A Persian Cafe, Edward Lord Weeks

Monday 15 February 2016

Fury and Raging

This is disgusting. Apparently the secession to the legitimate throne of Austria-Hungary excludes women. There's the minor matter of how sexist this is, but vastly more important is that it removes a golden opportunity for me to get my descendants onto a royal throne.

Consider this: marrying into the British throne is currently difficult if not impossible for a 21-year-old male, since the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cambridge are both married and straight. The next in line after this is the young Prince George, who may not turn out to be straight but is undoubtedly male. Even if (a) he did turn out to be gay, (b) I were willing to overlook my own straightness, it's far from obvious how that leads to my own biological descendants getting onto the throne. So the British throne is more-or-less out, at least until I have children who could marry the next generation of royals. The best I might be able to do is marrying Princess Beatrice, currently 7th in line, but (a) she'll move further down if/when Will and Kate have more kids and when Prince Harry, Prince George and Princess Catherine starting having children of their own, (b) would you really want to marry someone who wears a hat like this?

What other major monarchies are there? The obvious choice would be the monarchy of the country where I actually now live, i.e. Austria-Hungary. The Hapsburg family has been decimated by a variety of causes - primarily incest - but the line of Lorraine-Hapsburg still exists, though they have officially speaking renounced their claims to the throne. But get me in there and we'll change all that.

The youngest generation of Hapsburgs is very convenient: the eldest daughter of the current head of the House is but a month older than I am. She's not first-in-line of course, that would be her younger brother. But he's a racing driver, which is of course an awfully dangerous occupation - if you know what I mean. So the path is clear: contrive a way to meet "Jelena Maria del Pilar Iona Lorraine-Hapsburg", marry her, and then arrange an unfortunate accident for her younger brother. (Unless he looks like having children, obviously I shouldn't assassinate him until the secession of my children is guaranteed - creating the collateral damage to your schemes while failing to reap the benefits is immoral. This is why I found Raskalnikov so utterly unlikeable in Crime and Punishment, he murders the old pawnbroker but fails to steal her possessions. It's like, what was the point of it all?).

Except... that wouldn't put dear Jelena onto the throne; instead, the next-in-line is the Archduke George, brother of the present ruler Karl von Hapsburg. It seems that women are utterly excluded - not merely placed behind males of the same generation, as was the case with the UK monarchy until shortly before the birth of Prince George, but utterly excluded. What bullshit. I guess I'll have to create my own dynasty.

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