I was born in 1949 and Queen Elizabeth II acceded in 1952 so I have no memory of her predecessor. My daughter, Aileen, was born in 1976 and Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister in 1979 so Aileen was one of "Thatcher's Children," with no memory of any previous Prime Minister. Thatcher resigned in 1990. People born in 1945 would have no memory of the War.
Thus, the dual definition of "Changeling," "...born since or too young to remember anything from before...," is applicable throughout history.
18 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I was interested by the image you chose, plainly taken just after the coronation of Elizabeth II. And, by now, the rather elderly current Prince of Wales is the only British crown prince practically all Britons now remember!
When Prince Charles finally succeeds his mother he will become the oldest Prince of Wales to succeed his predecessor.
Sean
Sean,
He and I are almost the same age. His date of birth is something like 13 Nov '48 whereas mine is 1 Jan '49. I have been retired since end of April, '12.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
That was interesting, how you and the Prince of Wales are so close in age. And Prince Charles' elder son is already in his later thirties.
And I was interested by how Stirling treated Prince Charles in his Emberverse books: a basically, intelligent, well meaning man with many useful ideas. But, unfortunately, the horror of the Change seemed to have affected his long term stability and he became infatuated with an ambitious, scheming, unscrupulous woman.
Sean
The longer lifespans do interesting things to the concept of hereditary monarchy. Though something similar happened with Victoria and Edward -- she was, she told her intimates, determined to outlive him (they didn't get on).
Dear Mr. Stirling,
I recall reading of the unfair treatment the future Edward VII received from his mother. Because Queen Victoria blamed him for his father's premature death. That, as well as a natural tendency not to dwell on one's death also led Victoria to refusing to allow the Prince of Wales some share in the gov't of the UK after reaching his majority (to the embarrassment of some of her PMs, who disagreed with her on this matter).
A constitutional monarchy tends to moderate or correct some of those "interesting things" you mentioned.
Sean
Well, there was also the fact that Edward was a rake and a disappointment to Victoria in many other respects. Despite being raised in it, he wasn't a typical Victorian; he had little of Alfred's earnestness and seriousness, which personally I don't mind but she most emphatically -did-. The longest-lived Victorians had the anguish of seeing qualities they'd disliked in their Regency-era parents come back into fashion.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
While the manner in which Edward VII preferred to live might not be entirely to my taste, I still rather like him! Yes, he was not as serious a man as was his father Albert, but Edward was a more able and intelligent man than many have given him credit for being.
And, as a Catholic, I appreciated Edward VII's dislike for the anti-Transubstantiation clause of the Coronation Oath. He knew how deeply insulting and offensive that clause was to his Catholic friends and relatives. And took the necessary steps to getting Parliament to remove it from the Oath.
Sean
Yeah, it's a fossil of the Reformation era and the Wars of Religion. In which there was plenty of blame to go around on all sides, of course.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
I agree!
Sean
"His date of birth is something like 13 Nov '48 whereas mine is 1 Jan '49."
Queen Liz was born 2 days after my mother.
I'm not sure if it was in this blog, but I recall someone mentioning a child who while Thatcher was the UK PM, heard about one of the previous PMs and asked, "Oh were boys allowed to do that?".
Jim,
That was indeed on this blog. Children teach us a lot. We see that:
to a large extent, people accept and take for granted whatever society presents to them;
what society presents to them can differ a lot.
Given that, going against the acceptance, there is also a lot of dissatisfaction and desire for change, there is the possibility of making big changes and making them stick. History shows the same thing. A lot of people thought that the Berlin Wall and Apartheid would be with us indefinitely.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And I distrust that desire for "big changes." So often, all we get from them, esp. changes forcibly imposed on us by fanatics, are catastrophes, often bloody catastrophes.
As for post-apartheid South Africa, I dismiss it as just another corrupt one party kleptocracy.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But it would have been wrong to maintain Apartheid, was wrong that it existed in the first place. The struggle for justice obviously continues in South Africa.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I agree apartheid was a bad thing. I also repeat that as long as the ANC clings to power SA is not going to get better.
Ad astra! Sean
I agree. Any single group clinging to power is bad.
"A lot of people thought that the Berlin Wall and Apartheid would be with us indefinitely."
My recollection is in the mid 1980s I saw a few predictions that the USSR would collapse in a few decades, but nobody thought it would happen as soon as it did.
Kaor, Paul and Jim!
Paul: Not just merely "clinging," the ANC regime is just another corrupt kleptocracy which has lost whatever legitimacy it once had. SA is rapidly becoming a failed nation.
Jim: I agree, there were people who wondered how long the USSR could survive under a regime whose only claim to legitimacy was the ghastly and unworkable Marxist-Leninist ideology. But I don't think anyone expected the USSR to fall apart so rapidly in 1988-91.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
The Russian bureaucracy exploited Russian workers not only to maintain its own privileges but also to compete militarily (by stockpiling nuclear weapons, not by launching WWIII) against the US. Internal exploitation (but by a bureaucracy, not by individuals or corporations) + external competition (military, not economic) = "state capitalism," according to some analysts. Such a system has to have an ideology which could have been almost anything but in this case was "Marxist." Marxism as such refers to international workers' self-emancipation - arguably unrealistic etc no doubt but not what that Russian regime was trying to bring about.
Paul.
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