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Pomp and circumstance has its place, and monarchy has the advantage of separating the pomp from the power. This is an enormous timesaver for the government, whose machinery can tick quietly behind the pageantry, processions and boredom of state visits. Besides, the separation is a safeguard against political demagoguery. Modern monarchy often seems to reduce the tensions to which democracy is prone. According to Sociologists Edward Shils and Michael Young in the Sociological Review, it provides an effective segregation of love and hatred. "When the love is directed toward a genuinely love-worthy object, it reduces the intensity of the hatred as well. Just as the existence of a constitutional monarchy softens the acerbity in the relations between political parties, so it also lessens the antagonism of the governed toward the reigning government."
A more serious charge against monarchy than costliness is that it keeps people in tutelage and prevents them from learning how to rule themselves. This may be true in autocratic kingdoms, but it is scarcely so under constitutional monarchy. According to a widespread psychiatric view, constitutional monarchs represent parents who are always reassuringly present without, however, curbing a people's freedom. They thus embody the continuity and unity that is lacking in so much of modern life. Shorn now of the military ambitions and political self-seeking that made so many of them the scourge of the world, they seem to be reverting to their ancient magical role.