Dane here. To me it is not important to be a republic. I am fine with our constitutional monarchy, I don't really care, to be honest, and I don't see countries with presidents doing so much better when it comes to democracy. If our royal family continues to create a good image, make trips to Asia for exposure and stuff, it's fine.
I just imagine having to vote for one of the most annoying of our politician as a president. And then them being a representative for our country. And voting for one person, rather than a party. It seems like such a dividing process. I get that your royal family has a bit of a problem these days, with the shaman-dude and the not-a-prince, but soon that will be history.
Lol, yeah. Because voting for someone you choose yourself (you can always not vote at all and have the same result) is worse to having choice made for you... but by literal blood in their veins. Expiry date: never. Democracy and accountibility is not a dividing process on its own.
You could also delegate the election of the president to your parliament. Not all countries have direct elections.
What if your children wanted to be "president" of your country? How will you tell them that no, they can't. Why not? Because they were not born from the right vagina.
They can be prime minister. Why is president so important over the prime minister? Oh no, I cannot be president, what to do? Those are words spoken from someone who lives in a country with a president.
I never ever ever heard anybody cry about "oh I am never being president because I was born in this horrible country of no president". But a kid in my country would perhaps dream of being the next primeminister.
And what does vagina have to do with it? It has nothing to do with vagina.
Oh no, I cannot be president, what to do? Those are words spoken from someone who lives in a country with a president.
Because it is a matter of principle. To accept that you can never become something it is to accept that there is someone above you, someone better than you by birthright. I do not accept that. Do you?
And what does vagina have to do with it? It has nothing to do with vagina.
... do you know how monarchs are made? Or in general how people are born? /s For the British Monarch, an existing member of the Royal Family has to marry a woman. Ideally.
Then the next future king will be ONLY the firstborn child that is born from that specific vagina. In this case, the specific vagina being Kate Middleton's. And as you are aware, she already had a child. He (his son George) will decide who the next king will be. Not anyone else. That's the meaning of birthright.
About vagina. Read it slowly again. You cannot be president on our country because we don't have one. No vagina. If the dream is to be King of Denmark, then yes, vagina.
And regarding principle, all polls show, that if we had to vote about it, people will choose to remain a constitutional monarchy, because it is a huge part of our identity as a country.
About vagina. Read it slowly again. You cannot be president on our country because we don't have one.
Maybe you should try reading slower too? Obviously in a monarchy the head of the government is the monarch. You cannot become head of government of Denmark, even though there is one person who fulfills that role for Denmark.
Happy now?
And regarding principle, all polls show, that if we had to vote about it, people will choose to remain a constitutional monarchy, because it is a huge part of our identity as a country.
And? Tradition is peer pressure from the dead.
That many people would like to keep things as they are, doesn't magically make monarchy not fundamentally wrong as a concept.
No matter how hard you try, monarchy as an idea or concept is indefensible. It does not matter how cerimonial it is, how powerless it is, how innocuous it is, or how good the monarchs themselves are. It remains fundamentally wrong as an idea.
ok. you don't like monarchy. I like my country and my history. I don't like you hating on us. But my country is rated very high on every parameter from social mobility to corruption. So. You just keep hating us, we will manage.
Just to be clear, of course I don't hate you, nor anyone who lives in a monarchy.
I myself live and have lived in countries who have monarchies. I am an avid collector of Lego! Without them the world would be a sadder place. I don't even hate apologists of the monarchy. I only disapprove of their opinions, and remain hopeful that one day they will realise it too.
Your country is a nice place to live, but would undoubtedly continue to be so even when one day it will eventually became a Republic.
As a German, a country with a figurehead president elected by the parliament (it‘s more complicated than that but easy enough), not a single child here would ever dream about being president, it‘s a job to honour successful politicians at the end of their careers. You know what kids do dream of being? Queens and kings. Or, you know, chancellor, if they‘re a bit weird.
It was not an example to be taken literally. It was to stress the fact that one is something that with sufficient dedication you could aspire to, and the other is something that no matter your effort, since you were born into the wrong family you will never be able to do.
I understand the kids very well. Everybody know that figures like king and queens belongs to the books; to the fairy tales. But they has nothing to to in a modern democracy.
Do the german people miss the last emperor Wilhelm II?
I can only talk from my own experience.
I've seen good politician, I've seen bad ones. What they've in common ist that they don't love our country as broadly as our King do.
He may not say meddle about politics, as he's forbidden to do so, but you can tell that he cares about us a lot and try to use hes influence to protect us. Without our King our politicians would've sold out our national parks a long time ago.
He's not without fault, like no parents is, but he loves what he was raised to protect.
I don't know which king you are writing about, but it seems to be the Swedish one.
King CG has no power as you seem to think he has.
Without the king, Sweden would be like Finland and Iceland - democracy does not fail if the king is replaced by a president.
The politicians take responsibility for distributing burdens and scarce goods, they pay taxes and we can hold them accountable. This is in contrast to the king and his family
Have you ever talked to kids? That hypothetical is nonsense. They dream of far less likely things, and as a parent you have to figure out how to rein it in to reasonable expectations while not crushing their hopes. That's just basic parenting. And for example the likelihood of me becoming king has always been higher that the likelihood of me becoming an Olympic rhythmic gymnast and about a gazillion other things.
But also, the main issue with kids dreaming of being royals in particular has just about nothing to ever do with their mother's genitalia, but rather the fact that fairytales aren't real. It's like asking how someone would reply if their kid wanted to be a Pokemon master. Their dreams have nothing to do with the positions that exist in real life and it's utterly irrelevant to the head of state your country has.
And for example the likelihood of me becoming king has always been higher that the likelihood of me becoming an Olympic rhythmic gymnast and about a gazillion other things.
But that is not true. Becoming an olympic athlete depends on many factors. Genetics do not preclude you completely the possibility of becoming an athlete. It might put a cap on how good you could be, but it also depends on your competition. Albeit small, your chance of becoming an athlete is still higher than zero, same as the chance of becoming a billionaire, an actor, or a reddit moderator. Whereas with hereditary positions, you either belong to the correct line or not.
It's not about what children dream in practice, or how hard it is, it's a matter of principle that there are priviliges some people are born into, and others that are not. Sure, the children of Bezos or Zuckerberg or Musk are also born into a life of privilege. We can begin by making the world a tiny bit fairer place by relegating monarchies to history AND by fighting hypercapitalism. One does not exclude the other.
No, there are more ways to become royal than birth. You can enter through marriage, through election after the old line tragically dies out, there could be a legal change to the order of succession, maybe you're yet to find out you're the secret bastard of an old/foreign king, or you could…stage a coup and form your own dynasty. And so on. There are several potential pathways, and an entire lifetime for it. Of course the likelihood is infinitesimally small, but indeed more than zero. And it is in fact not particularly dependent on genetics.
It is larger than me being approved for gender reassignment and hormone replacement or whatever as literal child, while simultaneously training and miraculously succeeding in becoming one of the best gymnasts in the word, and lucking out in being recognized as such, and then somehow convince the Olympic committee to allow someone with a Y chromosome to compete in a women-only competition. All this before I've past the youthful prime of a gymnast?
It's always been impossible for me for purely genetic reasons; I haven't even gotten into any medical stuff. And there are countless reasons due to me being born to my parents in particular beyond that. Like the fact that they aren't athletes and there are no gymnastic training facilities where I grew up (I'm not even sure my country has ever even qualified) so how could I possibly become world class? My parents certainly didn't have the resources to ship me away.
The likelihood of be becoming king has indeed always been greater than that of me becoming an Olympic rhythmic gymnast. It still is.
The world isn't fair and it's certainly a noble cause to try to make it fairer. But before you start that crusade, you may want to look at the forms of government you'll commonly find around the top of the social mobility rankings etc. Being a monarchy doesn't impede whatsoever in making things fairer. Like everything it has its pros and it has its cons, but the fact that the firstborns of one family happen to grow up with different opportunities is utterly insignificant. It's probably better to actually try to make things fairer for people, than worry about a strictly ceremonial head of state and disrupting the status quo of clearly quite successful countries.
Fellow Norwegian here, our king has massively worked as a collective figure that is non-political, we really live in a time where this is more important than ever.
It dosen’t work well in Norway. The free press will continue to write critically about the family and the familysystem after the Marius case, his mums friendship with Epstein, how they spend public money and Martha & Dureks business, troubles, lawsuits etc
The press still writing about it is part of the system working. However, neither the King, the Crown Prince and Princess Ingrid Alexandra have been embroiled in any real scandals.
Haakon Magnus is mixing his own ecconomy with the states. He has his own business and has an inherited position, dosen’t pay tax.
The family close to the throne are protected. As Marius was.
Agreed as a fellow dane, but our royal family also long ago realised that big spendings on royal events arent necessary, like the crowning of our new king was nothing like in UK. Even the royals feel the jantelov.
To be fair the Danish monarchy doesn't have the same international recognition as the British Monarchy so it would be less beneficial to spend all the money on a coronation, because there'd be less tourism
Fair enough, as long as you British think its okay i have no issues with it. Denmark is the second oldest monarchy in the world and generally over here in the northern realms we are quite different than the British, we wouldnt accept the big spectacles as it isnt well seen to flaunt your priveleges. We are proud of your royalty, and appreciate they are so down to earth and makes an effort to keep the support for the monarchy high.
I don’t think there is a big spectacle nowadays in Britain. Monarchy tries to be ecological and modest. I mean if you think it’s big now, you should have seen the coronation of QE in the 1950’s.
I don’t know if it’s the same in Denmark, but here in the UK our constitutional monarchy has created a very distinct separation of the ceremonial elements of being a Head of State.
When you consider the ceremony Americans have around the White House and the First Lady, for us all of that is with the Royals. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister just gets on with his job, and often we know very little of their spouses or family.
Right? Right? I know that our prime minister has kid(s). She also is married. I have no idea to whom. I don't know the age or names of her kids. And she has been our PM since way before covid. They can actually do their job, without the circus.
But I know the names of the wifes of every president since ... after Reagan, I guess. And the kids. And it is super important how they act, and the easter eggs and the rosegarden and the christmas decorations, and do they believe in god.
Our king (still feels weird to say king, since our queen retired) and all the kids, and the brother and all his kids and the divorce, and the former princess, and her kids, yeah, they are exposed. Not as bad as in UK, that is mental. But they are just a pillar in our society. They make a little speech, and visit places. It's fine.
I don't see countries with presidents doing so much better when it comes to democracy
It's not about doing better or worse but simply having a say in whom represents you. You cherish the idea because you also talk fond about democracy but with that one little exception of preserving outdated concept from two millenias. I know it's mostly because it doesn't matter anymore but still. It's pretty pointless.
It is one family. Only one. I live in a country with high social mobility, low GINI, and I for sure would like to make it even more equal, I am very leftwing. But that one family, they are the ones without freedom. Our king for sure has struggled with his future being determined by birth. Every girlfriend has been plastered over the news, every drunken night has been recorded.
I believe they are free to escape the role they have been given, but they choose to be part of the history of this country.
I don't envy them, I don't feel like everybody else is below them, this is a part they are playing, it is a job they are doing. And it contributes to danes feeling like a part of something that is us. Even if it is only a drinking game during the royal new year speach, it is something we are.
It is not Saudi arabia, where the royal family owns everything. They have a few castles they maintain, they go on trips to represent us, they travel to Faroes and Greenland to stay in touch with those parts of the kingdom.
Compared to a lot of other countries I think we are born very equal in this country, I don't think a president would make it different.
It sounds like you're too indifferent to change it, but you surely wouldn't CHOOSE to establish a constitutional monarchy if given the choice, would you?
Elections, mainly. Monarchies and presidencies tend to be similarly grand in terms of presentation, but presidencies require expensive elections on a regular basis.
Of course but in the greater scheme of things they aren't expensive. Like, if you went to a Irish or German person and said "hey would you like to save some public money, how about replacing your elected President with a royal family" they would stare at you like you're crazy.
Hey, how about we save money by moving the parliament to a WeWork building, cancelling St Patrick's Day and letting ChatGPT act as Judges during legal cases.
In many counties people died fighting to get rid of the Monarchy. It is so anachronistic, to defend it on the grounds of cost is completely myopic
I do prefer what we have over others. I like the stability of the (nonpolitical) royal family over random politicians being president.
I prefer that the power is held with the parlament. Those are the elected, and they are representatives of the political parties. They have to collaborate to get stuff done, creating a more stable political environment.
I don't want power to one person, as a president could have.
My country (Ireland) has a President as 'Head of State' who is elected every 7 years, and a separate parliament which elects the government.
The President is just a ceremonial role with no day-to-day power, effectively replacing the position that would be held by the Monarch in a constitutional monarchy like the UK.
Desiring the monarchy is crazy to me, but I am happy that you are happy.
The thing about elections, even if they're just every seven years, is they often cost the taxpayer a bundle. Whereas monarchs replace themselves, and you only need to hold a coronation every so often (hopefully).
Also, unlike a president, it's harder to legitimise a constitutional monarch as having real political power, which arguably makes it safer and harder for them to seize power in unstable times (I used to think that in general, that sort of thing didn't happen in developed nations, but then the South Korean president tried to do a self-coup).
So how is it "crazy" to accept a constitutional democracy, if you try to convince me yours is the same?
Your president holds no power, yet you have to elect them every 7 years. We have a King, he holds no power, but he is there to intervene, if our parliament for some reason go mental.
So same same? We can risk a mad king, you can risk a mad president. We have for sure no election interference, you might have, next time.
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u/BeeFrier May 20 '25
Dane here. To me it is not important to be a republic. I am fine with our constitutional monarchy, I don't really care, to be honest, and I don't see countries with presidents doing so much better when it comes to democracy. If our royal family continues to create a good image, make trips to Asia for exposure and stuff, it's fine.