NOBODY is mad at monarchy these days. Britain's angry John Osborne can sneer: "My objection to the royal symbol is that it is dead; it is the gold filling in a mouthful of decay." But that was nearly a decade ago, and even Osborne has simmered down since. Antiroyalism was once such an embattled issue that even Americans—who basically adore royalty—could echo Mark Twain's dictum: "There was never a throne which did not represent a crime." But nowadays monarchy is not much of a villain. And what would astonish Mark Twain is not that so many kings have lost their crowns but that so many still wear them.
The great tide of regicide and republicanism that began with the French Revolution reached a high mark with World War I. The last European ruler to play the king game with real gusto was high-living Edward VII. His funeral, on May 20, 1910, was a perfect set piece to illustrate the end of the royal era. Glittering and clanking behind his catafalque came one emperor, nine kings, five heirs apparent, 40 royal highnesses, three queens and four dowager queens. Afterward all of them went back to their thrones and palaces, courtiers and horse guards and watched their world come apart. Within five months, Portugal fired its King Manuel and declared itself a republic, and during the next generation the rulers of Russia, Austria, Germany, Greece and Spain were relieved of their jobs. Italy's royal family survived until 1946. By then exiled rulers cluttered the international resorts with their miniature traveling courts, surrounded by faded elegance and sour memories. Monarchy seemed to have reached the point where history turns into musical comedy.
When the Going Is Tough
Yet today there are signs everywhere that monarchy is far from obsolete. Spain is preparing to restore its royal house as a way of assuring political stability. In many Asian and African countries, the monarch alone provides a sense of cohesion, without which they would be torn apart by old animosities and new social forces. This is true even of some European nations. Certainly today's rulers have serious problems. Greece's young King Constantine is at loggerheads with the politicians in a country where politics is played like karate (a sport at which Constantine excels). Jordan's Hussein is doing his best to stave off antimonarchist rioters instigated by his leftist neighbors, Syria and the United Arab Republic. Only last week the new African nation Burundi ended the 400-year-long tribal rule of King Ntare V.
But most of the twoscore crowned heads listed in The Statesman's Year-Book fulfill a real function. In part, their significance is upheld by an old ally in a new guise: nationalism. The more closely peoples are brought together by high-speed communications and economic interdependence, the more they seem to react by turning inward to their national traditions. And to embody the sense of national integrity and unity when the going is tough, a king can do things that a President or a Prime Minister cannot do.