Let's Get Our Own King and Queen

My heart skipped a beat ... maybe more than one as I read the story.

"Peter Phillips, the Queen's eldest grandchild, became the first royal of his generation to marry yesterday.

"In the presence of 300 guests including the woman he calls 'Granny,' the Prince of Wales, the Duchess of Cornwall, Prince Harry and his girlfriend Chelsy Davy, the 30-year-old son of the Princess Royal exchanged vows with Autumn Kelly, his Canadian fiancée."

I haven't been so excited since Elizabeth Taylor married Eddie Fisher!

Then it dawned on me. Peter doesn't have a title so Autumn will just be Mrs. Phillips and maybe even, though perish the thought, plain Ms. Phillips. Or Ms. Kelly-Phillips. Or in the McTeer tradition, Ms. Kelly.

This is not fair and it had me running to the 1931 Statute of Westminster, whereby we became a self-governing dominion. But alas, I found no loopholes. There is nothing legal we can do about this. Max Aitken, a rich Canadian press baron of rather dicey private habits, became Baron Beaverbrook and our best known and much beloved felon Conrad Black became Baron Crosseyes, or Crossbow, or something like that. But Autumn stays Autumn.

A national cause is born

This just isn't fair! Especially since Peter's Grandmum offered to give him and sister Zara titles but Mummy, the Princess Royal, wouldn't hear of it

Take Camilla, the late Parker-Bowles, who became the Duchess of Cornwall. She couldn't even pass the virginity test administered to Diana. (I applied for the job of virgin testing but realized I was getting a bit long in the tooth for it.) Nevertheless, Camilla not only became a Duchess but a Royal Duchess at that. Those who take these matters seriously, which I'm sure most of you do, will remember that when Wallis Simpson married the Royal Duke of Windsor, until shortly before King Edward VIII, she was not made into Her Royal Highness because of the spite (understandable) of the new Queen Elizabeth, later the Queen Mum. This rankled poor David (Edward when he was King) for the rest of his life. Bad enough that Wallis was only a plain Duchess but she was stuck with David, the world's best known premature ejaculator, forever after.

I've thought a lot about this and other royal minutiae for a long time. The Scots, that is the Highlanders with the exception of Clan Campbell (who supported the despised Hanoverians), bitterly resent Elizabeth being styled II when she is only Elizabeth I of Scotland. The Black Campbells, as all we descendants of Somerled, first Lord of the Isles know, murdered the Macdonalds in their sleep at Glencoe in 1692, which, far from being erased in our memories, increases, and is fortified every time we see and read the latest pronouncements from the Great Dictator in Victoria. But I digress.

Out with old, in with new

Here's what we do. We tell the present Queen that the retirement time for Canadian monarchs is 80 and that she'll just have to go. We'll be nice about it -- a coat of recently slaughtered seal pups will keep her lovely memories of Canada alive and for Philip yet another Stetson hat, this one autographed by Ralph Klein.

Then we ask Peter and Autumn to become King and Queen of all the Canadas including La (or is it Le? and why does it matter?) Nation de Quebec. Of course, there will be a training period of a couple of years as a CBC presenter.

Many of us of a certain age yearn for the days when instead of party hacks, pretty women and inspired political choices as governors-general, we had chinless British aristocrats. I well remember as a young army cadet in World War II being reviewed by the Earl of Athlone (actually Sir Alexander Augustus Frederick William Alfred George Cambridge, Prince Alexander of Teck in real life) and he was perfect. How thrilled I was when he mumbled something to me without having to move his lips. He was married to a granddaughter of Queen Victoria and is, for true monarchists and the scattered remains of the Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire, the last real, honest to goodness viceroy of this, our beloved Canada, a country that fights to its last breath to maintain the last vestiges of colonialism.

Handsome, not too smart

Admittedly Peter is not old and he is not chinless -- but by God he's British, descended as all royals are from the best of impoverished German aristocrats. He has his father's looks (the saints be praised) his mother's athletic ability (if riding horses is athletic for the rider too) and his grandfather Philip's intellect, having studied "Sports Science" (how long is a football field? and such like) at the University of Exeter.

Actually as I work my way through this mindless minefield I've entered, it occurs to me that having our own King and Queen, with the Queen a Quebec Anglophone, is a capital idea.

Countries need a head of state and electing them is a bad idea because then they think they have a real mandate.

Appointing people reminds one of Louis XIV who said "Every time I create an appointment, I create a hundred malcontents and one ingrate."

So let's just accept the gift that has fallen into our collective laps. All hail King Peter and Queen Autumn, the new Canadian royals!

Of course it's a bit late for the prescribed virginity test but fertility must be a condition precedent so that once they get rolling on the job, so to speak, they will ensure peaceful passage of authority to the next generation of suitably bred leaders of our great realm.

Surely this is an idea whose time has come.

Related Tyee stories:

• YouTube's New Royalty
  It used to be the voice of the people. Not anymore?
• Diana's Revenge
  Reviewed: The Diana Chronicles
• Royal Pains
  'The Queen' and all her kooky clan, even the corgis.