Royals have their work cut out

Of monarchs, mantrijis and other games of thrones.

By ET Bureau | Jan 03, 2020, 09.06 AM IST

The 93-year-old Queen put in 67 days of work in 2019.

Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown — not for the British monarchy. Calculations based on Britain’s Court Circular, a daily list of events and functions attended by the members of the royal family, reveal that the 93-year-old Queen is as busy as, well, a queen bee in that in the year just ended, she put in 67 days of work, excluding checking her red box of official correspondence that she does on a daily basis, which is four days more than she did in 2018.

It would appear that, despite Huckleberry Finn’s observation that “All kings is mostly rapscallions” whom he couldn’t want to reign on his republican parade, royalty must obey the dictum of noblesse oblige, and the greater the noblesse, the more the oblige.

Having long since derecognised princes and other regal representatives of a regime deemed only too ancien for a democracy, our own elected royals who occupy high political office can claim that they too are no slackers when it comes to work, which in the case of mantris involves, as their nomenclature suggests, the ritual incantation of inspirational mantras in the form of injunctions aimed at aam janta.

And, any quibbling as to how those in the seat of power often put governance in the back seat could be met with the libertarian response that that government grandee governs best who governs least.

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