Prince Philip, from an foreigner's perspective

[Kishkashta]

I am not English, but have been living here for quite a while. And I just don't get what all the fuss is about with prince Philip.

Every single article I read (there are a lot of them lately...) mentions his unconventional personality and sense of humor. But the thing is, from my experience, this is just cookie cutter behavior of the (especially older male) members of the British upper class. These politically incorrect jokes that kind of just stir the water a bit and slightly off kilter behavior. I just find it weird how in these articles it is presented as something unique about him whereas in reality all these stories are just something that describes essentially his class rather than his personality.

Also I don't know how anybody can take seriously the attempts to paint his life as full of hardships (had to give up his "Navy career" to support the Queen - the only reason he had his kind of career is obviously his background and marriage, etc).

To me, from these descriptions, he just seems to be an extremely ordinary person who literally did nothing special other than existing until age 99...

Is there something I don't get about this?

That’s what you call class. It’s not about her and her clothes or how she looks. She knows how lucky she is and she knows what the job entails.

Precisely. I would sit composed for hours if I too were a Princess. I'd even bring my favourite crown and diamond choker for the bit!

Another Princess Anne graduate here - and I also remember that she smiled and made eye contact. I was bored enough at the event, can't imagine how she felt!

Vlad- I'm sure you think you'd be able to do that job etc and sit composed etc.

However, seeing as you don't seem to have any awareness of how someone inspires respect in others by "just being there sitting composed and not bored", I very much doubt - no matter how much you thought you'd pulled it off, that people would walk away feeling better about things after coming into contact with you when you were sat there being "Princess Anne" or whoever.

Not meant as an insult - I am also 100% sure I wouldn't be able to do that job. The fact you think you could do it and it's easy, tells me that you'd be even worse at it than me.

That's what you're missing in the whole conversation. Inspiring others and not looking bored is what we all do in a micro version as parents - it's effing tiring, surely you realise there is emotional stamina required to be continually interested in others?

Same as we're not always enamoured of the school dance show etc, we know our opinion can shape the day and inspire how that child feels.

Princess Anne turning up and looking bored and not showing genuine interest or seeming to care would be tangible and leave an empty feeling in the people she met. That doesn't often seem the case - she knows she can make people feel good and she does it.

I really don't understand how people can say it's easy peasy.

I really don't understand how people can say it's easy peasy.

Because it is literally your one job. As in you have one thing to do. In so far as the emotional/mental toll it takes to continuously demonstrate you care about others I completely understand that - school dances and that sort of thing and more seriously people such as HCPs, teachers, parents, friends and so forth - absolutely! I don't deny that. But in my capacity as a Princess being 'briefed' that today I'm going to a concert for 'Save the turtles in Dorset' I absolutely would manage to look dedicated to every single turtle in Dorset for those 6 hours or whatever. Just imagine the royal dinner waiting for you at home! And tomorrow there's no commute to an office job - it's breakfast bought in by my servants which I could eat while wearing my diamonds.

Princess Anne - she who on her early 20s told an armed kidnapper to piss off (I paraphrase). On the Olympic equestrian team, European championship gold winner... generally keeps her mouth shut and does a lot of engagements (and manages to look engaged and doesn’t complain about how boooooooooring they are)?

I think she treats it as a job, and she gets on with it. She seems OK to me.

It certainly doesn’t seem easy to me. Every day dressed up, driven or flown to another corner of the country to shake hundreds more hands. Make small talk to strangers. Look fascinated when you’re bored shitless. Wave when you leave. Drive ten or twenty miles and do it all again.

She did 540 of those engagements in 2017. I’ve seen her in action and somehow she makes it look as if it’s the first time she’s ever done it. She’s a better woman than me, my boredom would make an appearance very quickly.

Typically people that make something look easy have usually put in a shedload of prep.

Half of MN get the vapours if someone unexpectedly rings their doorbell. I'd love to see them step out of a car, light up and engage a few hundred people on a different subject every time, plus the risk of a nutter in the crowd taking a pot shot. Or sitting next to the Trumps or member of the Saudi RF at a State dinner and not express your thoughts.

@VodselForDinner

I’m not British and don’t have any particular thoughts on the man, but was amused at news reports talking about how he supported the Queen by taking on a more hands-on parenting role.

Honestly, if you raised that bunch of philandering, work-sky, adulterers, and one who is irrefutably linked to Epstein and Maxwell, wouldn’t you consider that you’d failed as a parent?

100% this. I completely agree with the OP, the whole reaction is bloody ridiculous. The love for the royals astonishes me when they have proved over and over what a self serving, pompous, lazy bunch they are. To invoke a Mumsnet phrase, when someone shows you who they are, believe them.

I'm English born but northern Irish catholic background so not exactly a royalist.

I do believe the three siblings and William now need to circle the wagons and stop Andrew using his mother's vulnerability to muscle himself back into sight.

I flinched when he addressed the cameras outside church. He is a humility free zone. He could be innocent or guilty as sin, I don't know more than is printed, and that Matliss interview was toe-curling so for Christ's sake man STFU.

@Marmaladeagain

Vlad- I'm sure you think you'd be able to do that job etc and sit composed etc.

However, seeing as you don't seem to have any awareness of how someone inspires respect in others by "just being there sitting composed and not bored", I very much doubt - no matter how much you thought you'd pulled it off, that people would walk away feeling better about things after coming into contact with you when you were sat there being "Princess Anne" or whoever.

Not meant as an insult - I am also 100% sure I wouldn't be able to do that job. The fact you think you could do it and it's easy, tells me that you'd be even worse at it than me.

That's what you're missing in the whole conversation. Inspiring others and not looking bored is what we all do in a micro version as parents - it's effing tiring, surely you realise there is emotional stamina required to be continually interested in others?

Same as we're not always enamoured of the school dance show etc, we know our opinion can shape the day and inspire how that child feels.

Princess Anne turning up and looking bored and not showing genuine interest or seeming to care would be tangible and leave an empty feeling in the people she met. That doesn't often seem the case - she knows she can make people feel good and she does it.

I really don't understand how people can say it's easy peasy.

Of course it’s ‘easy peasy ’, judging by this thread, because people’s standards for her are so low that making eye contact is viewed as a gracious and humane royal act. That’s what’s so depressing about royal family enthusiasts — the reverence is such that you’re actually fawning over an adult woman of incredible privilege whose net worth is about £30 million, for not looking bored in public.

Can’t you see that’s why it’s ‘easy’, because the ingrained belief that she’s special means that the remotest appearance of being ‘hardworking’ or ordinarily polite or engaged (by the minimal standards to which the royal family are held by the public) gets her brownie points?

The really depressing thing is that the very people who treasure the fact that a royal smiled at them are the people who get up every day and go out to poorly-paid, non-prestigious jobs where no one is touched by them making eye contact or praises them for not looking bored, and who, on top of that, have to get home and feed their children and scrub their own loos and worry about money, educating their children, keeping a roof over their heads etc.

The fiction that the royals ‘earn’ their privilege by being ‘hardworking’ and gracious is a joke. The royals participate to the extent that they do because surely even the least sharp recognise that if people saw through the aura of noblesse oblige and opening community centres, there would be riots.

@TSSDNCOP

I do believe the three siblings and William now need to circle the wagons and stop Andrew using his mother's vulnerability to muscle himself back into sight.

I flinched when he addressed the cameras outside church. He is a humility free zone. He could be innocent or guilty as sin, I don't know more than is printed, and that Matliss interview was toe-curling so for Christ's sake man STFU.

I think he’s allowed to talk about his mother when his father has died. However that’s it.

Thing is, it would be for others to decide how they felt about having met you and how you'd made them feel.

I think the dismissive attitude of how "easy" you felt the job to be would seep through. I don't think you'd have a pile of people saying you'd made their day and recounting it 20 years later....

TSSDNCOP - that did make me laugh! half of MN and the front door! very funny and very true. The armchair directors of how easy it is to inspire new people every day - chinny reckon, as we say in these parts.

@TSSDNCOP

Typically people that make something look easy have usually put in a shedload of prep.

Half of MN get the vapours if someone unexpectedly rings their doorbell. I'd love to see them step out of a car, light up and engage a few hundred people on a different subject every time, plus the risk of a nutter in the crowd taking a pot shot. Or sitting next to the Trumps or member of the Saudi RF at a State dinner and not express your thoughts.

Precisely. It's a job they've been trained up for since birth. Plus I don't want to see some random MNetter doing an engagement.

it's part of our political system it isn't a fairy tale etc get over the idea that people think they're "special" for the sake of it - they are respected, by those that do respect them (lots don't) for their commitment to their job as living a life of service.

So boooring.... don't be depressed on others behalf as you don't understand what others think and credit them as being simpletons. Nice. Save us from the "nice" and kind people.

@Marmaladeagain

it's part of our political system it isn't a fairy tale etc get over the idea that people think they're "special" for the sake of it - they are respected, by those that do respect them (lots don't) for their commitment to their job as living a life of service.

So boooring.... don't be depressed on others behalf as you don't understand what others think and credit them as being simpletons. Nice. Save us from the "nice" and kind people.

And you don’t think that the depressing thing is that an accident of birth is actually embedded in your political system? That a fluke of birth order means that a disgraced man with established connections to the trafficking of underage girls for sex isn’t the heir to the throne?

You’re the one who used the expression ‘fairy tale’, not me. It’s certainly not that.

I like the hereditary Head of State aspect personally, Queen is apolitical and has longevity and brings the wisdom and experience of that to the role. She’s Not Bounced around by the short term election cycles and political nonsense, doesn’t have to canvas for votes. Stays neutral. We didn’t even get to hear the Queen’s views on Brexit (although the sun alledges she was pro but I doubt that) Combined with an elected Prime minister and a House of Commons and lords, it’s a good political system and has certainly stood the test of time.
Besides it is not just up to the U.K., it would be a commonwealth matter to dissolve the monarchy as quite a few other countries have the Queen as their Head of State and so would have a major impact on their governance too.
These countries could choose to become republics whenever they want, some have, others have kept the Queen.

@Kishkashta

I am just as well informed as you about the facts of PP's life, in the sense that nothing said on this thread was new to me (the incessant coverage of the last few days made sure of it). The only reason you assume I am not is because I said I am a foreigner (I presume).

You made statements about his early life, connections and naval career that were clearly wrong, so “nothing said on this thread was new to me” is not true.

I would also argue our history in the U.K. is so interesting precisely due to the hereditary aspect of Head of State. We’ve had some great kings and Queens over the centuries and some not so great ones. I like the randomness of it, the twists and turns it brings and the manoeuvres back in the day to get your man or woman on the throne. Where would we be now without Henry the 8th! Or Queen Elizabeth the first? What about King Arthur? Accidents of birth definitely but why not them?
Also meant we have had female Heads of state which might not have been the case without a hereditary monarchy. I’ve convinced myself even more than I love our hereditary monarch. No fighting or blood shed needed, or drama, first born child is the heir - simple!

I simply say you don't need to feel depressed or sorry for anyone that doesn't feel the same as you do about the RF. Those people are not dunderheads and you're missing an awful lot of the picture, that you'll never see - but I don't pretend to "feel depressed" on your behalf or anyone else that can't imagine anything other than their own view of the world.

I disagree with you but really we don't need your pity that we're simpering fools...get over yourself.

So the presidential system....

do those imagining others acknowledging service and understanding that others may wish to show respect or pleasure in meeting that representative - do they also feel pity and depressed on anyone's behalf for the people that win a presidential position and go on to represent a country?

Really no-one requires you to feel "depressed" for not being as "bright" as you to agree binning the RF, rather than reforming what we've got, is the best option on the table.

Someone staying out of politics is a very good head of state for my liking.

sorry, rather garbled and confusing post

Oh I am very keen on our monarchy. I feel sorry for countries that don’t have one or chopped their heads off 200 years ago and now have Macron in charge

We should elect a new Queen / King every few years. Like a halfway house between a PM and a Big Brother winner.

and now have Macron in charge

Indeed! They'd have done better with Boris!!!

Monarchs tend to get better as they age and learn the job - I don't think I'd stomach the endless churn of people learning. I used to be very much in favour of monarchy - had about 10-15 years of thinking good god this isn't fair on anyone etc... then came to the conclusion to reform what we've got, which I think Charles and William will do.

The more you learn about other systems around the world, the more you realise our imperfect system works well enough - but to reform continuously as we go. It is time for some more radical changes - but that will naturally happen after the Queen.

All this disparaging nonsense that people are in awe of the RF etc is insulting to everyone's intelligence - some people are in awe of BB contestants - we can't help who some people choose to be in awe of - they'll put anyone up there if that's their mind set - that's their choice and doesn't make them idiots - as long as they realise the RF are part of the UK political system and definitely not the same as BB etc.