Prince Harry is a Wuss

It needed to be said.

As the descendant of Irish immigrants, I'm not one of those people who weep at the thought of the British monarchy concluding, even though I am a subject of the monarchy through one of my citizenships.  But Harry ought to care, given as the only reason he's in the position in life that he is, is that he's a royal, irrespective of his current relationship with the House of Windsor.

I'm not a big monarchy fan in general, and I'm often baffled when you run into what seems to be a small Reddit class that feels all the ills of the modern age could be repaired by the restoration of monarchies.  Such people usually imagine that the Christian monarch will serve as a Christian, conservative, model for the nation.

Most monarchs may well have been conservative, more or less, although not all members of royal families have been, but as far as their personal morality is concerned, it's often lacking.  Their life circumstances in some ways operate against it, although perhaps that is just an excuse for it.  The now King Charles cheated on his wife, Princess Diana, with his current wife, Camilla.  King Edward had such an icky moral life that his father had wished that his second son, rather than Edward, could become king right off the bat.  King George IV had a string of mistresses, which seems to have been fairly openly known, and apparently one secret marriage, that being his first, which being to a Catholic, was kept quiet.  A child born during this time frame, or maybe two, would mean that the actual line of succession, if the marriage was legally valid (which due to the requirement of the sitting king giving permission it would not be) would mean that he should have succeeded King George IV.

King William IV lived with an actress with which he had ten illegitimate children.  He didn't have mistresses after his marriage, but the long prior arrangement is notable, and apparently he had an illegitimate child by another woman prior to that.

The next monarch after William IV was Queen Victoria, whose father was Prince Edward, Duke of Kent.  He is believed to have had three mistresses, including a long-running one, Camilla style, of 28 years.

The next king, Edward VII, had a large number of mistresses in his adult life, including one that was a great-grandmother of Camila.

We already discussed Edward VIII, of course.  He didn't have mistresses after his marriage, but he certainly wasn't chaste before.  George V, who succeeded him, was an exception to this story as he lived a normal life in this regard and therefore more or less fit the model of what real monarchy fans imagine royals to be.

We'll forgo the examples of non-British royals, for the most part, but they're no different. Even Czar Nicholas II, who is adored by some fans of monarchy, had a mistress in his early years, that woman also being the mistress of his brother at some point.

The point is that royals don't really tend to be that personally admirable.

Harry is a big whiner.  He didn't seem to be early on, but after marrying Meghan Markle he really took to it.  While doing it is fraught with hazard, blaming a wife for a fellow becoming a big wuss isn't a popular thing to do anymore (it was fairly common at one time) but something in this relationship really flipped the wuss switch.  Harry was, for example, a big fan of hunting before taking up with Markle but as she wasn't, he quit.  Altering a strong personality trait as the wife doesn't care for it, save for in the case of something like heavy drinking, drug use or philandering, isn't a good thing and can show a fairly weak character.

As noted, something about the weird status royals live in seems to encourage their worst traits.  Tending to have significant assets, even before becoming monarchs, if they do, and tending to be limited in their roles, they seemingly have time to engage in bad behavior and develop odd personality traits.  This would all suggest that at the human level, maintaining the monarchy might be a bad thing for royals themselves.  Prince Harry, for example, probably wouldn't have a lot of time for whining if he had to have a real job, and back when he was a serving British Army officer he seemed pretty non-whiney.

Indeed, one good trait about the royals of old was that they kept their beefs and bad behavior largely out of public view, although some of the philandering became pretty widely known.  At least that kept things at the rumor level, rather than the published book and 60 Minutes level.

Some would say, well just abolish the monarchy, it's not necessary anymore, and it truly is not.  Given as that decision isn't mine, and it doesn't appear that it will happen soon, although Prince Harry's whining is clearly imperiling it, perhaps it should be emphasized.  Heard much about the King of Sweden recently?  How about the King of Norway?

I didn't think so.

If it was way scaled back, and you hardly heard of them, and the various princes in the immediate households had to get real jobs, that might be best.  If that was the case, Harry right now might be a serving British Army officer still as it would be his only economic choice.  That might well mean that Meghan might not be a princess, but so what?  Or she and he could be living in off base housing in some Army town where we didn't hear of them, which would be fine.