Indeed, to subject people who are born into royal families, or people who marry into them, to lives in a fishbowl, where they are on constant display, like actors and actresses in a continuous soap opera, where human relations are distorted and stunted by absurd rules of protocol, is a terrible form of cruelty. The current Japanese empress and her daughter-in-law, both from non-aristocratic families, have had nervous breakdowns as a result.