Opinion: Not all royals are snobs, and not all snobs are royal
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My colleague Henry Chu’s entertaining story about the engagement of Prince William and Kate Middleton contained a couple of revealing references to the bride-to-be’s family. Chu noted that when the couple broke up temporarily, ‘some courtiers [were] sniffing that Middleton and her family had probably proved too gauche for the royal household.’ And he mentioned that Middleton’s mother, Carole, a former flight attendant (!), is regarded as a social climber who, to add insult to insignificance, was caught on camera chewing gum.
It’s tempting to view this snobbery as a function of Britain’s retention of the monarchy. But members of the royal family -- and their kissing cousins, the aristocracy -- aren’t necessarily refined or erudite, though royals are better educated than they used to be. And not every British snob has a title.
If there were no more kings, queens, princes and dukes (a major loss for Britain’s tourist industry), the overanalyzed British class system would survive. A gum-chewing mother-in-law would be as much an embarrassment to a public-school-educated city of London banker as she would be to a future monarch.
In other words, even if there was no king of England, there would be plenty of ‘commoners.’
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