I Thought We Were An Autonomous Collective

Everyone thinks the British royal family is just so great because it includes robust-looking human analogues traipsing around in the full flower of life, observing and attempting to replicate the very alien (to them) social behavior of people not raised on television. We find their struggles charming because they so want to be just like us only to fall back again and again just when it seems like they might brush a velvet-gloved fingertip against the soft, warm flesh of a human connection. Having them try so gosh darn hard can't be anything but endearing, especially when (over the last couple of generations at least) they really go out of their way to drag one of our own into the struggle by marrying a Normal, knowing that it will only result in a) making them look even weirder by standing next to one of us and b) dooming the poor former Normal to royal assimilation and alienation from her species. We keep watching the soap opera unfold because we want to be there to see the exact moment the light behind the vibrant young bride's eyes finally flickers, fades and dies out. Usually right around the time they're done breeding. And the cycle starts all over again.

Not only is the process a great source of ad sales for the types of publications worthy to be bundled for sale next to the King Size Snickers bars and standard-definition DVDs of Ferris Bueller's Day Off on your way out of the grocery store, but it also serves as an insight of a simpler time in human history when we were all stupid enough to be duped into thinking human procreation was an OK process for selecting national political leadership at the highest levels.

Luckily for the British people, the only thing the royal family is really allowed to do officially anymore is keep polo alive as a sport. There are some places left where meaningful royal successions still happen, with serious consequences for the people unfortunate to be born subjects instead of citizens. In Saudi Arabia, where royals can decide things like judicial persecution of gays or not letting women drive cars, their old-ass King Abdullah just died. Tragedy or relief? Let's consider:

Unlike the UK or any other western country using some form of primogeniture, ascendancy to the Saudi throne hasn't been a promotion, it's a series of lateral moves. Tied for first place in line are all the sons of the founder-king of the modern state, King Abdulaziz. There hasn't been a family tree with this many sideways steps since the Habsburgs stopped forcing royal princesses to marry their gross uncles, creating a weird interconnected network of nieces whose children are their own first cousins. In someways it's the opposite problem with the Saudis. It looks like Abdulaziz ibn Saud was able to pull in a lot of foreign strange, genetically speaking. So much that dude had forty-five sons. It seems like a lot to draw from, but if you consider that so far kings can only be drawn from his first-generation issue and that homeboy has been dead since 1953, the fruit is starting to wither on the vine. All the once-full, ripe plums are desiccating into gnarly, wrinkly, fibrous things that no one in their right mind would consider harvesting anymore. Not without the very real risk of exposing the whole system to tapeworm or something. I don't know, the metaphor got away from me.

What I'm getting at is that even though the approaches have been different, the result is going to end up being the same: terrible governance by crazy people. In Spain, you get a sort of reverse Kwisatz Haderach producing Charles II of Spain, a pitiable conglomeration of human infirmities that, women's rights being what they were at the time, two different European princesses were coerced into marrying, despite the slobbering, the mouth-breathing, the epilepsy, the lunacy and the hostility toward personal hygiene.

In Saudi Arabia, you get a 90 year old succeeded by a 79 year old who probably already has dementia. Next in line after this "new" one? A spry 70 year old. If we're lucky, new King Salman will live just long enough for Crown Prince Muqrin to develop a debilitating frailty worthy of modern Saudi kingship.

It's easy for us to sit back and laugh, though. Representative democracy shields us from the archaic whims and vagaries of genetic luck and the influence of the dubious, intemperate and (this is most important) pretend Fates. We've got almost 250 years of history showing the genius of our foundational documents, ensuring leadership forged in the furnaces of merit and worth, burning away the self-imposed, uncle-fucking impurities that pollute the inheritance model. Think of the courage and prescience involved in the 18th century to reject political dynasties and all their concomitant complications. We've said "no, thank you." We're well past making that same mistake.