So what exactly is the point of having a monarchy?

[SpeedyGonzalez]

Are there any actual, properly meaningful reasons for having these people inherit public office and lots of expensive stuff? I'm not interested in the tourism rationale; that's just fluff. I genuinely want to know what is the point of their role.

Its tradition , and they support the Government and the nation.....
but way back in history they ruled 'the people' totally.

What do you mean by 'support'? Isn't their role completely nominal?

In my view, they perform a job that it would be almost impossible to recruit people to do. The ambassadorial role they perform is second to none, I heard someone on the radio saying that these people aren't even educated to do the role, but they are, they are educated the best way possible, from birth, by example, as all we mums know, this kind of learning simply can't be replicated in a classroom. Its so much more complicated than just tourism, its all about trade and political relationships, which in turn feed into the economy. What would you do? Turn the country into a Republic? How do you do that? How far do you go, do you remove all the titled Lords etc, which then leads onto removal of the House of Lords, what do you replace that with? It'll never happen, it would require such a strong mandate in parliament that it wouldn't succeed, especially if alternative voting is successful. Considering Britain has never had a large scale revolution to rid it of the royals, I don't think they'll be ousted this way! Its logistically impossible to not have a royal family!

Imo, the monarchy is intrinsic to our national identity and culture, love it or loathe it, having a monarchy is part of British culture that you can't remove from history, and shouldn't seek to remove from the future.

r0zebud, what does that mean for other countries who don't have a monarchy to perform that ambassadorial role? Are they sinking without a monarch?