Manic Impressive
18th October 2011, 21:00
Earlier I was about to respond to a post which criticized my animosity towards the British royal family. Unfortunately that post was deleted but it did remind me that I had seen that opinion represented on here before. So I decided to do a little digging about the Royal family and the rest of the aristocracy.
First the UK,
As with all people born in the UK I am not a citizen of this country, I am a subject.
A subject is an individual subjected to the rule by an eliteHow does this effect my life? Not at all but it still pisses me off that I'm considered as little more than expendable property in the language of the state, created to be governed by those born into wealth and privilege. But perhaps we are all subjects really, maybe Britain is just more honest about it.
Some claim the Queen has no power well...
The Queen has the right to rule: the people of Britain are not citizens, but subjects of the monarch. Most public servants must swear an oath of loyalty, or make an affirmation of their loyalty, to the crown.
Although the Queen is politically neutral, she has the right to be consulted and to "advise and warn" ministers. Otherwise her residual powers - the "royal prerogative" - are mostly exercised through the government of the day. These include the power to enact legislation, to award honours (on the advice of the prime minister), to sign treaties and to declare war.
But royal prerogative is the subject of controversy, because it confers on governments the power to make major decisions without recourse to parliament. When Edward Heath brought Britain into the EEC in 1972, parliament was not consulted until afterwards. Similarly, Margaret Thatcher used royal prerogative to go to war in the Falklands in 1982.
So a couple of examples of the Queen using the royal prerogative to bypass democracy, one of which resulted in over 900 deaths and thousands injured. Granted she was asked to by the Prime minister but she could've refused and had it put to a vote. The Queen is also worth between £450m - £750m in personal wealth alone with an estimated 17 Billion in assets. Name me one person who's worth that much money and isn't powerful? She can also tell the ruler of the most powerful empire on earth to stfu (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJUOUL-BF7c), now you can't deny that takes breeding. We also have the Privy Council which is a body of advisors to the monarch, now mostly made up of senior politicians, which can enact legislation without a vote in Parliament. The current Prime minister David Cameron went straight into a decent job in the conservative party after a family connection made a mysterious phone call from the palace on his behalf. David Cameron is also a distant cousin of the Queen.
Then we have the fact that they are completely unaccountable for their actions and could even pardon themselves if convicted of a crime, that's more powerful than any normal member of the bourgeoisie. How better to illustrate this than with a few examples of their racism. Prince (http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/01/13/1105423591296.html) Harry, (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jan/12/prince-harry-video-pakistani) Prince Charles (http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2009/jan/14/prince-charles-prince-harry), the Queen (http://www.babble.com/CS/blogs/strollerderby/archive/2009/02/05/the-queen-of-england-sells-racist-toys.aspx)and finally Prince Philip here's some of the worst
China State Visit, 1986 "If you stay here much longer, you’ll all be slitty-eyed."
To an Aborigine businessman in Australia “Do you still throw spears at each other?”
When asked if he would like to visit the Soviet Union “The bastards murdered half my family"
To a Briton in Budapest “You can’t have been here that long – you haven’t got a pot belly.”
To a driving instructor in Scotland “How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to get them through the test?”
To a student who had been trekking in Papua New Guinea “You managed not to get eaten, then?”
To the President of Nigeria, dressed in traditional robes “You look like you’re ready for bed!"
On key problems facing Brazil “Brazilians live there”
Seeing a shoddily installed fuse box in a high-tech Edinburgh factory "like it was put in by an Indian".
While presenting a Duke of Edinburgh Award to a student, when informed that the young man was going to help out in Romania, he asked if the student was going to help the Romanian orphans; upon being informed he was not, it was claimed the 85-year-old duke added "Ah good, there's so many over there you feel they breed them just to put in orphanages."
During a visit to a Tamil Hindu temple in London, he asked a Hindu priest "Are you related to the terrorist Tamil Tigers?"
In 1987, he wrote in his book on If I Were an Animal
"In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation."
OK that's enough of that even though there are plenty more highly offensive comments.
I should also add that the Queen is as well as being part of the Aristocracy, she is a bonefied member of the Bourgeoisie in a Marxian sense (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/theroyalfamily/5888381/Queens-private-income-rises-three-times-the-rate-of-inflation.html).
But It's easy to have a go at the inbred, tax dodging, racist leeches. However, the aristocracy is bigger than just them.
A few rich people, many of them aristocrats, own 69 per cent of the land in Britain. As a result, house prices are so high, millions can't afford to buy a home. The NS launches a campaign to end this feudal system.
Holker Estate owns more than 15,000 acres of land in south Cumbria, land that is used for anything from tourism to farming to commercial caravan sites. The estate controls the gates to the foreshore of Morecambe Bay, and thus has jurisdiction over fishing and cockling rights along this part of the remote Cumbrian coastline, from which, on a clear day, you can see in the far distance the ominous massing of the Heysham nuclear power station.
The owner of Holker Hall, Hugh Cavendish (Lord Cavendish of Furness), is part of the extended, intricate and secretive "cousinhood" - the 6,000 aristocratic families and their relatives who still own most of Britain and who, before the recent eviction of hereditary peers, exerted their influence and control over land ownership through the House of Lords. The present head of the Cavendish family is Peregrine Cavendish, 12th Duke of Devonshire. His father, Andrew, died in May this year. He was married to Deborah Mitford - the youngest of the six famous sisters, two of whom, Unity and Diana, were fascist-fanciers - and was celebrated in his obituaries as a kind of archetypal establishment toff: racehorse owner, one-time Tory activist, arts dilettante.
The Cavendish family, which first began to acquire vast tracts of land following the dissolution of the monasteries in the 16th century, and consolidated its wealth and position through marriage within the aristocracy, owns 65,000 acres of land in Britain and another 8,000 in the Republic of Ireland. Their residences include Chatsworth in Derbyshire, which attracts more than half a million paying visitors each year, as well as Holker Hall, Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire, Bolton Hall in Yorkshire, Compton Place in Eastbourne and several grand houses in central London.
The United Kingdom is 60 million acres in size, of which 41 million are designated "agricultural" land, 15 million are "waste" (forests, rivers, mountains and so on) and owned mainly by the Ministry of Defence and the Forestry Commission, and four million are "urban plot", the land on which most of the 60 million people of these islands live. In sum, 69 per cent of the acreage of Britain is owned by 0.6 per cent of the population. Or, more pertinently, 158,000 families own 41 million acres of land while 24 million families live on four million acres.
Spain (where 70 per cent of the land is owned by 0.2 per cent of the population) is the only other European country in which so much land is concentrated in the hands of so few, if you exclude pseudo countries such as Luxembourg, Liechtenstein and Monaco. Even in Brazil, where the white elite have ruled with impunity for so long, land is more evenly distributed through-out the general population than it is in Britain.
When I contacted Holker Estate to speak to Lord Cavendish, I was redirected to someone called Dickon Knight, the good lord's land agent. In well-modulated tones, he told me that the great landowners of Britain were "stewards" of the land: that without their presence, their care and their diligence, the British countryside would not be as well preserved as it is, or as attractive to tourists. "The estate takes a very paternalistic view of the local community," he told me. "Through farming, forestry, tourism and conservation, we contribute significantly to the vitality of the local economy. We also have common land, which the estate owns but over which other people have rights. Where you find large estates in the country you will find that the surrounding countryside is extraordinarily well cared for."
In her powerful book World on Fire, Amy Chua, a professor at Yale Law School, writes of how many of the world's developing nations are dominated economically by ethnic elites which comprise a small percentage of the overall population: the Chinese in Indonesia and the Philippines, the Jews in Russia, white settlers in Zimbabwe (who are now in hasty and demoralised retreat), the Lebanese in West Africa, white people of European origin in Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador and Peru, the Igbos in Nigeria. Chua argues that free markets concentrate wealth in the hands of the "market-dominant minority" even as experiments with democracy increasingly empower the often impoverished majority population. The result can be a potentially catastrophic ethnonationalism, "pitting a frustrated indigenous majority, easily aroused by opportunistic vote-seeking politicians, against a resented, wealthy ethnic minority".
The British aristocracy is, I would argue, a genuine market-dominant minority: centuries of inbreeding, to keep the bloodlines "pure", have created a tribe, a racially distinct sub-group of people who resemble one another, who have the same absurdly affected accents, who go to the same few schools, who protect each other's interests and who continue to exert their control over the land through the armed forces, the Conser- vative Party and the media, notably the Daily Telegraph, the country's bestselling broadsheet newspaper. Today, as with other market-dominant minorities elsewhere in the world, the landowning classes of Britain are threatened not by revolution, but by greater democracy - as represented by the rapid extension of home ownership.
The above is a heavily edited copy of the original (http://www.newstatesman.com/200409200005) which I recommend reading in full, it was just too long for the thread.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/11/10/article-1328270-0BFE33B1000005DC-379_964x681.jpg
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1328270/A-Britain-STILL-belongs-aristocracy.html
Being a typical British Subject I'm a product of our xenophobic schools which teach us very little about our continental neighbours. So I thought I'd check out how many other royal families were still going. I was shocked at what I found, while they may not be reigning monarchs any more they certainly are doing all right for themselves.
Emporer Karl von Habsburg II and King Karel IV of Bohemia
and King Karlo II of Croatia
Referred to in Austria (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austria) as Karl Habsburg-Lothringen, in France (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France) as Charles de Habsbourg-Lorraine, in Hungary (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungary) as Habsburg Károly, and by his royal name (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_titles) as Archduke Karl of Austria,[1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_von_Habsburg#cite_note-title-0)[2] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_von_Habsburg#cite_note-1) is an Austrian politician, and the current Head of the House of Habsburg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Habsburg) and the Sovereign (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign) of the Order of the Golden Fleece (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_Golden_Fleece). Born in Starnberg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starnberg), Bavaria (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bavaria), Germany, he is the son of Otto von Habsburg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_von_Habsburg) and Princess Regina of Saxe-Meiningen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Regina_of_Saxe-Meiningen), and the grandson of the last Austrian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austria) emperor, Charles I (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_of_Austria). He served as a Member of the European Parliament (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_of_the_European_Parliament) for the Austrian People's Party (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_People%27s_Party) 1996–1999.
Franz, Duke of Bavaria
styled as His Royal Highness (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Highness) The Duke of Bavaria (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_of_Bavaria), is head of the Wittelsbach (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wittelsbach) family, the former ruling family of the Kingdom of Bavaria (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_of_Bavaria). His great-grandfather Ludwig III (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_III_of_Bavaria) was the last King of Bavaria before being deposed in 1918. Franz is also the current senior co-heir-general (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heir-general) of King Charles I of England and Scotland (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_I_of_England), and thus is considered by Jacobites (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobitism) to be the legitimate heir of the House of Stuart (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Stuart) as king of England, France, Scotland, and Ireland.
After the war Franz received his high-school education at the Benedictine Abbey of Ettal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ettal_Abbey). He then studied business management at the University of Munich (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Munich) and in Zurich (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zurich). Franz developed a passion for collecting modern art; today many items from his private collection are on permanent loan to the Pinakothek der Moderne (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinakothek_der_Moderne) in Munich (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich).[5] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz,_Duke_of_Bavaria#cite_note-4)
Franz lives in an apartment in Nymphenburg Palace (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nymphenburg_Palace), the former summer residence of the kings of Bavaria, in Munich (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich).
King Simeon II Tsar of Bulgaria
In 1990, after the fall of communism, Simeon was issued a new Bulgarian passport. In 1996, 50 years after the abolition of the monarchy, Simeon returned to Bulgaria and was met in many places by crowds cheering: "We want our King!" [5] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simeon_II_of_Bulgaria#cite_note-4) He did not, at that point, make any political announcements or moves.
Various estates in Bulgaria that had been nationalized under the republic were returned to Simeon and his family. In 2001, Simeon announced he would return to Bulgaria to form a new political party, the National Movement Simeon II (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Movement_Simeon_II) (NMSII), dedicated to "reforms and political integrity."
NMSII won a large victory in the parliamentary elections held on 17 June 2001, capturing 120 of the 240 seats in Parliament and defeating the two main pre-existing political parties. on 6 April 2001, Simeon resumed the role of leader of the nation upon taking office as Prime Minister (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Minister_of_Bulgaria) of the Republic of Bulgaria (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Bulgaria) from July 2001 until August 2005.
Emporer Charles Napoleon Bonaparte
Charles attended school at Sainte-croix-des-neiges in Abondance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communes_of_the_Haute-Savoie_d%C3%A9partement), Haute-Savoie (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haute-Savoie), taking off 1964–1965 to study German in the Black Forest (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Forest). He holds a doctorate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctorate) in Economics from the Sorbonne (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorbonne)
Charles has worked professionally as a banker, financial planner, and real estate developer and as a visiting professor at the American Institute on Foreign Policy.
Take a look there's plenty more http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_royal_houses#Europe
The point of this whole thing is to show that the Aristocracy even those who were dethroned carried on living comfortably. The Aristocracy of Europe never died out, they adapted to capitalism and thrived on it. So next time I get pissy about a rapper kissing up to the royal family now you know why.
(thread dedicated to Evil Red Guy :tt2:)
First the UK,
As with all people born in the UK I am not a citizen of this country, I am a subject.
A subject is an individual subjected to the rule by an eliteHow does this effect my life? Not at all but it still pisses me off that I'm considered as little more than expendable property in the language of the state, created to be governed by those born into wealth and privilege. But perhaps we are all subjects really, maybe Britain is just more honest about it.
Some claim the Queen has no power well...
The Queen has the right to rule: the people of Britain are not citizens, but subjects of the monarch. Most public servants must swear an oath of loyalty, or make an affirmation of their loyalty, to the crown.
Although the Queen is politically neutral, she has the right to be consulted and to "advise and warn" ministers. Otherwise her residual powers - the "royal prerogative" - are mostly exercised through the government of the day. These include the power to enact legislation, to award honours (on the advice of the prime minister), to sign treaties and to declare war.
But royal prerogative is the subject of controversy, because it confers on governments the power to make major decisions without recourse to parliament. When Edward Heath brought Britain into the EEC in 1972, parliament was not consulted until afterwards. Similarly, Margaret Thatcher used royal prerogative to go to war in the Falklands in 1982.
So a couple of examples of the Queen using the royal prerogative to bypass democracy, one of which resulted in over 900 deaths and thousands injured. Granted she was asked to by the Prime minister but she could've refused and had it put to a vote. The Queen is also worth between £450m - £750m in personal wealth alone with an estimated 17 Billion in assets. Name me one person who's worth that much money and isn't powerful? She can also tell the ruler of the most powerful empire on earth to stfu (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJUOUL-BF7c), now you can't deny that takes breeding. We also have the Privy Council which is a body of advisors to the monarch, now mostly made up of senior politicians, which can enact legislation without a vote in Parliament. The current Prime minister David Cameron went straight into a decent job in the conservative party after a family connection made a mysterious phone call from the palace on his behalf. David Cameron is also a distant cousin of the Queen.
Then we have the fact that they are completely unaccountable for their actions and could even pardon themselves if convicted of a crime, that's more powerful than any normal member of the bourgeoisie. How better to illustrate this than with a few examples of their racism. Prince (http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/01/13/1105423591296.html) Harry, (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jan/12/prince-harry-video-pakistani) Prince Charles (http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2009/jan/14/prince-charles-prince-harry), the Queen (http://www.babble.com/CS/blogs/strollerderby/archive/2009/02/05/the-queen-of-england-sells-racist-toys.aspx)and finally Prince Philip here's some of the worst
China State Visit, 1986 "If you stay here much longer, you’ll all be slitty-eyed."
To an Aborigine businessman in Australia “Do you still throw spears at each other?”
When asked if he would like to visit the Soviet Union “The bastards murdered half my family"
To a Briton in Budapest “You can’t have been here that long – you haven’t got a pot belly.”
To a driving instructor in Scotland “How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to get them through the test?”
To a student who had been trekking in Papua New Guinea “You managed not to get eaten, then?”
To the President of Nigeria, dressed in traditional robes “You look like you’re ready for bed!"
On key problems facing Brazil “Brazilians live there”
Seeing a shoddily installed fuse box in a high-tech Edinburgh factory "like it was put in by an Indian".
While presenting a Duke of Edinburgh Award to a student, when informed that the young man was going to help out in Romania, he asked if the student was going to help the Romanian orphans; upon being informed he was not, it was claimed the 85-year-old duke added "Ah good, there's so many over there you feel they breed them just to put in orphanages."
During a visit to a Tamil Hindu temple in London, he asked a Hindu priest "Are you related to the terrorist Tamil Tigers?"
In 1987, he wrote in his book on If I Were an Animal
"In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation."
OK that's enough of that even though there are plenty more highly offensive comments.
I should also add that the Queen is as well as being part of the Aristocracy, she is a bonefied member of the Bourgeoisie in a Marxian sense (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/theroyalfamily/5888381/Queens-private-income-rises-three-times-the-rate-of-inflation.html).
But It's easy to have a go at the inbred, tax dodging, racist leeches. However, the aristocracy is bigger than just them.
A few rich people, many of them aristocrats, own 69 per cent of the land in Britain. As a result, house prices are so high, millions can't afford to buy a home. The NS launches a campaign to end this feudal system.
Holker Estate owns more than 15,000 acres of land in south Cumbria, land that is used for anything from tourism to farming to commercial caravan sites. The estate controls the gates to the foreshore of Morecambe Bay, and thus has jurisdiction over fishing and cockling rights along this part of the remote Cumbrian coastline, from which, on a clear day, you can see in the far distance the ominous massing of the Heysham nuclear power station.
The owner of Holker Hall, Hugh Cavendish (Lord Cavendish of Furness), is part of the extended, intricate and secretive "cousinhood" - the 6,000 aristocratic families and their relatives who still own most of Britain and who, before the recent eviction of hereditary peers, exerted their influence and control over land ownership through the House of Lords. The present head of the Cavendish family is Peregrine Cavendish, 12th Duke of Devonshire. His father, Andrew, died in May this year. He was married to Deborah Mitford - the youngest of the six famous sisters, two of whom, Unity and Diana, were fascist-fanciers - and was celebrated in his obituaries as a kind of archetypal establishment toff: racehorse owner, one-time Tory activist, arts dilettante.
The Cavendish family, which first began to acquire vast tracts of land following the dissolution of the monasteries in the 16th century, and consolidated its wealth and position through marriage within the aristocracy, owns 65,000 acres of land in Britain and another 8,000 in the Republic of Ireland. Their residences include Chatsworth in Derbyshire, which attracts more than half a million paying visitors each year, as well as Holker Hall, Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire, Bolton Hall in Yorkshire, Compton Place in Eastbourne and several grand houses in central London.
The United Kingdom is 60 million acres in size, of which 41 million are designated "agricultural" land, 15 million are "waste" (forests, rivers, mountains and so on) and owned mainly by the Ministry of Defence and the Forestry Commission, and four million are "urban plot", the land on which most of the 60 million people of these islands live. In sum, 69 per cent of the acreage of Britain is owned by 0.6 per cent of the population. Or, more pertinently, 158,000 families own 41 million acres of land while 24 million families live on four million acres.
Spain (where 70 per cent of the land is owned by 0.2 per cent of the population) is the only other European country in which so much land is concentrated in the hands of so few, if you exclude pseudo countries such as Luxembourg, Liechtenstein and Monaco. Even in Brazil, where the white elite have ruled with impunity for so long, land is more evenly distributed through-out the general population than it is in Britain.
When I contacted Holker Estate to speak to Lord Cavendish, I was redirected to someone called Dickon Knight, the good lord's land agent. In well-modulated tones, he told me that the great landowners of Britain were "stewards" of the land: that without their presence, their care and their diligence, the British countryside would not be as well preserved as it is, or as attractive to tourists. "The estate takes a very paternalistic view of the local community," he told me. "Through farming, forestry, tourism and conservation, we contribute significantly to the vitality of the local economy. We also have common land, which the estate owns but over which other people have rights. Where you find large estates in the country you will find that the surrounding countryside is extraordinarily well cared for."
In her powerful book World on Fire, Amy Chua, a professor at Yale Law School, writes of how many of the world's developing nations are dominated economically by ethnic elites which comprise a small percentage of the overall population: the Chinese in Indonesia and the Philippines, the Jews in Russia, white settlers in Zimbabwe (who are now in hasty and demoralised retreat), the Lebanese in West Africa, white people of European origin in Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador and Peru, the Igbos in Nigeria. Chua argues that free markets concentrate wealth in the hands of the "market-dominant minority" even as experiments with democracy increasingly empower the often impoverished majority population. The result can be a potentially catastrophic ethnonationalism, "pitting a frustrated indigenous majority, easily aroused by opportunistic vote-seeking politicians, against a resented, wealthy ethnic minority".
The British aristocracy is, I would argue, a genuine market-dominant minority: centuries of inbreeding, to keep the bloodlines "pure", have created a tribe, a racially distinct sub-group of people who resemble one another, who have the same absurdly affected accents, who go to the same few schools, who protect each other's interests and who continue to exert their control over the land through the armed forces, the Conser- vative Party and the media, notably the Daily Telegraph, the country's bestselling broadsheet newspaper. Today, as with other market-dominant minorities elsewhere in the world, the landowning classes of Britain are threatened not by revolution, but by greater democracy - as represented by the rapid extension of home ownership.
The above is a heavily edited copy of the original (http://www.newstatesman.com/200409200005) which I recommend reading in full, it was just too long for the thread.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/11/10/article-1328270-0BFE33B1000005DC-379_964x681.jpg
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1328270/A-Britain-STILL-belongs-aristocracy.html
Being a typical British Subject I'm a product of our xenophobic schools which teach us very little about our continental neighbours. So I thought I'd check out how many other royal families were still going. I was shocked at what I found, while they may not be reigning monarchs any more they certainly are doing all right for themselves.
Emporer Karl von Habsburg II and King Karel IV of Bohemia
and King Karlo II of Croatia
Referred to in Austria (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austria) as Karl Habsburg-Lothringen, in France (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France) as Charles de Habsbourg-Lorraine, in Hungary (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungary) as Habsburg Károly, and by his royal name (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_titles) as Archduke Karl of Austria,[1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_von_Habsburg#cite_note-title-0)[2] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_von_Habsburg#cite_note-1) is an Austrian politician, and the current Head of the House of Habsburg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Habsburg) and the Sovereign (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign) of the Order of the Golden Fleece (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_the_Golden_Fleece). Born in Starnberg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starnberg), Bavaria (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bavaria), Germany, he is the son of Otto von Habsburg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_von_Habsburg) and Princess Regina of Saxe-Meiningen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Regina_of_Saxe-Meiningen), and the grandson of the last Austrian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austria) emperor, Charles I (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_of_Austria). He served as a Member of the European Parliament (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Member_of_the_European_Parliament) for the Austrian People's Party (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_People%27s_Party) 1996–1999.
Franz, Duke of Bavaria
styled as His Royal Highness (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Highness) The Duke of Bavaria (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_of_Bavaria), is head of the Wittelsbach (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wittelsbach) family, the former ruling family of the Kingdom of Bavaria (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_of_Bavaria). His great-grandfather Ludwig III (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_III_of_Bavaria) was the last King of Bavaria before being deposed in 1918. Franz is also the current senior co-heir-general (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heir-general) of King Charles I of England and Scotland (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_I_of_England), and thus is considered by Jacobites (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobitism) to be the legitimate heir of the House of Stuart (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Stuart) as king of England, France, Scotland, and Ireland.
After the war Franz received his high-school education at the Benedictine Abbey of Ettal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ettal_Abbey). He then studied business management at the University of Munich (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Munich) and in Zurich (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zurich). Franz developed a passion for collecting modern art; today many items from his private collection are on permanent loan to the Pinakothek der Moderne (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinakothek_der_Moderne) in Munich (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich).[5] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz,_Duke_of_Bavaria#cite_note-4)
Franz lives in an apartment in Nymphenburg Palace (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nymphenburg_Palace), the former summer residence of the kings of Bavaria, in Munich (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich).
King Simeon II Tsar of Bulgaria
In 1990, after the fall of communism, Simeon was issued a new Bulgarian passport. In 1996, 50 years after the abolition of the monarchy, Simeon returned to Bulgaria and was met in many places by crowds cheering: "We want our King!" [5] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simeon_II_of_Bulgaria#cite_note-4) He did not, at that point, make any political announcements or moves.
Various estates in Bulgaria that had been nationalized under the republic were returned to Simeon and his family. In 2001, Simeon announced he would return to Bulgaria to form a new political party, the National Movement Simeon II (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Movement_Simeon_II) (NMSII), dedicated to "reforms and political integrity."
NMSII won a large victory in the parliamentary elections held on 17 June 2001, capturing 120 of the 240 seats in Parliament and defeating the two main pre-existing political parties. on 6 April 2001, Simeon resumed the role of leader of the nation upon taking office as Prime Minister (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Minister_of_Bulgaria) of the Republic of Bulgaria (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Bulgaria) from July 2001 until August 2005.
Emporer Charles Napoleon Bonaparte
Charles attended school at Sainte-croix-des-neiges in Abondance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communes_of_the_Haute-Savoie_d%C3%A9partement), Haute-Savoie (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haute-Savoie), taking off 1964–1965 to study German in the Black Forest (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Forest). He holds a doctorate (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctorate) in Economics from the Sorbonne (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorbonne)
Charles has worked professionally as a banker, financial planner, and real estate developer and as a visiting professor at the American Institute on Foreign Policy.
Take a look there's plenty more http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_royal_houses#Europe
The point of this whole thing is to show that the Aristocracy even those who were dethroned carried on living comfortably. The Aristocracy of Europe never died out, they adapted to capitalism and thrived on it. So next time I get pissy about a rapper kissing up to the royal family now you know why.
(thread dedicated to Evil Red Guy :tt2:)