Nobody does dynasty better than the British royal family. The recent days of pomp and circumstance have not only been a celebration of a life well lived. They have been a celebration of the power of the family to transcend death and to link the past to the present and thence to the future. Individual monarchs may die. The institution lives on because of the fusion of biological and social inheritance. The Queen is dead. Long live the King!
It is easy, particularly after watching days of soldiers in red jackets and bearskins, marching bands and union flags, to see the Windsors as an expression of the peculiarities of the British. To a man and a woman, social theorists have predicted that modernity would mean the end of the dynastic principle in the face of democracy and meritocracy. And they have been able to point to the demise of great royal dynasties such as the Romanovs and the Habsburgs. Queen Victoria’s funeral resembled a gathering of crowned heads of state, many of them her relations. At Elizabeth II’s funeral, most of the heads of state were commoners.
Yet dynasty remains a surprisingly powerful force. Dynastic families keep popping up in countries that were founded in revolt against the British monarchy: Think of the Kennedys and the Bushes in America and the Gandhis in India. The Philippines is run by a Marcos and Canada by a Trudeau. The “stans” of Central Asia are virtually family fiefs. China is a land of “princelings,” the children of senior Communist Party leaders, starting with Xi Jinping, who is about to become president for life. North Korea is on its third Kim in a row, with a fourth on the launching pad.
