By Ben Salter
Prince Willy dropped by earlier this week for what seemed to be nothing more than a general chat and to remind us that he still exists.
We’ve all but decided that we don’t care for Charles and his horse-faced wife, so surely severing ties with the royal family once and for all is on the agenda when Elizabeth II, heaven forbid, passes away. However, William could change all that, should he pick off his dad and come to power quicker than expected.
He took the whole thing casually, and clearly tired to make a good impression, dressing fairly casually as you can see above, alongside our all so excited Prime Minister. The reason he may have slipped under the radar, despite trying to get his publicity minions on the job, is because he stayed here for a measly three days. The media did their best, and painted him with a halo above his head, but it was more of a pop in than a visit. What else does he have to do exactly that caused him to rush off home? Surely he could have at least made a week off it, or bypassed New Zealand – we don’t want people knowing they actually have a nice country.
He was here to become better acquainted with the country, and its people, but as far as I can tell he didn’t see much of either. He had a chinwag to our Governor-General Q (Quentin Bryce), sat next to K-Rudd for a bit, saw a traditional Aboriginal welcome somewhere in inner Sydney, and played cricket with David Hussey.
It’s not entirely his fault, he wouldn’t of had anything to do with planning his itinerary, but he didn’t exactly achieve his goal of becoming acquainted with the people. It’s like traveling around Europe, but only socialising with the jetlagged Australian couple you met in hotel’s bar on the first night. It’s Pointless. Not so much because he didn’t try; an old man got to shake his hand; a 20-something girl even got a kiss, but it’s hardly the mass audience that could have been achieved with a few more days in the country. Furthermore he needed to do some more professional royal waving. At prince school I assume they teach how to wave at a legion of followers, while giving the impression you know what you’re smiling about, along with which of your folks to use for peas.
Despite my distaste for his itinerary, and choice of social company, the good Prince actually made a fantastic impression on the Australian public during his brief visit; the public the realised he was here, that is. The people who did seem him, in the flesh, seemed almost infatuated with him. It wasn’t exactly the reaction I would of expected from a royal visit, since I’m sure they forget we exist half the time.
If Charles had come to power last week, we’d be calling for Australia to become a republic. Now, however, after a brief, non-eventful stopover from the second heir to the thrown, we’ve gone a little royalty mad, as we did back in the 50s when the Queen visited.
For the past 20 years, and consequently my entire lifetime, we’ve been shown Charles, the bumbling idiot that got himself caught up in an affair with an even stupider woman, as the heir to the thrown. We loved to hate him, but couldn’t bring ourselves to severe ties with the kind, elderly, Queen. With Charles at the helm it would have been easy, but now we’ve been shown William as the possible successor. Truth be told he’s probably an idiot as well, but the monarch really doesn’t do all the much, and he seems like a nice bloke, who may very well be the reason we stick around in the Monarch’s back pocket.
Does a “nice bloke” constitute a reason to hold off becoming a republic? No. It’s not appropriate for Australia in 2010 and, while I quite like the Queen, we shouldn’t be here discussing it now. Nevertheless Prince William has done a good enough job making himself look like the monarch (to be) we’ve been waiting for. It seems to me that Australians take kindly to any overseas visitor that can be written about in the celebrity section. We loved Tiger when he visited, only to hate him when he left and had sex with everyone, but no doubt we’d take kindly should he visit again in the near future, because he’s an overseas celebrity. I hope the Prince’s status doesn’t influence our decision on whether he, and the English-monarch, should continue to have some power over us. What little it is, the fact remains it should be none. We should have broken up years ago, but we’d like to still be friends.
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Submitted by ICC_06
24/01/2010
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