Among Europe’s Ex-Royals
Small correction to the article - Alexander Karađorđević is not crown Prince of Serbia, but of Yugoslavia. I went to school with his sons, we were in the same house, same year - they went by “Prince” rather than Karađorđević - quite a few kids had fictitious surnames to avoid attention. They were regular and likeable dudes, liked skating, cars, hip-hop, bad 80’s movies, games. Nobody cared that they were princes, or treated them differently, as it wasn’t all that unusual at the school, and typically, the higher your rank, the less airs and graces and nobbery you bothered with.<p>Me, I’m a baronet - not that I ever use the title, or even tell anyone (these days - as a kid rubbing shoulders with outranking aristos it mattered far more to me) - I’ve grown to think the whole thing bloody stupid, as my politics careened wildly off to the left after a tumultuous start to adulthood - and as I realised I really didn’t want all the perceived responsibilities and expectations of an aristo - there are only so many balls and parties and royal enclosures you can go to before you’re sick to the eye teeth of it.<p>I guess the main thing that I saw among those heirs who were expected to actually take a throne, or were the primogeniture of a non-ruling family, was an overwhelming sense of obligation, the anticipation of a life run on rails, the desire to live absolutely wild here and now because later is a gilded cage. It’s hard to be an isolated and aloof aristo in the modern world - nobody is raised in court any more.<p>I can tell you that the millennial heirs of several European thrones are seriously sitting on the fence over whether they’ll take the baton - one, I know, definitely won’t - another probably will, but intends to fundamentally reshape the monarchy.