I have a joke for you: hereditary monarchies.



That’s it. That's the joke.



Of all the ways that man has devised for cornering power, none is as breathtaking as the hereditary monarchy. For centuries, kings and queens have ruled vast nations based solely on the notion that their blood is somehow “royal.” It’s utter wash, of course, as countless failed leaders have proven. There is nothing special about royal blood. It is the same blood as runs through our veins. Except for the hemophilia. The roya

Nicholas compensated for his anxious feelings of inadequacy and lack of preparedness by holding tenaciously to his belief in divine right. The moment the crown had touched his head, he had become a vehicle for God’s purpose and had magically absorbed a kind of spiritual superiority which made him, whatever his inadequacies, better equipped than any minister to know what Russia needed. It was a mystical idea far more literal even than the pronouncements about his relationship with God which had brought Wilhelm such derision in Europe, and in Nicholas it encouraged a kind of fatalism which would make him oddly passive in a crisis. It also made him extremely possessive of his authority, and sensitive to anything that could be interpreted as interference. While Nicholas the family man was gentle and charming, Nicholas the emperor was often touchy, mistrustful and stubborn

At the moment of his birth, two, or arguably three, factors, immediately had a defining effect on the life and character of [Kaiser Wilhelm II]… Firstly, the baby’s left arm was damaged in the delivery – a fact which, in the relief and excitement following his birth, wasn’t noticed for three days. It seems likely that in the obstetrician’s urgency to get the baby out before he suffocated, he wrenched and irretrievably crushed the network of nerves in Willy’s arm, rendering it useless and unable to grow. Secondly, and unprovably, it’s possible that those first few minutes without oxygen may have caused brain damage. Willy grew up to be hyperactive and emotionally unstable; brain damage sustained at birth was a possible cause. Thirdly, an almost impossible burden of conflicting demands and expectations came to rest upon Willy at the moment of his birth.

I have a joke for you: hereditary monarchies.That’s it. That's the joke.Of all the ways that man has devised for cornering power, none is as breathtaking as the hereditary monarchy. For centuries, kings and queens have ruled vast nations based solely on the notion that their blood is somehow “royal.” It’s utter wash, of course, as countless failed leaders have proven. There is nothing special about royal blood. It is the same blood as runs through our veins. Except for the hemophilia. The royals have a lot more hemophilia.The absurdity of the crown runs like a black joke throughout Miranda Carter’s triple biography,. King George V of Great Britain, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, and Tsar Nicholas II of Russia were not great men. They were not even average men. Quite to the contrary, they were eminently unsuited to lead a PTA meeting, much less globe-spanning empires. They are Exhibits A through C as to why the coincidental meeting of sperm and egg should not decide any country’s transfer of power.Of course, by the time World War I rolled around, that had become apparent to most thinking people. Accordingly, King George V was a figurehead, Kaiser Wilhelm was constrained by Reichstag, and only Nicholas II came close to a true autocrat – in fact, a true autocrat right to the end, which spelled doom for him, his wife, and his children.This reality - the occasional impotence of these leaders - defines the contours of Carter’s book. The subtitle,, hints that the intertwining lives of these three ridiculous men had something to do with the collision in the Balkans and the resulting catastrophe in Europe. That’s not the case. Leaving aside the infamous Willy-Nicky telegrams, these three men played diminished roles of varying importance leading up to 1914, and were well-seated bystanders during the July Crisis.To Carter’s credit, she doesn’t try to prove otherwise. There is no overarching theory that the blood-relationships and diplomatic relationships between these three men caused or could have averted World War I. This is not an academic history. It is not concerned with political movements or geopolitical posturing or Balkan history or entangling alliances.Instead, it is the story of three average to below average men who were all way over their heads. The punch line being that none of them realized how far over their heads they were.Taken that way,is well-researched, ably presented, and easily read. It is also quite entertaining. Carter mostly ignores the political science angle and focuses instead on the human dimension. This is the perfect route to take, because George, Nicholas, and Wilhelm were excruciatingly human. There was never any hint that God or the gods smiles upon these men.George is the least interesting, partially because he had no power in an England dominated by Parliament, and partially because he was a big dull dud. George, in fact, perfectly embodies the modern British crown. He was a fop, obsessed with clothes; he had an intellect that was “of no more use than a pistol packed at the bottom of a trunk if one was attacked in the robber-infested Apennines”; and he had intense dislike for “everything complex.” His great passions in life were stamp collecting and shooting. He was very good at shooting.George’s obsession with aristocratic hunting – beaters to flush the game, servants to carry his guns and lunch – was shared with Tsar Nicholas (with whom George also shared an uncanny resemblance). Indeed, in 1893, Nicholas recorded “667 dead creatures for 1596 shots fired.” Oh, also, that was for one day.Nicholas is a man difficult to hate. It is, after all, hard to despise a person who was murdered in a grimy little basement along with his entire family. By all accounts, he was a good husband and a caring father, who doted unceasingly on his hemophilic son Alexis. He was remarkably stolid after his abdication, spending his captivity chopping firewood. On the other hand, Nicholas’s historical reputation has benefited greatly from sympathetic biographers such as Robert Massey. He may have loved his family, but he gave two farts for the people he ruled. And when you push some people long enough, some people push back.By far the most fascinating – and horrifyingly so – leader was Kaiser Wilhelm. It is rare to see so many pathologies bundled into a single person. Wilhelm is the easiest of the three crowned heads to despise. With his posturing, his mustache, his bellicosity, he was a caricaturist's dream. His actions towards Great Britain – I love you! I hate you! Do you like my admiral's uniform? – are more fitting for grade school romances than a head of state. His stubborn insistence on forging a great Navy, despite being a mostly landlocked country, triggered an arms race with Great Britain that finally resolved itself at Jutland. Yet Wilhelm also engendered more of my sympathy than the other two. He was, it seems, marked from the beginning to fail:Wilhelm’s deformity, his crummy upbringing, teach a great lesson: Emperors, it seems, were children once. Even at his belligerent worse, I think it’s possible to see the damaged child behind Willy’s upturned mustache.Carter’s combined biography mostly concludes with the outbreak of World War I. She does devote a single chapter to the three monarchs during the war; however, this is obviously not adequate to maintain the level of detail previously provided. This authorial decision was a bit disappointing. After reading these vivid portraits, I wanted to follow these well-intentioned unworthies through the ups and downs of war. It’s an especial shame when it comes to Nicholas’s abdication, arrest, and murder. Due to the compression of the entire war into one chapter, Carter doesn’t have the proper space to devote to Nicholas’s plight, specifically with regards to his two cousins’ failure to save him.Having read this during the summer of Kate Middleton’s pregnancy, I took a special lesson from: monarchies are preposterous. Great Britain literally pays these people to create spectacles to entertain the masses. (Americans can – and do – enjoy for free; maybe more than most Brits). Marriages and pregnancies, affairs and divorces, topless photos and sudden death. None of it is relevant to running a country. None of it is relevant to the ordinary, day to day lives of anyone.This is why history is instructive. The past can help clarify the present. Put down that! Turn off! Ignore the royal bump. These are just folks, folks. Fact: strip away the future crown and Prince William is an okay-looking fellow with male pattern baldness and the tendency towards a weak chin.Democracy is often a train wreck. It’s often a train wreck combined with a plane crash crossed with a traffic accident. Elections often come down to corporate money, demagoguery, ad hominem attacks, and popularity contests. But at least no one pretends they were chosen by the heavens to rule on this earth.