Speaker 1: Hey, everybody. Mr Chuck Bryant here, Charles w. That is,
Speaker 1: if you want to know how royalty works, we can
Speaker 1: sort of explain that. This is from Jeez about six
Speaker 1: years ago, from September eleven. We talk all about royalty
Speaker 1: and probably get about right. Welcome to Stuff you should know,
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w. W W, Chuck
Speaker 1: Bryant and Jerry. What's your problem? This is should know?
Speaker 1: My problem is I got an eye twitch. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a little weird. Okay, you can see it. Who can't?
Speaker 1: My left eyes is going crazy? All right, it's I
Speaker 1: think stabilized. Yeah it seems too. Yeah. Mitosis kicking in.
Speaker 1: You're what mitosis? What kind of toasts you got? Uh?
Speaker 1: Tosis is when you have a droopy eyelid. You know
Speaker 1: I told you about that recently. You're like, you do
Speaker 1: see that left eyelet is is more exposed. It's like
Speaker 1: a forest Whittaker. I know what you're saying. I see that.
Speaker 1: Like if I compare it to the other eyelid, I
Speaker 1: can see more of your left eyelid, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: appear droopy. I think that's the right term for it.
Speaker 1: Tosis no droopy No, well it's tosas is a droopy eelid,
Speaker 1: and I have it. I think it's a toasta highlid.
Speaker 1: That's what you got, man. I was diagnosed and it's
Speaker 1: uh apparently going to get worse. So who is it?
Speaker 1: Forest Whittaker? Who else? I think Tom York of Radiohead,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you're company. And I think Paris Hilton has tosis.
Speaker 1: Oh yes she does, and me the four It's worse
Speaker 1: when I'm sleepy or if I drunk. Yeah, I could
Speaker 1: see that, but I'm never either one of those. So
Speaker 1: so you're always fine. Yeah. I don't know why, stroop.
Speaker 1: Are you drunk right now? That's good? Should not be
Speaker 1: drunk while we do these? Chuck, it's too important, that's right.
Speaker 1: So I've got an actual infro for this, oh man,
Speaker 1: like the old days in my head. It could be
Speaker 1: up to like twenty minutes long. So just sit back
Speaker 1: and around perfect um, So chuck up. Until about nine
Speaker 1: years ago, all humans walked around and gathered food and
Speaker 1: followed herds of animals which they hunted and killed and
Speaker 1: eight and on any given day, you eight what you
Speaker 1: gathered and then you just kind of moved along to
Speaker 1: the next spot. That was typically the way things were done.
Speaker 1: They were called hunter gatherer societies. Then, during what's called
Speaker 1: the Neolithic Revolution, people started selecting plants in their area
Speaker 1: and realizing that they could replant the seeds from those plants,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden you had agriculture, which is
Speaker 1: made things very stable, very stable, more stable tie people
Speaker 1: to the land. But it also gave rise to something
Speaker 1: that hadn't been around before, which was surplus. Because if
Speaker 1: you're a hunter gatherer and all of your buddies and
Speaker 1: family and friends or hunter gatherers, and you're all just
Speaker 1: hunting and gathering just enough to sustain you for that day,
Speaker 1: then there's no such thing as surplus. That means everybody's
Speaker 1: pretty much equal. Maybe one guy takes mushrooms more than
Speaker 1: the rest of you, so he's your religious leader or
Speaker 1: something like that, but for the most part, everybody's roughly equal.
Speaker 1: Now that there's a surplus, say somebody has a particularly
Speaker 1: good bounty on the year where everybody else in the
Speaker 1: area has a bad bounty. That person is in what's
Speaker 1: called the position of power. Yeah, they have an advantage, Yes,
Speaker 1: they do that happens a few times to the same people.
Speaker 1: And if they are clever enough to consolidate that power
Speaker 1: and have more and more kids in a larger and
Speaker 1: larger kin group, at which they would if they're more powerful,
Speaker 1: you know they're gonna have more kids, then they conform
Speaker 1: what you would recognize today as a dynasty. And then
Speaker 1: over time these people would say, you know what, this
Speaker 1: is my birthright to rule you guys, to be rich.
Speaker 1: I'm going to just say that I'm connected to the Sun,
Speaker 1: which is our god that we worship, So by proxy,
Speaker 1: I'm the Sun, God's ruler here on earth, which means
Speaker 1: I'm in charge of you. And while you're at it,
Speaker 1: give me some of your surplus, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: now you have a king a kingdom. And this happened
Speaker 1: roughly all around the world, independently, but following almost the
Speaker 1: exact same course. You've got agriculture, you have surplus. You
Speaker 1: have certain people consolidating power, rising to power, associating themselves
Speaker 1: with gods to um to make their power that much
Speaker 1: more stable and unchallenged, and then you have kingdoms. That's
Speaker 1: what happened. Boom. Over time, these kingdoms did more and
Speaker 1: more crazy stuff, but they all they all followed roughly
Speaker 1: the same thing. Yeah. And if you're out in the
Speaker 1: middle of a desert, you don't have a lot of
Speaker 1: options to go other places, so that helps along the king, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you don't have any choice. Or if you're in
Speaker 1: Peru there's a big mountain range there, kind of stuck. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because you still need you know, your potatoes, you still
Speaker 1: need your grain. Um. And if you can't move very easily,
Speaker 1: if you're getting resources from being a member of a community,
Speaker 1: then that explains why you, as this normal, independent minded person,
Speaker 1: might go along with some guy saying he's a descendant
Speaker 1: of the Sun God and you have to give him
Speaker 1: half of your grain for no good reason. Yeah. Or
Speaker 1: if you're in the Amazon where it's you're not surrounded
Speaker 1: by desert or mountains and you can say, screw this guy,
Speaker 1: I'm out of here, then you may be a little
Speaker 1: slower to have something like a king, yeah, or maybe
Speaker 1: not at all. And so all this whole mentality, this
Speaker 1: whole process took place independently, like I said, the world
Speaker 1: around and also everybody seemed to have come to the
Speaker 1: same idea that you need to export this stuff. The
Speaker 1: more power or the more land and there therefore the
Speaker 1: more um crops or whatever you can get under your power,
Speaker 1: more powerful you are. And the way to get that
Speaker 1: is to get a bunch of guys who are sick
Speaker 1: of farming and like to mess around with spears, to
Speaker 1: go conquer some other cities and make those people give
Speaker 1: you half of their grain. Then you become even more powerful,
Speaker 1: so you export this kind of um mentality of being
Speaker 1: ruled by a single person who's getting fat off of
Speaker 1: taxing everybody else. And still today we have virtually all
Speaker 1: of these same processes just in a different guys. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we should give credit to uh, Simon Powers, because
Speaker 1: we didn't just make all that stuff up. No, as
Speaker 1: the Simon Powers, the researcher or the writer, he is
Speaker 1: really uh an author of the study that um kind
Speaker 1: of looked at that theory that we've been talking about
Speaker 1: and made a model that UM, I don't know if
Speaker 1: it proved it, but made it seem pretty likely. Yeah,
Speaker 1: why how despots arose during the Neolithic Revolution. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: way to go, Simon Powers. And if you're interested in
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, also go back and read Dr
Speaker 1: Jared Diamond's The Worst Mistake in the History of the
Speaker 1: human race, which talks a lot about this transition and
Speaker 1: basically argues that we were all better off as hunter gatherers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Dustin Diamond wrote the same article and it was the
Speaker 1: answer was saved by the Belle the worst mistake in
Speaker 1: the human race. Hey, that's a good show. Um, alright,
Speaker 1: all the wrong way. You're right. So in this article
Speaker 1: how royalty works, like, we're going to kind of default
Speaker 1: to England. Yeah, here and there for the most part,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, great Britain. Well, we're gonna explain all that
Speaker 1: stuff finally and for all, because that's, you know, that's
Speaker 1: what we were exposed to. That's the kind of the
Speaker 1: Western English speaking standard, the British monarchy. But you can
Speaker 1: kind of substitute in a lot of ways. This this
Speaker 1: um a lot of the way that it developed for
Speaker 1: just about anywhere in the world. Because again, the idea
Speaker 1: of hierarchies, of class, of social stratification and then some
Speaker 1: group of people being at the absolute pinnacle is extraordinarily ancient. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it all comes down to land and owning land.
Speaker 1: Since people have tried the earth, the most powerful ones
Speaker 1: are the people that owned more of it than their neighbor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but not scessarily tried the earth. I mean we're talking
Speaker 1: just in the last ten thousand years. And even after that,
Speaker 1: the English didn't create them this idea that you could
Speaker 1: take land and say this is my land. Now you
Speaker 1: used to farm it, but you can still farm it,
Speaker 1: but you owe me because this is my land and
Speaker 1: I'm letting you farm on it. Yeah. And after everybody
Speaker 1: was like, wait what, and you say, oh, I forgot
Speaker 1: to tell you. If you don't do this, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: kill you in your entire family. So do it. And
Speaker 1: they created what's known as the feudal system. Yeah, let's
Speaker 1: get in our our way back machine. Awesome, let's pull
Speaker 1: the cover off this bad boy and let's go back
Speaker 1: to oh like anywhere between the ninth and fifteenth century.
Speaker 1: Let's do it because it doesn't matter. It's all about
Speaker 1: the same. That's not true, but it's similar, uh to
Speaker 1: the feudal systems of medieval Europe. Um. Basically what went
Speaker 1: on was there were very few people that owned a
Speaker 1: lot of the land, um a lot of territory. But
Speaker 1: they basically looked around at one point and says, you
Speaker 1: know what, I have too much stuff to govern on
Speaker 1: my own. So I'm gonna divide it up and I'm
Speaker 1: gonna let other people use it. And I call them vassals.
Speaker 1: And you're my vassel. You're gonna go out and you're
Speaker 1: gonna manage that territory for me, going to collect some taxes,
Speaker 1: you can keep some of that. You can farm and
Speaker 1: keep some of that. Well, they didn't farm, They had
Speaker 1: people farming for them. Well, sure, so it's like a
Speaker 1: hierarchy habit farmed. Like you can imagine all of England
Speaker 1: is being owned by the king and then you divide
Speaker 1: it up, and then those people further divided it up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because the vassal could divide their's up. And for sub
Speaker 1: sub vessels, I guess serfs, Yeah, I guess so either
Speaker 1: they're called um And you know, you guys, how about
Speaker 1: raising some armies for me? Um, You're all gonna be
Speaker 1: beholden to me, but I'm gonna let you keep a
Speaker 1: lot of the dough, um, as long as you still
Speaker 1: give me something. Yeah. And and prior to this, chuck like,
Speaker 1: this is kind of a sweet deal. And the way
Speaker 1: that you ended up in vassal is you had an
Speaker 1: army that could conceivably challenge this guy who said I'm
Speaker 1: a king of England and everybody and um, everyone said
Speaker 1: where and he's like here this, this is England now,
Speaker 1: and I'm the king. Uh. And so if you had
Speaker 1: an army that he could probably defeat with his army,
Speaker 1: but could still like pose a problem. He turned you
Speaker 1: onto his side, sure, and said, well, wait before you
Speaker 1: say anything, I'm going to give you. Let you handle
Speaker 1: some of this land, like you said, and you can
Speaker 1: get these people who are farming the land to give
Speaker 1: you some of their grain. You give some to me,
Speaker 1: but you keep some yourself. Yeah, you'll be like a
Speaker 1: smaller version of me. Yeah, and we'll will be more
Speaker 1: powerful together exactly. And that's how this hierarchy, at least
Speaker 1: in under the feudal system began, that's right. And these vassals,
Speaker 1: they had rules of succession a lot like inheritance. Um,
Speaker 1: you could pass your your land onto your children and
Speaker 1: then they would be a vassal. Yeah. You also passed
Speaker 1: your obligation to the king onto the children too. It
Speaker 1: wasn't just the sweet life. Oh no, no no, no, they
Speaker 1: could you could never. You are always beholden as long
Speaker 1: as you maintain that land, um, and it was the
Speaker 1: same in other parts of the world. Japan had the
Speaker 1: imperial system that was similar to the European monarchies, and
Speaker 1: Japan's actually their monarchy is the oldest in the world.
Speaker 1: Did you know that? Yes? I did. The Japanese imperial
Speaker 1: family traces their lineage back to the sixth century b
Speaker 1: c e. That's crazy, although they are purely ceremonial at
Speaker 1: this point right well, yeah, but they were the exact
Speaker 1: opposite of just purely ceremonial up until and uh g
Speaker 1: I Joe came in and like said, you guys aren't
Speaker 1: divine deities any longer, which is what everybody considered them
Speaker 1: up until and check out my kunk fu grip. Uh.
Speaker 1: So everything was going along well until about the seventeenth
Speaker 1: century when republicanism began to uh kind of just chip
Speaker 1: away at the royals and the power that they held
Speaker 1: throughout Europe, and democracy starts to form, and sometimes it
Speaker 1: happens gradually and kind of nicely. Sometimes it happens via revolution,
Speaker 1: like in France, and uh sometimes when they would kick
Speaker 1: out the monarchy, they would come back um with a vengeance,
Speaker 1: like after the English Civil War between the Roundheads and
Speaker 1: the cavaliers. Um, we had King Charles executed, his heir,
Speaker 1: Charles two was exiled to France. Parliament gained a lot
Speaker 1: of control, but they would later come back of course.
Speaker 1: Charles the second, well, just the monarchy period, yeah, but
Speaker 1: after that the monarchy just was never the same now,
Speaker 1: although maybe under like Elizabeth, she was pretty powerful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I think, um, Parliament had gained a lot of control. Yeah,
Speaker 1: everybody after that point had to deal with Parliament before
Speaker 1: anybody had. Under Charles the first, the same stuff was
Speaker 1: going on in the Middle East. Um, it was a
Speaker 1: little different though because religion was so much more a
Speaker 1: part of uh, their their monarch's um they had was
Speaker 1: it called a caliph? Yeah, was was the head? Uh?
Speaker 1: I guess that would be the king, Yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: so if you had if you compared it to like
Speaker 1: the English model, the caliph would be the head, the
Speaker 1: king of England, and then beneath them would be sultans,
Speaker 1: which would be like vassals, which are powerful kings, but
Speaker 1: they they are not the religious leader. So you got
Speaker 1: the caliph and the sultans. Yeah, and sultans were like
Speaker 1: military commanders but not priests, right, but they were involved.
Speaker 1: Everything was all tied into religion still is of course. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then if you look at the Middle East model UM,
Speaker 1: you know, very early on, like like look at Egypt,
Speaker 1: all of the Egyptian UM rulers were considered deities up
Speaker 1: until America said no, no, no. The Imperial King, the
Speaker 1: Emperor of Japan was considered a deity of the Shinto
Speaker 1: religion like a god um In in the Middle East,
Speaker 1: the caliph is a religious figure. In uh, the Holy
Speaker 1: Roman Empire, the king's ruled along with the pope. So
Speaker 1: there's always been this real um marriage, either in the
Speaker 1: form of one person or in the form of like
Speaker 1: some sort of allegiance between the holy ruler and the
Speaker 1: political ruler, because they the religious aspect of it gives
Speaker 1: um credibility to the rule of the the political ruler,
Speaker 1: and like like even in England they went so far
Speaker 1: as to come up with the Divine Right of Kings,
Speaker 1: which said, the king is God's emissary here on planet Earth,
Speaker 1: and the king is therefore infallible. Nobody can get rid
Speaker 1: of the king. But exactly, but I mean it ended
Speaker 1: up been going on for millennia since before then. But
Speaker 1: that was like they just put it down into text like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's the way it is. Unfortunately for the king,
Speaker 1: that meant that the only way to get be gotten
Speaker 1: rid of was to be murdered. Yeah, but they figured
Speaker 1: it will be a pretty wild ride until then. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's one of the risks when you're the king.
Speaker 1: Uh So now you have you have royalty, you have
Speaker 1: this class system. Royalty is actually transcends class because uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's the bloodline like a noble. That's the differencetween
Speaker 1: nobility and royalty is nobility. The nobles didn't have the
Speaker 1: bloodline going. Yeah, it depends on the country that you're in.
Speaker 1: So like in some countries, there are more than one
Speaker 1: royal family, right, yeah, different houses, but just one of
Speaker 1: them holds the throne at a time. Yeah, just one
Speaker 1: of them has uh the ability to be the heir
Speaker 1: to the throne um. So in other countries, it's like
Speaker 1: there's one group of royals and they're the only royals,
Speaker 1: and everybody, no matter how powerful, no matter their noble title,
Speaker 1: they're still technically commoners exactly. They're they're almost always wealthy,
Speaker 1: even though technically wealth doesn't have anything to do with
Speaker 1: it because it's about your bloodline. But if you're if
Speaker 1: you're in the monarchy, you're going to be wealthy. And
Speaker 1: in some cases also they're considered an actual part of
Speaker 1: their country. Yeah, they're that much ingrained into the national fabric.
Speaker 1: So we said that, Um, in some countries there can
Speaker 1: be more than one royal family and um, this kind
Speaker 1: of comes into play when there's not a clear line
Speaker 1: of succession. Yeah, things can get a little messy when
Speaker 1: the king dies. So like if you have, um, what's
Speaker 1: called an agnatic succession, that that means that the oldest
Speaker 1: male heir inherits the throne. Yeah, and actually agnatic, uh,
Speaker 1: it means your brother takes over and not your son. Okay,
Speaker 1: So it's patrilineal. It's it's on the father's side, but
Speaker 1: instead of giving the throne to your child, like your
Speaker 1: firstborn son, it goes to your your little bro okay,
Speaker 1: your oldest little pro Okay, got youa um. And then
Speaker 1: in in other lines, it can be the oldest heir, right,
Speaker 1: that's right, whether it's male or female, like how Queen
Speaker 1: Elizabeth is the queen Now, yeah, you can be a
Speaker 1: female heir Britain of course, so all of these people
Speaker 1: are all related. They're part of the royal family. They're
Speaker 1: either a sibling, a child, a grandchild, even a cousin.
Speaker 1: But there's still a member of that family, which is
Speaker 1: also known as the house. In a country where there's
Speaker 1: more than one royal house and there's a dispute or
Speaker 1: a problem with the succession the normal succession rights, then
Speaker 1: you can have a challenge to the throne by another
Speaker 1: royal house. Yeah, or it's just simply elected by a
Speaker 1: committee of nobles. Maybe who that next king is going
Speaker 1: to be? Yeah, Or if there's not a very clear line,
Speaker 1: they can say, you know what, it's it's no man's
Speaker 1: land here, and whoever ends up with the crown may
Speaker 1: not even be a part of the bloodline. Maybe they
Speaker 1: just had the best military or the most money, right,
Speaker 1: And that's I mean, that's how original houses were set up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean the only difference between that situation happening now
Speaker 1: and someone else's house, like taking control of the throne,
Speaker 1: is they just descended to royalty, you know, millennia ago,
Speaker 1: rather than right now. Yeah, all right. Titles, it's all
Speaker 1: about the title. The very top of the chessboard. You're
Speaker 1: gonna have your king and queen or an emperor empress,
Speaker 1: depending on if that's the kind of game you play
Speaker 1: in your country or your empire. Uh, then the elatives
Speaker 1: are the king and queen. Um. It really depends on
Speaker 1: the country in the monarchy. A lot of times their
Speaker 1: princes and princesses can be your children, your grandchildren, could
Speaker 1: be your brothers, could be your cousins. Um. It just
Speaker 1: kind of varies depending on what country you're in. And
Speaker 1: those titles are called peerages, and there's hereditary peerages, and
Speaker 1: then there's life peerages. That's right, and um. The peerages,
Speaker 1: as at least in uh in European royalty, go in
Speaker 1: from an order of importance and from the lowest number
Speaker 1: to the most number duke, marquess or marquis, earl, viscount
Speaker 1: and baron. So the barons are at least powerful, but
Speaker 1: there's the most of them, is it viscount. I've been
Speaker 1: saying viscount my whole life. Viscount. It's all right, man,
Speaker 1: everybody says viscount. Um. And then the dukes are the
Speaker 1: most powerful, but there's the fewest of them. And so
Speaker 1: if you have an hereditary peerage, you inherited that at
Speaker 1: some point in time, some king or queen said, you
Speaker 1: are now the Duke of blah blah bah, and you're noble,
Speaker 1: but you are not royal, right exactly, so um, the
Speaker 1: although you can be royal like I believe Prince Charles
Speaker 1: is the Duke of Windsor, you know, yeah that man,
Speaker 1: it gets confusing. It definitely does get confusing. It gets
Speaker 1: even more confusing because when Prince Charles becomes King Charles,
Speaker 1: the Duke of Windsor will vanish. That title will vanish
Speaker 1: because he became king, which he'd much rather be king
Speaker 1: than Duke of Windsor, you know what I mean. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's called being absorbed into the crown by the crown.
Speaker 1: The title can also just be left, like if there's
Speaker 1: no air. You can also take it and give it
Speaker 1: to another family, although I think that that probably is
Speaker 1: subject to being approved by the queen or the king. Um.
Speaker 1: And then there's a whole other cattle of fish called
Speaker 1: life peerages, which basically says you are now a baron
Speaker 1: or baroness while you're alive, right, And and then your
Speaker 1: kids will still receive some sort of honor. They won't
Speaker 1: receive the title, but they can call themselves the honorable,
Speaker 1: which suggests that their parents had a life peerage, but
Speaker 1: that that it wasn't a hereditary title, so the kids
Speaker 1: don't inherit it. Yeah. And to add further confusion, a
Speaker 1: prince isn't always the male child of the king. Sometimes
Speaker 1: that is the king, um, sometimes it's just a noble.
Speaker 1: When Britain ruled India, they made a very clear distinction that, um,
Speaker 1: your rulers and your provinces in India, um are going
Speaker 1: to be called princes, just so it's clear you're not
Speaker 1: going to call yourself a king, which is bs because
Speaker 1: India already had its own monarchy system, um, but now
Speaker 1: they were all downgraded by the British. Yeah. Um. We
Speaker 1: should also say that if you receive a peerage of
Speaker 1: any sort it you are automatically a member of the
Speaker 1: House of Lords, which is the upper chamber of British Parliament. Um.
Speaker 1: And so it's part of them the duty of the
Speaker 1: Queen to appoint these things, to appoint these peerages, but
Speaker 1: in these modern times she wants to kind of appoint
Speaker 1: them along party lines to make sure they're an appropriate
Speaker 1: representation of everybody in the House of Lords. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: you also get season tickets to uh men you games?
Speaker 1: Do you know? I don't think so, I'll bet you do. Uh.
Speaker 1: All right, So I guess we can move on to
Speaker 1: the functions of these royals, because it really has varied
Speaker 1: throughout the years and depending on which country, whether or
Speaker 1: not your ceremonial figurehead or you're actually have real duties. Um,
Speaker 1: and I guess it's well, let's just start with England. Okay,
Speaker 1: So with England? Do you want to read her her
Speaker 1: Majesty's full title? Should we get into this now? I
Speaker 1: think we should, all right, because boy, we have botched
Speaker 1: this over the years with saying Britain and England and
Speaker 1: Great Britain and the UK. We're gonna set the record
Speaker 1: straight here today because technically calling q E two, we
Speaker 1: know her, we love her, calling her the Queen of
Speaker 1: England is not correct now and it's pretty disrespectful to
Speaker 1: some people. It is. And we're gonna explain this right now,
Speaker 1: follow along with our little history lesson and a man,
Speaker 1: I hope we get this right. Where did you find this?
Speaker 1: By the way, Oh I found it on the internet.
Speaker 1: I can't remember where it's all over. There's many different versions,
Speaker 1: but um, here we got seven. You have King James
Speaker 1: the sixth. He ascended to the throne of Scotland after Mom,
Speaker 1: who was married Queen of Scott's, advocated the throne. At
Speaker 1: the same time, you have Elizabeth one, daughter of Henry
Speaker 1: the eighth. She was a Queen of England and she
Speaker 1: was Mary, Queen of Scott's, first cousin. Once removed. Go
Speaker 1: forward a little bit to sixteen oh three, Elizabeth one dies.
Speaker 1: Then James was King James one of England and King
Speaker 1: James six of Scotland at the same time. Just making sense.
Speaker 1: They have united the crowns of England and Scotland. Even
Speaker 1: though they were separate kingdoms. They had separate parliaments, separate institutions.
Speaker 1: It is a crown united with England and Scotland. Now
Speaker 1: we have the birth of Great Britain that was in
Speaker 1: seven Yeah, and man, everyone in the UK right now,
Speaker 1: it's just saying like following along so closely, waiting first
Speaker 1: to mess up. So after the union of the crowns
Speaker 1: of England Scotland, it was a rough time. There were
Speaker 1: different monarchs, there were a lot of wars. Eventually the
Speaker 1: wars ended uh in sixteen sixty the monarchy rose restored,
Speaker 1: and in seventeen o two Queen Anne became Queen of England,
Speaker 1: Queen of Scotland and Queen of Ireland. It's very confusing
Speaker 1: where well, Scotland was still independent, they still had their
Speaker 1: own parliament, their own legal system. Uh. In seventeen o seven,
Speaker 1: during Queen as Queen Anne's reign, the English and Scottish
Speaker 1: parliaments passed separate Acts of Union, and on May first,
Speaker 1: seventeen o seven, the kingdoms of England and Scotland ceased
Speaker 1: to exist and were replaced by the Kingdom of Great Britain.
Speaker 1: So now Anne as the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland. Okay.
Speaker 1: So that means that while Anne was Queen, she was
Speaker 1: the last Queen of England. Yes. And then after these
Speaker 1: acts were passed in seventeen o seven, she automatically became
Speaker 1: the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland. That's right. Since
Speaker 1: seventeen o seven it has been incorrect to call anyone
Speaker 1: the king or Queen of England. Yes. Stories not over
Speaker 1: yet gets more complicated. The next century, Ireland was separate,
Speaker 1: separate kingdom. It gained its own parliament and then eight
Speaker 1: hundred that all changed when Irish and British parliaments passed
Speaker 1: separate Acts of Union, creating the United Kingdom of Great
Speaker 1: Britain and Ireland one country eighteen o one. So it
Speaker 1: was three separate kingdoms prior to seventeen o seven. Now
Speaker 1: one kingdom ruled from London. The active Union passed an
Speaker 1: eighteen hundred and it's still in force today, although there's
Speaker 1: been amendments of course along the way. Then George the
Speaker 1: Third at that time was the King of the United
Speaker 1: Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. It's even more confusing
Speaker 1: because Ireland had their problems. Nineteen twenty two, they partitioned
Speaker 1: off what was the Irish Free State and then eventually
Speaker 1: the Republic of Ireland was created. In the nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: seven the name was changed to the United Kingdom of
Speaker 1: Great Britain and Northern Ireland UH and at that same
Speaker 1: time United Kingdom was removed from the title King. George
Speaker 1: the Fifth, the king at the time, became King of
Speaker 1: Great Britain and Ireland. Eventually, in nineteen fifty three, we
Speaker 1: arrived at Her Majesty Elizabeth the Second, by the grace
Speaker 1: of God, the Kingdom of Right Britain, in Northern Ireland
Speaker 1: and of her other realms and territories, Queen Head of
Speaker 1: the Commonwealth, Defender of the faith man. So she's not
Speaker 1: the Queen of England, Nope, not. You don't hear England
Speaker 1: in that title. And then you know she also has
Speaker 1: titles in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Jamaica. Yes, she's
Speaker 1: the Queen of Canada. I didn't know all that stuff.
Speaker 1: The Queen of Australia, yeah, And they're not the Queen,
Speaker 1: not the Queen of England, no man. She's the Queen
Speaker 1: of the United Kingdom, of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Speaker 1: But the reason why she is the um the Queen
Speaker 1: of England and the Queen of Australia is because there
Speaker 1: was a treaty in agreement amongst these other countries and
Speaker 1: Great Britain that basically said, you guys can go off
Speaker 1: on your own, but keep the queen, will you. And
Speaker 1: she's not the Queen of like you guys aren't part
Speaker 1: of this territory, but keep her as your queen. So
Speaker 1: she is, in addition to the Queen of Great Britain
Speaker 1: and Northern Ireland separately, the Queen of Canada and the
Speaker 1: Queen of Australia, but she assigns a governor to like
Speaker 1: do all the work, right, and so she's strictly a
Speaker 1: figurehead there. And the reason why she's strictly a figurehead
Speaker 1: there is because in practice she's supposed to approve all
Speaker 1: treaties and and all sorts of powerful legislation, but her
Speaker 1: her agent never opposes the Parliament of Canada or Australia. Yeah. Man,
Speaker 1: it's super confusing, but she's still the Queen of Canada
Speaker 1: and the Queen of Australia. Back in the day, it
Speaker 1: was a lot easier because the monarchs had absolute power,
Speaker 1: well not absolute power, well remember the Pope could get
Speaker 1: them or they could be subject to train aside. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and basically they they had the last word, but they
Speaker 1: had all these other people that were advising them. And
Speaker 1: you don't want to make enemies of the people that
Speaker 1: are taking care of your land and making you money
Speaker 1: and raising their own private armies, because that's where the
Speaker 1: taraniside can come in exactly. So you want to pretty
Speaker 1: much kind of keep things copacetic as much as possible,
Speaker 1: or you're gonna have the English Civil War yes, if
Speaker 1: you're smart and not an inbred dingbat, you know, because
Speaker 1: there are plenty of kings that ruled like complete nuts jobs.
Speaker 1: And then those nobles too that we talked about, um,
Speaker 1: that weren't royal but noble. They also formalized and the
Speaker 1: dukes and bishops started evolving eventually into what became the
Speaker 1: House of Lords, which is the upper house of British Parliament.
Speaker 1: And even today the House of Lords is still made
Speaker 1: up of several dozen of those hereditary nobles and a
Speaker 1: lot of life peers that are appointed by the Queen.
Speaker 1: And that's when you were talking about with you know,
Speaker 1: she has to sort of balance it out politically with
Speaker 1: these peerage appointments. And she still plays an enormously ceremonial
Speaker 1: role in England. You know, she's a huge tourism draw.
Speaker 1: She's the head of state, all that jazz. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: But and in other countries the monarchies are are even
Speaker 1: more ceremonial, like in Japan, the Imperial family UM the
Speaker 1: heir to the um the emperorship. Sure, his name is
Speaker 1: Prince he Saihido, and he recently got his um ceremonial
Speaker 1: age six haircut really and more pants for the first time.
Speaker 1: There's like apparently if you're from the outside, you're like,
Speaker 1: what are these people doing? But this is like these
Speaker 1: are traditions that are steeped back again to the sixth
Speaker 1: century BC for this lineage, um, but they are strictly
Speaker 1: ceremonial as a result of World War two treaties, it's
Speaker 1: the same lineage. Yeah, yeah, remarkable, but then and supposedly
Speaker 1: they're no longer deities. But if you're a Shinto in Japan,
Speaker 1: you like view the emperor as the highest apex of
Speaker 1: your religion and of you know, the monarchy is why
Speaker 1: wow uh sometimes you it's it's not ceremonial at all.
Speaker 1: Like in Jordan's they're a constitutional monarchy, and the king
Speaker 1: of Jordan's um in this article they equated to the
Speaker 1: US president. So they have appointments, appoint judges, they sign laws, um.
Speaker 1: But they can be overruled by the National Assembly. But
Speaker 1: they actually have a job to do. In Jordan, it's good,
Speaker 1: good for them. Although it might be nice just to
Speaker 1: be purely ceremonial. I bet that's a that's a cushy
Speaker 1: life right there. I bet it wouldn't be very nice
Speaker 1: for whatever transitional monarch lost power and now has to
Speaker 1: just do whatever Parliament says. But yeah, I'm sure if
Speaker 1: you're like Harry, he's having fun. Yeah, you bet he is.
Speaker 1: Some of them, some royals are famous for not letting
Speaker 1: all of this go to their head. Like apparently Scandinavian
Speaker 1: royals are called bicycle monarchs. Just regular folks. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: ride bikes. Yeah, I don't know about it's like everybody. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're not even expensive bikes, not bit. They're pretty nice.
Speaker 1: But when you think royals typically you think like Sultan
Speaker 1: of Brunei or um King of Monico and Princess Grace
Speaker 1: Kelly and just incredible wealth for the British monarchs. Again,
Speaker 1: that's a good will to go back to for this
Speaker 1: one too. Yeah, let's go over a couple of these things,
Speaker 1: because life is pretty good at Buckingham Palace two hundred
Speaker 1: forty bedrooms in London, four hundred servants, not bad. That
Speaker 1: seems excessive windsor q E two's family retreat eight thrones,
Speaker 1: eight thrones among six d and fifty rooms, not bad,
Speaker 1: but you mentioned it's a pretty good ratio. Brunei. Uh.
Speaker 1: That is where things get really crazy. That is the
Speaker 1: world's largest palace um almost eighteen hundred rooms and they
Speaker 1: have a throne room tiled and solid gold and chandeliers
Speaker 1: that cost twelve million dollars. Wow. They must be royal
Speaker 1: in the Britannia, which um, I don't think they use anymore.
Speaker 1: I wonder why not the royal yacht? Did they retire
Speaker 1: it because it was wasteful? Do you know? No? I
Speaker 1: don't know. Someone will tell us. I know that Jimmy
Speaker 1: Carter sold the presidential yacht because he thought it was
Speaker 1: wasteful and excessive? Did he really? Did he sell it
Speaker 1: to private company? Really? That's kind of cool? Um? And
Speaker 1: then the I guess we should talk about pretenders to
Speaker 1: the throne. Yeah, that's an important thing. Um. That is
Speaker 1: not someone pretending um to be king, although sometimes it's
Speaker 1: a case. But a pretender is someone who uh doesn't
Speaker 1: hold the crown but lays claim to it. They're saying like, hey,
Speaker 1: that person is an illegitimate king. I should be king,
Speaker 1: but I'm really just a sad pretender. That that happens
Speaker 1: sometimes when like a monarchy is deposed. Okay, it doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily mean that there's somebody who's holding the throne, although
Speaker 1: it can it can like there can be no throne anymore.
Speaker 1: And this whatever family was in charge when the monarchy
Speaker 1: was deposed is still keeping track of all this stuff
Speaker 1: in case they can never go back. And whoever is
Speaker 1: the king in that secession is the pretender to the throne. Okay,
Speaker 1: I got you. That's the other way it can happen,
Speaker 1: all right. Right for this break, we're gonna talk a
Speaker 1: little bit more about what life is like if you
Speaker 1: are a royal m m all right. So we talked
Speaker 1: about some of the opulence, uh of the royals and
Speaker 1: how they love to to show off their wealth and
Speaker 1: stick your nose in it. You're a commoner. Um. These days, children,
Speaker 1: if you're a royal child, you have all the best education.
Speaker 1: But that wasn't always a case. They used to be
Speaker 1: big dummies for the most part. Like they didn't even
Speaker 1: want them to go to school or to learn military
Speaker 1: tech dicks because they wanted them to just sit around
Speaker 1: and eat you know, turkey turkey legs all day, don't
Speaker 1: even worry about the book learning. Right, So you gotta
Speaker 1: had a bunch of dumb royals back in the day,
Speaker 1: dumb monarchies. Yeah again, um, Prince he Sahito is the
Speaker 1: first in the Japanese Imperial family to go to an
Speaker 1: elementary school rather than the specific school designed just for
Speaker 1: the youngest kids of the royal family, like a school
Speaker 1: of three people, yeah, or one at the time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's private tutelage, right, yeah, I guess so, yeah, but
Speaker 1: they call it a school if you're really young, like
Speaker 1: sometimes you'll be a king and you're just a little
Speaker 1: baby or like a like you said, like a little
Speaker 1: little toddler. You're gonna be assisted by people called regents,
Speaker 1: and they are going to be running the show for
Speaker 1: the most part until the king or queen can come
Speaker 1: of age. So chuck, here's the thing, um there. People
Speaker 1: often take potshots at royal saying that they're genetically unsound.
Speaker 1: It is true, apparently, um. Pretty much around the world,
Speaker 1: royal families are fairly well in bred. It's because of
Speaker 1: power consolidation over millennia, and so even if you had
Speaker 1: let's say two or three royal families in a country
Speaker 1: that were considered royal, but only one was in line
Speaker 1: for the throne at the time, they might want to
Speaker 1: kind of keep it amongst themselves. So even though they're
Speaker 1: intermarrying between the families. It's still just basically like intermarrying
Speaker 1: between three families. Yeah, and it's to keep the bloodline pure,
Speaker 1: which has always struck me as odd because it's uh
Speaker 1: results in some uh you know, disease and genetic defects
Speaker 1: pretty much. Yeah, and and um like, apparently that's where
Speaker 1: hemophilia came from. Yeah, and that was a gift courtesy
Speaker 1: of Queen Victoria. Apparently. The reason why this happens is
Speaker 1: you can't just say it's inbreeding. It's when you have
Speaker 1: a narrower, shallow gene pool that you're pulling from, the
Speaker 1: possibility of recessive genes appearing is increased. So if you
Speaker 1: have two people who have both have a copy of
Speaker 1: a recessive gene, that genes going to become dominant and
Speaker 1: come to the forefront, and so a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: that normally wouldn't pop up in a person when you
Speaker 1: just are inter mingling in a normal sized gene pool,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have a lot of problems because these people
Speaker 1: all share the same genes roughly, and so recessive genes
Speaker 1: are popping up in pairs. That's right, that's a big
Speaker 1: problem actually. Yeah, and a lot of royals throughout the years,
Speaker 1: and a lot of different countries have been um have
Speaker 1: been mad. Yeah, you found an article on some mad
Speaker 1: ones since Yeah, I picked out a few of these. Um,
Speaker 1: King Georgia third, he was probably the most famous. Um.
Speaker 1: The movie Madness of King George is in my top
Speaker 1: one by the way. Oh yeah, great, great movie. So
Speaker 1: I was listening to is it Keneth Durant who does
Speaker 1: uh MPR movie reviews? I think? So? He did this
Speaker 1: awesome like essay on on sequels and now there's an
Speaker 1: art to naming a sequel, And he was saying that
Speaker 1: the stage play originally was the Madness of George the Third,
Speaker 1: but when they turned it into a movie in America,
Speaker 1: they decided they need to rename it because they didn't
Speaker 1: want American filmgoers to think that this was the Madness
Speaker 1: of George three than that missed the first two. So yeah,
Speaker 1: wow it's not interesting. Yeah, dumb Americans. Yeah, Madness of
Speaker 1: King George. Uh he had all kinds of wacky behavior. Um,
Speaker 1: supposedly attempting to shake hands with a tree because he
Speaker 1: thought it was a King of Prussia. Didn't that sound
Speaker 1: like something Mr Burns would do? Yeah, totally Uh these
Speaker 1: days Um, you know, they tried and diagnose all the
Speaker 1: people now with what they think they might have had.
Speaker 1: And they believe he might have had schizophrenia, or maybe
Speaker 1: he was bipolar, or maybe he had this blood disorder
Speaker 1: called poor porphyria and that is hereditary and um, it
Speaker 1: can mimic madness. And then you have Christian the seventh
Speaker 1: of Denmark from seventeen eight seven to eighteen o eight.
Speaker 1: He um had these wild mood swings, hallucinations, paranoia, self mutilation. Um,
Speaker 1: he may have been schizophrenic and also may have suffered
Speaker 1: from porphyria or porphyria. So that was another one. And
Speaker 1: then more recently Farouk of Egypt. This one is my favorite.
Speaker 1: In ninety six, Like you can find pictures of this guy,
Speaker 1: which is kind of fun. Well, yeah, he was around
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty six. He loved his sports cars so
Speaker 1: much so he loved his red sports cars. They he
Speaker 1: decreed no one else was allowed to have a red
Speaker 1: car in all of Egypt. Yeah, and he would apparently
Speaker 1: shoot out the tires of people that passed him on
Speaker 1: the road. And they think that he had misophobia, which
Speaker 1: was a fear of contamination, so he would search for
Speaker 1: germs and little imaginary bits of dirt and um. It
Speaker 1: was also reportedly a kleptomaniac who may or may not
Speaker 1: have stolen Winston Churchill's watch. So he was a little wacky.
Speaker 1: Two I'd lied, Chuck. That guy was tied for first
Speaker 1: from my favorite king Charles the sixth of France. Melissa's deal. Dude,
Speaker 1: he was. He was pretty out of it. He um
Speaker 1: apparently got very paranoid that people were after him, so
Speaker 1: he murdered some of his own nights and he uh man,
Speaker 1: I thought that he was made of glass and had
Speaker 1: clothes made for him, special clothes. He wouldn't allow to
Speaker 1: anyone to touch him um because he thought that he
Speaker 1: would shatter. Actually, apparently he would forget he was king.
Speaker 1: He didn't recognize his family. They're not exactly sure what
Speaker 1: it is like all these guys. They diagnose the schizophrenia, bipolar,
Speaker 1: right right. I think the most um, the most exact
Speaker 1: one was missophobia for Farouk. Yeah, but the rest of
Speaker 1: them is how do you diagnose somebody like that? Now?
Speaker 1: You can't like hundreds of years later. It's tough. But
Speaker 1: there have been some wacky mad rulers. There have some monarchs.
Speaker 1: You got anything else? Yeah, this one last bit about crowns.
Speaker 1: I learned this. I thought there was one crown that
Speaker 1: was like, if you're the king or the queen, you've
Speaker 1: got your one single crown. Yeah, that's what I thought too,
Speaker 1: but that isn't true. Apparently they have different crowns worn
Speaker 1: by their ancestors, and they even create their own for
Speaker 1: special events like coronation. Yeah, where to have your own
Speaker 1: crown or something made for you. Yeah, and you've heard
Speaker 1: the term heavy ways to crown. They can be super heavy.
Speaker 1: King William the Force coronation crown with seven pounds. That's
Speaker 1: heavy crown. That is heavy. King George the Fifth had
Speaker 1: a two pound crown with six thousand diamonds. But Queen
Speaker 1: Victoria it was like that stuff. I want a little
Speaker 1: light crown because that's obnoxious and it hurts my head.
Speaker 1: I was trying to find. I have this idea that
Speaker 1: um crowns were originally fashioned to um represent a halo.
Speaker 1: So I don't know, I'm making it up. Oh gotcha,
Speaker 1: but it sounds right because remember, like forever, monarchs has
Speaker 1: been like remember I'm holy um. And the closest I
Speaker 1: could find is that in pre Christian Rome. There was
Speaker 1: a cult, a sun cult that I think a lot
Speaker 1: of the Roman emperors were members of, and they would
Speaker 1: wear crowns that look like the Statue of Liberties crown,
Speaker 1: which emulated rays of sunlight. Ah, so that's what those
Speaker 1: early crowns are based on. I like your theory. I'm
Speaker 1: going with it. Statue of Liberty is a member of
Speaker 1: a Roman sun cult. Well, no, I like the about
Speaker 1: the halo. I'm just gonna start telling people it's true.
Speaker 1: I think. Yeah, tell him Josh you, Yeah, tell him
Speaker 1: Josh sent you. Yeah that I got nothing else? All right, Well,
Speaker 1: if you want to learn more about royals, you can
Speaker 1: type that word into the search part at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com and it will bring up this excellent
Speaker 1: article by Ed Grabmanowski. Yeah, the grab Store. Uh. And
Speaker 1: since I said grab Banowski, it's time for listener. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this random number generation. We did our
Speaker 1: show on number stations and random number number generation is
Speaker 1: a key to the number station. This is from Aaron
Speaker 1: in Toronto, Ontario, Okay, Canada. Hey guys, just listen to
Speaker 1: your recent podcast and number stations. It was fascinating. Had
Speaker 1: no idea what these words till you described them, gave
Speaker 1: an example. Then I suddenly remembered scanning through the frequencies
Speaker 1: on my little shortwave radio. I'm picking up some of
Speaker 1: those trainsmissions. Never really thought about what they were and
Speaker 1: what they meant at the time. I was too caught
Speaker 1: up in thinking about where they were broadcasting from. Since
Speaker 1: of vice has always had an accent, I wanted to
Speaker 1: add a small detail about computers generating random numbers. Modern
Speaker 1: computers are indeed capable of generating truly random numbers, but
Speaker 1: often the random data is generated too slowly to be
Speaker 1: of great use. So what they do is UH use
Speaker 1: some true random data to see the high quality pseudo
Speaker 1: random generator algorithm which can generate random numbers as quickly
Speaker 1: as needed. But doesn't that make it less than random?
Speaker 1: I don't know. It seems like every so often the
Speaker 1: algorithm is receded from the true random source to keep
Speaker 1: the sequences more random. While what you said is not wrong,
Speaker 1: it was missing a bit of detail that those of
Speaker 1: us who enjoy the nitty gritty details don't want to
Speaker 1: be overlooked. Smiley face, Thanks for a great podcast. My
Speaker 1: wife and I often listen to pass the time on
Speaker 1: our two hour road trip to and from the cottage. Well, Aaron,
Speaker 1: good for you for having a cottage. And I said,
Speaker 1: you're coming to see us in Toronto for our lives.
Speaker 1: He's like, I didn't even know. How do you not know?
Speaker 1: And then he bought tickets and I think he's gonna come. Awesome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm very excited. Is it gonna be fun shows. If
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with Chuck and I,
Speaker 1: you can tweet to us at s y s K podcast.
Speaker 1: You can join us on Facebook dot com, slash Stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know. You can send us an email to
Speaker 1: stuff Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com, and as always,
Speaker 1: joined us at our home on the web, Stuff you
Speaker 1: Should Know dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.