The modern monarch might be only a cog in the machinery of government, but for the machine to work that cog must still turn
didn’t much enjoy his regency. “Playing at King”, as he called his time standing in for his father, the “mad” George III, was less fun than it sounded, though the prince bravely made the most of it. He got drunk, took laudanum and squandered his money on matronly mistresses, diamond-buttoned breeches and enormous breakfasts.
The current queen, while manifestly not incapable, is clearly less capable than she was. A list of her royal engagements shows that they have been falling in a slow and gentle slope—from an admittedly high base—for some time: 831 in 2011; 295 in 2019; 184 in 2021, of which over half were done by phone or video link.
But the nation would very much mind if the queen failed to appoint a prime minister, to dissolve Parliament or to give royal assent to legislation. And it very much did notice when her crown went to Parliament in her stead. . When George III’s “ulcer’d mind” left him alternatively setting fire to his page’s wigs and weeping in a straitjacket in his rooms, Parliament was paralysed.
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