Well, would you? There are, as with so many things, pros and cons.
The positives are that you don’t have to worry about your pension arrangements, get to live in a castle and have people to run your bath for you. The negatives – you have to marry a woman chosen by your parents, everybody has an opinion about your personal life, and you have to behave politely while Welsh people shout at you.
In the old days he wouldn’t have had to do that, he’d just have locked them in a dungeon. I wouldn’t have minded being King in those days.
The Royal Family have quite a good collection. They have a collection of castles and palaces, for one thing, a famous Stamp Collection and at least one Peace Medal which I covet – a Lancaster 1919 Peace Medal struck in gold. Everyone else got one in aluminium. It’s the third one down on this page.
It might be a problem that I’m not keen on horses and am a poor shot. People expect Kings to look good on a horse and slaughter a wide variety of livestock. You’d think they would just send the butler out to the butchers, wouldn’t you? But no, they have to spend all day sneaking round after a stag on a hillside or having defenceless gamebirds driven towards them.
Then there’s the family. My kids aren’t likely to sell me out to Oprah Winfrey and I can at least look at them without wondering if they are both mine. This has been a bit of a mixed blessing over the years, but I’m now resigned to having to take the blame for their faults.
This is a draft which I started on 31st December and finished today as part of my clearing out process.