We hope you finished your summer reading! But, if not, we read Finding Freedom so you don’t have to (unless you want to)! Join us as we discuss the summer’s most excerpted book, and whether it accomplishes the goals of the authors, Omid Scobie and Carolyn Duran. We can all now put the tiara drama to rest!
The British Monarchy has still not officially acknowledged its role in the beginnings of the British slave trade and subsequent profiting off of it. Can the royals responsibly lead the Commonwealth while continuing to ignore the roots of its founding?
Huge debt to the framing of this episode to Brooke Newman’s article in Slate on the royal family’s role in the British slave trade. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/07/british-royal-family-slavery-reparations.html
Other sources:
Monarcast is back to distract you with a bit of today's royal gossip and some tales of royal gossip past. First up? Someone once tried to kidnap Princess Anne and learned...not to try to do that!
Harry and Meghan dropped a bomb on the Royal Rota last week, announcing they would be “stepping back” from their roles as Senior Royals and splitting time between North America and England. What does it mean? We break down their statement, any precedents, the reactions of the other royals and the press, and try to decide if we are sympathetic or cynical about the whole thing.
It’s a Holiday Bonus! In this week’s episode, we are taking a break between royal beheadings to chat about how the royals have celebrated Christmas and New Year’s throughout the centuries. Starting with William the Conqueror’s coronation on Christmas Day through Queen Elizabeth II’s annual broadcast, traditions have evolved!
We’re back and we are talking Baby Sussex, Baby Sussex’s name, and royal titles! We mean it, this episode might be our longest to date, but it’s full of everything you didn’t know you needed to know about royal titles, who gets them, and what they mean. It’s confusing, to say the least, with plenty of fun English spellings vs. pronunciations to trip us up! Plus, we catch up on five months of royal gossip and movie reviews!
Mary of Teck was perhaps England’s first modern Queen Consort, enduring the hardships right along with her subjects, including two world wars and a succession crisis. She was a constant to her husband and her family, and to the monarchy itself, showing that a successful consort can be a drama free consort. That she did it all absolutely dripping in jewels, well, all the better. She modeled wartime rationing at its sparkliest!
This week, we play the royal baby name game! How do the British royals pick their names? Who do the babies get named after? There’s a relatively short list of traditional options, and we break them down for you, then take our best shot at guessing the name of the new baby Cambridge. We think everything is a contender for a boy’s middle name, but we’re a bit stuck on the first name. As for a girl, we see you Catherine Middleton, we’re giving you a middle name honor!
This week, we chat everything you ever wanted to know about British royal weddings! Who made the weddings more public? What flowers are in the bouquet? Who had the most 80’s dress of them all? Tune in to this week’s ep to find out!
Show Notes:
How do you keep your throne when your cousins are all losing theirs and your family legacy when you’re in danger of seeming just a wee bit too German for the British public? George V knew the answer: just change the family name! Also in this ep, like everyone else, we cover Spanish family drama and maintaining royal protocol during holidays with your in-laws.
