Why I DO Care About the “Royal Birth”

For the past week or so, excitement has grown into practical hysteria. News coverage has been increased, souvenirs have been loaded into shops, paparazzi have camped outside a hospital.

Bookies have been packed, babies have even gone nameless for weeks; their parents awaiting the name of this royal bundle of joy to be announced, in the hope that their child may bear the same name as the future monarch of our country.

And then, the announcement comes. The sky is filled with jubilant cries of celebration, the internet is overcome by tweets; politicians and celebrities of the world sharing their congratulations for this lovely young couple that most of them have never met.

Even the news of an earthquake taking nearly a hundred lives in China is ushered to the underside of any news programmes, After all, this is royalty. Maybe even Jiang Yafei would have tweeted congratulations to the royal pair as her baby shared the same birthday (if you were allowed to use twitter in China, or if her baby hadn’t been born in a makeshift tent in the rubble of earthquake struck Gansu province. But, I digress.)

Our illustrious leader David Cameron has even joined in the celebration of the birth (not the birth to Jiang Yafei, in fact he hasn’t even spared a tweet for those killed in China, I mean the birth to the Kate and Wills) calling it “an important moment in the life of our nation”.

And it is.

Because once again, our nation is being reminded of that core value that makes British culture and history so very wonderful. That some people are born to be better than others.

I remember being 17 years old, and studying at college when Prince Charles blasted the education system for encouraging people to rise “above their station”. See, the British way of life has long been built on a class system, one which panders to the ideal that one can be born into success, and which has long seen to it that those that are meant to be the workers, the sufferers, the labourers, remain exactly that.

In recent years some of those in the middle and upper classes have decried the fact that status should be seen to be less important, angry that just anybody should be able to study at university, and scoffing at suggestions that we should have an even partially elected House of Lords. These people are not born to have to work for their status; it should be gifted to them, symbolically passed into them with the first feed that they receive from their mother or wet nurse.

And now, after cheers from Buckingham Palace, the nation now holds it’s breath for the announcement of the name of a baby we don’t know, born to a family most of us will only ever see on television. A baby that I’m sure will be just delightful, as all babies are, but a baby that we all care about due only to being an anomaly; the son of the son of the son of the Queen of England. A stark reminder that if you are born in the right place, at the right time, but more importantly, to the right family, you will never want for anything in your life.

This is a fact in this country that has been present throughout it’s history, and it is still present now, and not only in the royal family.

I care about this birth, not because I care about the monarchy, but because I care about every baby that is being born in this age. Every person that is constantly told that if they work hard at school, and follow the rules, they have a very promising career in subservience to somebody better than them.

One day I would like to have a child, and I will teach them that they are not a king or a queen.

I will not call my daughter “princess”.

I will not have them aspire forever to be seen as something that you can be born into.

I will teach them that with work, focus and determination, they can be whatever they like to be. That they can aspire to be greater than any monarch or lord. Not despite their working-class (if you’re into that sort of title) background, but because of it. Because to be somebody that is focused on creating their own title is better than to be somebody that is gifted one.

I will aspire to teach them to seek their own happiness. To focus on the internal rather than the external. To remember that anything that can be purchased, is in the end, worthless.

I do not begrudge the royal family, they have a pretty sweet deal, good on them. My hope is that they have everything they need in future, but also that their position is abolished.

I hope the royal couple enjoy being parents; I wish them health and happiness.

But I wish that every child on earth was given the same fanfare. I wish that people saw the truth; that the birth of the child of Jiang Yafei (pictured above) is just as important as the birth of the child of Princess Catherine, despite the backgrounds of the children.

I care about the royal birth, because I want it to serve as a reminder of how far we as a society still have to go.

Peace.