Yet, dynasty remains a surprisingly powerful force. Dynastic families keep popping up in countries founded in revolt against the British monarchy: Think of the Kennedys and the Bushes in America and the Gandhis in India. The Philippines is run by a Marcos and Canada by a Trudeau. The “stans” of Central Asia are virtually family fiefs.
Nobody does dynasty better than the British royal family. The recent days of pomp and circumstance have not only been a celebration of a life well lived. They have been a celebration of the power of the family to transcend death and to link the past to the present and hence to the future. Individual monarchs may die. The institution lives on because of the fusion of biological and social inheritance. The Queen is dead. Long live the King!
It is easy, particularly after watching days of soldiers in red jackets and bearskins, marching bands and union flags, to see the Windsors as an expression of the peculiarities of the British. To a man and a woman, social theorists have predicted that modernity would mean the end of the dynastic principle in the face of democracy and meritocracy. And they have been able to point to the demise of great royal dynasties such as the Romanovs and the Habsburgs. Queen Victoria’s funeral in 1901 resembled a gathering of crowned heads of state, many of them her relations. At Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral on Sept 19, most state leaders were commoners.
