@myislandhome
How can any intelligent person believe there is such a thing as "royalty"? Yes, there is money, land, power accrued over time..but this self bestowed "royal" thing in terms of elitism is , frankly, bizarre.
The word represents the concept of having a leader if you go into the etymology, where reg was apparently 'going in a straight line' and developed into direction/the person to decide the direction, then through a few thousand years, this line concept got into biological succession, through several other languages, men's wish for their offspring to have the same authority, the need for religion to back up the claims to keep them from meeting a similar end to King Duncan in Macbeth (or any number of more ancient civilisations), and somewhere along that line, you get Royalty meaning the people, the leading, the line of inheritance, the religion, the law, the external trappings and it being borrowed to illustrate other concepts, such as 'Hollywood Royalty' to explain wealth and power.
It's a concept throughout human history, this Divine Right of Kings/Mandate of Heaven/the descent from Amaterasu-Ōmikami/etc. And in order to secure position, any newcomers to the role have normally sought to bring religion on their side - and been pretty unpleasant to priests/etc who have questioned it.
We're just a little less head-choppy about the whole business. And it's not as if the non religious ones are any better/more ethical/more deserved.