It unavoidably remains, however, something to contemplate. The gaze cannot be averted for long. The Windsor clan still compels attention even from the reluctant or the sated. It does so either by pervading the showbiz media, or by occupying the no man's land that separates us from the constitutional future. Whichever direction we may be taking, there is a monarchy-shaped blur that obscures the view. More worrying in a way, there seems to be a fear of what might be revealed if that blur was dispelled.

Events, many of them biological, have done what republican propaganda could not and forced at least a surmise about what lies on the other side of the fog. It will come as sad news to some people, but within a few years the Queen Mother will be no more, the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh will be on their last legs, and the mass-circulation papers will be forced to write in earnest about the really serious matters, such as whether or not "It's Queen Camilla!", or with which "supermodel" Prince William will compromise himself.

And all of this tripe, at which the heart sinks in anticipation, will occur in a parallel universe reported less luridly on other pages. (Sample headlines: "Catholics outnumber Protestants in new Ulster census"; "Scotland says 'Aye' to self-government"; "Blur in Channel - EU isolated.")

At around that time, if I'm spared, I will no doubt be hearing from Windsor partisans who demand to know if I'd really prefer President Bush, or what it is I have against our tourist trade. Who knows: I may even meet a cheery old pearly king or queen who will spontaneously exclaim: "I wouldn't have her job, mate. Not for a million smackers!" (Oh do shut up. Nobody's going to offer you the job - you weren't born into the right family for a start - and if they did, a million "smackers" wouldn't be the half of it.)

But deference has become an irrelevant curio, and tourists will probably manage to get here anyway, and the American presidential system will (with any luck at all) be coming under increasingly strenuous criticism precisely for being too monarchical and ceremonial. We shall still be faced with the question of how to make a devolved and Europeanised parliamentary system out of the sow's ear of "the crown in parliament" and the ramshackle insular union for which it stood.

Understand that there is no avoiding this; we can do many things but we cannot go on as we have. And there may be a variety of potential solutions, but King Charles III is not one of them, not even on an exceptionally good day.

Walter Bagehot's famous distinction between the "dignified" and the "efficient" parts of our unwritten constitution is in reality a distinction without a difference. If efficiency can be assumed of the functioning parts, then dignity is at least probable in the decorative ones. But something that is by definition inefficient is fairly certain also to be undignified. And the House of Windsor has overdetermined this outcome by sacrificing what remained of its rather heavy dignity in a welter of family dysfunction.

In addition to this, it almost imposes irrelevance. Recall the chancellorship of Norman Lamont; that amazing interlude in the history of our great currency. As the debate on the euro began to become real for the first time, he returned from a tense meeting with his fellow European finance ministers with the breathless intelligence that, whatever shape the future money was to take, he had ensured that the British version would still have the sovereign's head inscribed upon it. Imagine the effort that was involved in this Treasury triumph.

And those who believe that monarchy acts as a solvent upon local differences have only to look at the recent symbolic tussles in the six counties, where the first step - the necessary if not the sufficient condition - towards a redefined and non-sectarian police force was the removal of the word "royal" from its name.

This country for some reason does not have a name. Britain doesn't quite cover it (Ulster is part of the UK but not of Great Britain), England clearly doesn't cover it, and terms such as Albion or Britannia are part of the lost world of the Punch cartoon. Instead we have - like the recipient of some outmoded honour - a title: the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Other countries have titles which express ideas - "the United States of America" was proudly coined by that great English republican Thomas Paine, and at a time when there were fewer than 20 states - but ours is more a mode of address for a slightly iffy constitutional compromise that is now drawing peacefully towards its close.

And at the apex of this compromise is, fittingly enough, an absurdity. If it were not for the regal fog - the mist of state openings and birthday honours and Christmas broadcasts and fairytale weddings - we could have begun to confront this reality long before it was thrust upon us.

The argument of practicality - of the obvious need to evolve a secular constitution that separates church from state, replaces the hereditary principle and in other ways reflects the modern Euro-American world of human rights and civil society - ought not to be allowed to obscure the argument of principle. At bottom, the republican idea contains a different concept of citizenship itself. Not only does monarchy have a bad effect on our elite, it has a dire effect on our popular and public opinion.

Historically, the favouritism shown by Buckingham Palace to certain politicians and generals - to Benjamin Disraeli and Field Marshal Douglas Haig and Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain and Sir Alec Douglas-Home - has been meddlesome and retrograde. And many mediocre political time-servers have become completely insufferable with the addition of the words "right honourable" and the initials "PC" (for "privy counsellor" of all things) to their names. I think we may doubt that it was entirely good for Tony Blair to become so much of a palace politician so early in his tenure; it's only a step from nominating the "people's princess" to developing the fatal illusion that you can cure scrofula by being the princely people's prime minister.

Further down the scale, though, the monarchic principle constitutes an obstacle to precisely that sense of responsibility about which we hear so much. It can't be good for people to lead vicarious lives, made up partly of prurience and partly of deference, and fixated on the doings of an undistinguished and spoiled family.

In case I should seem snobbish about this, I can speak of the section of the public with which I am best acquainted: the humble drudges who bring out the nation's newspapers. The "royal" theme operates with the intensity of Gresham's law in this sector, encouraging laziness and sentimentality and salacity by making it too easy to fill page upon page with brainless twaddle, and encouraging contempt for the readership that makes itself such an easy target.

There have been times in our history - the stupid adulation of the loath some Edward VIII as "one of us" - when such manipulated populism was positively dangerous. But at no time is this conditioning of mild hysteria and personality cult a wholesome thing.

What one wants to propose, therefore, is not that we abolish monarchy but that we transcend it or, to put it in more old-fashioned terms, that we grow out of it. To remove the Windsors by the stroke of a legislative pen would be highly satisfying in one way, but disappointing in another. The infantilism and cretinism of the press, for example, can't be cured just by a fiat. What should now begin is the process of emancipating ourselves from the mental habits of royalism, and the many supports it provides to unthinking attitudes and dysfunctional practices.

The last-ditchers are right in one way: it would scarcely be progress if we scrapped the Windsors and then prostrated ourselves at the feet of an imperial presidency. But if the argument is rightly conducted then the attitudes required to see us through to a democratic republic - or federation of democratic republics - would be their own insurance. We even begin to think as democratic republicans, and culti vate and reward democratic republican virtues.

Those who really wanted to would not be prevented from idolising Prince William or from gurgling at the Queen Mum. There will be room for royalists and restorationists in a democratic republic, and there will no doubt be tabloids and glossies to gratify them. But the large and growing number of republicans and democrats will not have to witness this spectacle as if we were all a part of it, and it was all a part of us.

The private travails of the Windsors would not have - as they now do - the gruesome aspect of a publicly financed human sacrifice. The converse, in other words, does not hold - there is not limitless room for democracy in a monarchy and the sooner we appreciate this, and demand the extra space that an adult and constitutional settlement would require, the better off all of us, including even the monarchists, will be.

 Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair.

Related stories - news

6 December: Now is the time for change

6 December: Majority want to be citizens not subjects

Related stories - comment

6 December leader: Magic or not, let in the daylight

Jonathan Freedland: The people versus the crown

Polly Toynbee: The need to modernise our country

Vernon Bogdanor : The Guardian has got it wrong

Related stories - background

Full text: the act of settlement, 1701

Cartoon: Steve Bell



How ministers exercise arbitrary power

Ten year deal fit for a Queen

The Scottish threat

Talk about it

Do we need a monarchy?

Interactive

What is the civil list - and how much is it worth?

Quiz: how well do you know your monarchy?

Useful links

Latest ICM polls

Official British monarchy website

Full text of the Act of Settlement(from American parliament campaign)