by James Corbett, The International Forecaster:

For as long as there have been royalty there have been elaborate theological justifications for why monarchs deserve to rule over the people…and there has always been royalty.

It’s easy to see why the ruling class has tried to foster this idea of godly rule in culture after culture. After all, if the Kings and Queens and Emperors and Pharaohs were not gods, or at least chosen by God, why would anyone listen to them? The difference between a regal king and a tinpot dictator disappears if the king’s divinity is denied.

Even today, in this ‘post-monarchical’ era, ancient superstitions about royal families persist. They are still referred to as “blue bloods” as if the very blood that flowed through their veins is different from yours or mine. There is still an elaborate etiquette for meeting the Queen of England and it is still strictly enforced without exception. Even Obama had to take a lesson before he could meet with Her Majesty Elizabeth II.

The rituals of class distinction are not merely for show. The royals have always considered themselves of superior stock to the commoners, a breed apart from the poor downtrodden masses who toil in squalor beneath them. Thus the obsession with breeding that gentry the world over have been at great pains to observe down through the centuries. Or should that be ‘inbreeding?’ Certainly, the branches of many a royal family tree fold in as much as they branch out, explaining the remarkable physical similarity between members of the European royal families or the recessive disorders like haemophilia that have plagued European royalty for centuries.

Modern DNA analysis has shown that the Spanish branch of the Hapsburg family, the dynasty that ruled over vast swathes of Europe for over 500 years, was inbred out of existence. After generations of cousins marrying cousins and uncles marrying nieces, the genetic variation between Hapsburg husbands and wives was no greater than that between brothers and sisters. The last member of the Spanish Hapsburgs, Charles II, died a congenitally sick, deformed man, physically unable to have a child in order to carry on the dynasty. Nor is this a modern phenomenon: recent DNA analysis of Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamen shows that he, too, was the sickly, deformed product of a brother-sister incestuous pairing.

The royal fixation with inbreeding arose—as do many such ideas—from seemingly irrefutable empirical observation. Animal breeding has been practiced for thousands of years. The ability to breed certain traits into or out of pets and livestock has been an art form ever since humans began domesticating animals to work the land. It wasn’t much of a stretch for rulers and sovereigns to toy with the idea of using these techniques to purify their own stock and domesticate their own “chattel,” the commoners.

But, it will be pointed out, that was a long time ago. We no longer live in an age of lords and peasants, but an age of unprecedented economic mobility. With the notable exception of the world’s remaining royal families, humanity no longer divides itself into “noble” and “base” castes. We no longer talk in vague generalities about the “mixing” of traits between parents, but with precise scientific understanding of the functioning of genes and chromosomes and the structure of DNA and the importance of upbringing and environment in shaping who we are. We no longer believe (assuming we ever did) that a Queen Elizabeth or a King Abdullah or an Emperor Akihito has been chosen by God to rule over us.

No, ours is an “enlightened” era: Our leaders are democratically elected politicians, not hereditary monarchs. Upward mobility is a function of drive, motivation and talent, not peerage and good breeding. Celebrities are our royalty. The richest men and women in the world are average Joes and Janes who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and they are all ranked in order of wealth by glossy magazines each year…

…Or so the story goes. The truth, as always, is not quite in keeping with popular perception.

As it turns out, there is a modern-day royalty, hereditary lines of rulers in positions of power who possess nearly unthinkable wealth. These kings and queens, however, do not live in castles or demand deference. Their faces are not printed on our bills or stamped into our coins (although their signatures may be on the bills for those who care to look). These are the inconspicuous monarchs, notable for the buildings and banks, financial institutions and tax-free foundations that bear their family names. They have traded crowns and scepters for shirts and ties, these lords of business and finance who blend into crowds. And we can trace their rise to the fall of the monarchies of old.

By the late 17th century, with the world already transitioning away from medieval feudalism and towards modern capitalism, the absolute power of the European monarchs was being whittled away. In England, the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and the Bill of Rights of 1689 brought an end to the concept of the total authority of the king, an authority that had itself been formally limited by the Magna Carta in 1215. In 1694 the establishment of the Bank of England set a precedent for private control of a nation’s money supply, a template that was copied in country after country (including, of course, the United States) in the coming centuries. Before long it was a handful of banking families that controlled the exchequers of the governments that they “served” and the overt royalty of old was replaced with a new, covert royalty.

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