle Ages and the appropriation of God by power is simply not acceptable.
Still, the game goes on. Presumably, Sir Anthony will have to kneel in front of Elizabeth Windsor, be touched by a sword and creep away backwards and unctuously after being ordered to "arise, Sir Anthony". For a once excellent sportsman, fabulously wealthy, self-made businessman and exemplar of globalisation, is it really an honour to help in maintaining a discredited charade?
However there's quite an incongruity about an exemplar of globalisation cosying up to feudal provincialism. Perhaps, as the rugby writer, Terry Maclean, observed during the Lions rugby tour of New Zealand in 1959, O'Reilly's attitude to English members of the squad from upper-class backgrounds holds a clue. Maclean characterised O'Reilly's attitude then as showing "a strange regard, almost amounting to envy, for those fortunate folk who move through the world with a lordly calm based on a secure place in the scheme of things".
Maybe that explains it, even though, whether through the pseudo-intimacy of "Tony" or the formality of "Dr A.J.F.", O'Reilly has for decades moved through the world with a lordly calm based on a secure place in the scheme of things. It's hard to feel that the formal pseudo-intimacy of "Sir Anthony" will add greatly to his lordly calm. For years, he has preached an economic doctrine which focuses on cost-cutting, entrepreneurship and the power of "brand" names. Considering the fortune he has amassed, he is clearly very adept in the area.
Yet this latest branding of himself has already been hit by bad timing. Over the holiday period, the Queen's annual televised speech bombed in the ratings. Down now below the 10 million mark, it is scarcely a national institution in Britain any longer. Many soaps, football matches and game shows regularly outstrip that figure on days without the housebound audience of a Christmas Day.
The content of this year's address, "My Life as a Christian" (she is the supreme head of the Church of England), included no mention of ecumenism or any disavowal of divine right.
Over 50 years, the ratings for the Christmas address have become a measure of the monarch's popularity. Clearly, QE 2 is facing a relegation battle.
Certainly, her daughter Anne's "basketgate" rudeness hasn't helped. The crassness of braying "what a ridiculous thing to do" to a 75-year-old woman who had risen at dawn to bring a hand-crafted basket of flowers to give to her royal heroes, has done more damage to the monarchy than the Guardian's serious campaign.
In accepting the patronage of the Windsors, Sir Anthony has linked himself to a declining brand. In a century in which genetics seems certain to be the "hot" science, the primitive, genetically-based social structure of monarchy will, ironically, become unsustainable. The fairytale nonsense will not impress future generations who will see it as part of the human livestock industry. It will become increasingly embarrassing and will inevitably fossilise like the exotic ancestors which begat us all. It's well on the way already - a brand irredeemably past its sell-by date.