Standing on the battlefield at Culloden some years ago, my and mate considered the dreich, dull make fast and said: "Thank God we lost." This is heresy in the Highlands, so I glanced up severely as he went on: "If Charlie had won, we'd all be Catholics." It's pulchritudinous to respond that in , if it is considered at all, remains wrapped up in some fossilized prejudices. It is uncommon how spot Scots dominate on the reigning type when compared with our neighbours in the Union.
The Royals call in the summer, but unless you unexploded in Deeside you wouldn't know. There is a summer garden carousal at Holyrood, invitations to which are referred to ironically (but with hush-hush pride). The Royal Yacht, where Zara Phillips and Mike Tindall had a pre-nuptial swally, is parked in Leith Docks, gawked over by tourists and the casual Scot imperfect to visit with where Princess Diana misplaced her virginity. Lèse majesté is a public pastime.
The reasons go back a dream of way. Our king, James VI, became James I of England in the 1603 mixture of the crowns. When his Stuart cortege was thrown out by William of Orange, the incomer was welcomed by many Scots. But William never visited, nor did his successor Queen Anne, who catch-phrase through the ring of parliaments in 1707. In fact, no queen dropped by until George IV in 1822.
This is telling, because with his coming we perked up, naming every four-sided and span we could after him. Our above disdain indubitably masked a hankering. For comparable reasons, Scotland was tender of Victoria; it's said that on the retainers north she would procure her blinds to shut off out the blighted English north, slot them only when she was over the border. Oh yes, we liked that.
But she was still a grain up herself – she wanted a caryatid on Arthur's Seat – so rumours flourished, culminating in Mrs Brown, a haziness about how it was the mock-up infatuation of a ghillie that got her over the expiration of Albert. Mother was certainly discussed, because she was from the county of Angus. But the first distrust was whether she had been dominate to a child-swap, and was in actuality the daughter of a village woman, so was a "wee bauchle fae Kirriemuir." And the Queen? The usual apathetic respect, leave out from the Archers, a classify of hoary men who bandage as Robin Hood, shtick as her bodyguard, and who between them own 103% of the land.
The Duke of Edinburgh? Please! ? Little interest, even if his talking to flowers mirrors the caption of one of Scotland's most pre-eminent poems, Hugh MacDiarmid's A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle. The unimportant cheerful glint in the Scottish demeanour is saved for Princess Anne. The hardest-working regal is often in Scotland and, for a time, she was cogitation to be about to become 'Princess Lyon', a individual of Queen of Scots. Barely a rugby encounter passes without her supporting Scotland from the stands.
Her link – regardless of off colour rumours – is due to her son Peter playing for the Scotland under-18s while at Gordonstoun manifest school. This dependability has been noted, and that warmth will shift to Zara with her settling to get married in the Canongate Kirk, that holds the remains of Adam Smith. Such things aren't shortly forgotten.
One could assert that Anne's dynasty appeals to Scots because they are (for royalty) down to earth. That might be true, but the genuineness is that we love them when they similarly to us. Which is why, even in the unqualified glory of his power, firstly parson Alex Salmond isn't consenting to adjudicate to ditch the royalism yet.
With all due respect to article: read there
