The whole thing feels like an aberration of history.

It's wrong if the head of state of a country can only come from one family. It's wrong to furnish this clan with palaces, land and all manner of grants to spare its members the indignity of having to earn their keep and enable them to live in luxury ...

Millions of Britons know that ... but they remain in the minority which for years has been constant at around 18 percent of the population ...

British soldiers are fighting for democracy in Afghanistan and Libya, and they fought for it in Iraq. But at home, they defend the absurdly undemocratic idea that nobody but a Windsor can be head of state.

As soon as Elizabeth, 85, shuffles off her mortal coil, her son Charles, 62, already worn down by his long wait for the accession, will take the throne, even though opinion polls show the majority of Britons don't want the brooding, esoteric prince to become king.

The pomp and ceremony surrounding the marriage of William and Kate is the latest expression of British eccentricity ...

Der Spiegel 27 Apr 2011

As demolition jobs go, that's pretty comprehensive. And it poses three questions: the first of which surrounds the charge of 'eccentricity'.

Despite the gradual extension of the franchise from 1832 to 1948, the British constitution remains much as it was when Catholics were barred from becoming monarchs under the 1701 Act of Settlement.

That act does not specifically bar Moslems or atheists, but as Head of the Church of England - an abberation dating back to Henry VIII's tyrannical regime - it seems unlikely that either could be crowned in Westminster Abbey.

But the deeper question involves exactly what would replace the monarchy if the other 82 per cent of the populace ever decided they wanted rid of the Windsor-Battenburgs.

The prospect of an elected president is the obvious alternative, but one which opens up a barrel of eccentric possibilities.

S/he could be chosen along the lines of the X Factor, with half the country enrolling as contestants, and Simon Cowell acting as a latter-day Warwick-the-Kingmaker.

While I can think of much worse candidates than Susan Boyle, the probability is that we would get something along the lines of Posh or Becks, or, Darwin forbid, Posh and Becks!

Seriously - second question - the bigger worry is that it would become a surrogate election between candidates put forward by the political parties on the basis of a 'reward' for past loyalty.

This would see the likes of Harriet Harman and Iain Duncan Smith going head-to-head, which would be even more boring than getting one of Simon Cowell's winners.

So the problem remains: one of selecting the candidates in such a way as to wrest the process from the political parties.

However, given that 82 per cent of Brits don't want a republic, the question is why most people want to stick with the status quo?

Why is the monarchy in general - and the House of Windsor-Battenberg in particular - the preferred option?

(We could, btw, have the Stuarts back, in the shape of their nearest claim to the throne: the ex-Bavarian royal family. WWI general, Prince Ruprecht, used to mark the anniversary of King Charles I's execution on 30 January every year. This would, of course, swap one German royal family for another.    [HoW] )

Indifference? It's a strong possibility: it ain't broke so why fix it?

It might also be something to do with the character of the present monarch, though she is hardly emblematic of the present libertarian culture; her consort even less so. This might be an advantage, but the wedding of Wills and Kate has rather done its best to dovetail with the current milieux.

(For example, the wedding dress seems to have been rather more important than the person wearing it.)

The crunch, however, may well come when the Queen is eventually succeeded by her eldest son and heir.

'Brooding' and 'esoteric' are some of the more kindly comments that have been made sotto voce about HRH, but there seems little doubt that when he becomes King, his prediliction for interfering in the planning process - in order to ensure that his own, er, 'expertise' in the field of architecture is seen to be superordinate to that of specialists like Lord Rogers - will manifest its influence well beyond new buildings.   [LR]

There is no precedent - or mechanism - for the public's desire to see the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge assume the positions of King and Queen in his place.

At this point the current public indifference may well come to an end.