{"id":75,"date":"2005-10-08T11:35:39","date_gmt":"2005-10-08T15:35:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.musefanpage.com\/blog\/?p=75"},"modified":"2005-12-31T13:32:09","modified_gmt":"2005-12-31T19:32:09","slug":"usurpation-of-titular-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musefanpage.com\/blog\/?p=75","title":{"rendered":"Usurpation of titular rights"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The estimable Museblog Controller has pointed out that a plethora of Queens are making appearances on the blog. He &#8216;s asked me to explain, from my wealth of knowledge of heraldry and matters Royal (ha!), the correct procedure for setting oneself up as a monarch, and the correct form of address by one who hasn&#8217;t to one who has.<\/p>\n<p>Right then. Firstly, you need to own a country. Sorry, but that&#8217;s pretty obligatory for a monarch. And it can&#8217;t be some poxy little rock in the middle of nowhere, either. The practical minimum is something the size of Tonga. I know it doesn&#8217;t look that big on the map, but it&#8217;s a big map.<\/p>\n<p>Next, you have to get most of your subjects to agree that you own it. There&#8217;s always going to be a rebel element, so you&#8217;ll need a gang of thugs (sorry, a glorious army) to stop the rebels getting inconvenient. You also need to control religion. That has a habit of getting out of hand.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s about it, really. If everyone else reckons you&#8217;re Queen (or King), that&#8217;s what you are. Now they just need to show a bit of respect and address you correctly.<\/p>\n<p>If they write to you, they should address you as &#8220;Your Majesty&#8221; throughout the correspondence, and finish with &#8216;I have the honour to be, Madam, Your Majesty&#8217;s humble and obedient servant&#8217;. It&#8217;s a bit of a mouthful in conversation, so they&#8217;ll only have to call you &#8220;Your Majesty&#8221; the first time they address you. Then, until you throw them out because you&#8217;re bored, they can revert to the suitably obsequious &#8220;Ma&#8217;am&#8221; or &#8220;Sir&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Should you have a spouse or immediate progeny, the same rules apply, except that they get called &#8220;Your Royal Highness&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Your Grace&#8221; is reserved for high members of your Church hierarchy. Unless you revert to the early Tudor form, where the monarch was addressed as &#8220;Your grace&#8221; as head of the Church.<\/p>\n<p>You need to give your most sycophantic cronies some juicy titles to play with. The order of poshness is as follows :<\/p>\n<p>Duke\/Duchess, Marquis\/Marquess, Earl\/Countess, Viscount, Baron, Baronet. Dukes and Duchesses are called &#8220;Your Grace&#8221; (confusingly). Everyone else is &#8220;My Lord&#8221; or &#8220;My Lady&#8221;, which is even more confusing, because there are also Lords of the Manor. This is the only title you can actually buy.<\/p>\n<p>I hope that clarifies the situation. I very much doubt whether it does.<\/p>\n<p><img src=\"https:\/\/musefanpage.com\/blog\/wp-content\/plugins\/classic-smilies\/img\/icon_smile.gif\" alt=\":-)\" class=\"wp-smiley\" style=\"height: 1em; max-height: 1em;\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><i>Paul Baker teaches royal court etiquette.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random-craziness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musefanpage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musefanpage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musefanpage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musefanpage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musefanpage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=75"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musefanpage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musefanpage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=75"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musefanpage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=75"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musefanpage.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=75"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}