Bridgetown, capital of Barbados, Mme Sandra Mason has been sacred, in recent days, the first president of a new republic. Ties with the British crown are officially severed. To celebrate the country’s accession to this new status, a representative of the monarchy, Prince Charles, Duke of Cornwall, has been invited to present his wishes for success to this new power which, in many ways, mimics the old one.
It is Charles of Wales’ mother, Queen Elizabeth II, who loses one of her hats with Barbados. However, she remains queen of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Bahamas, Belize, Jamaica, New Zealand as well as a few other countries, fourteen in all that she can continue to contemplate. from its Buckingham Castle.
Since the start of her reign in 1952, Elizabeth II has been head of state of no less than thirty-two different kingdoms. A trifle.
In Barbados, the crown prince gave a speech in sugar. He regretted, heart in hand, the atrocities of slavery. This Caribbean country was a hub of slavery, under the benevolent gaze of a colonial power, of which that of Prince Charles proved to be an heir. What are such excuses worth?
Robert LaPalme, cartoonist at To have to, had one day unfairly manhandled I do not know who thanks to his sharp quill dipped in India ink. Proud like no other, he refused to apologize. The director of To have to, Gérard Fillion, not very diplomatic, however, had had in front of him a reflection which had led LaPalme to apologize with a smile. “Suppose, Mr. LaPalme, that you are walking on the street, carrying a long ladder over your shoulder,” he told her. “You are following someone whom you do not particularly esteem. As you suddenly turn around, the end of the ladder knocks her head down. You see that head roll on the ground. After that, can’t you, you can apologize… ”
In Barbados, in these Republican celebrations, there was no question of the slavery of money. Several former Commonwealth countries, in the Caribbean as elsewhere, are however, like Barbados, endowed with the title of tax havens, a not very shining title for the future of humanity. Perhaps this will be the subject of apologies and self-nutrition sessions within two centuries? Inside the skulls, the cleaning of cobwebs is always delayed. In the meantime, Canada’s Chartered Professional Accountants continue to support “Canadian CPA holders who work or reside in Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean,” says the organization’s website.
At this Republican ceremony was Rihanna. The multimillionaire singer was able to take note of the wishes launched on the fly by Queen Elizabeth II, her “warmest wishes”, “happiness, peace and prosperity for the future”. Barbados continues in any case, republican or not, to occupy a golden place in the world of tax havens, one of the most obvious legacies left by the imperialist powers and their rulers. In 2018, in the wake of the Paradise Papers, it was shown that the royal fortune had taken advantage of such tax loopholes.
Meanwhile, Prince Charles, 73, continues to slowly prepare to replace his mother. At 95, the health of Elizabeth II is now shivering a little.
While waiting for Charles’ head to bloom on the paper money and stamps, the heir enjoys all the attentions. This man is already so occupied with his essential functions as a monarch in the making that it is necessary to take care to help him, even if only a little, to live better. Also a valet, reports the specialized press, goes so far as to take care of putting the toothpaste on his toothbrush. Having someone who, every day, after every meal, prepares your toothbrush for you, is probably the height of that biological irony that leads a prince to wait more than seventy years to become a king. The toothbrush thus becomes the equivalent of the shine brush, not so much to shine the mother-of-pearl, but an oral cavity reduced after all to silence.
The Prince’s former butler Paul Burrell says the up-and-coming Sovereign’s pajamas are, meanwhile, always freshly squeezed before his well-deserved sleep. The same apparently goes for the laces of his shoes. Are you one of those who, like him, is sensitive to the inconvenience caused by shoe laces that are not properly ironed?
The future king of Canada is not the only one to demand, during his travels abroad, that his particular orthopedic bed follow him like a pocket dog. The king of jazz, Keith Jarrett, also refuses to move without his mattress accompanying him. Among the rich and famous, it seems that we know the little music of great comfort everywhere.
According to the newspaper The Parisian, the future ruler also demands that his own toilet seat and rolls of paper of his favorite brand follow him. Seems a bit big to me. True or false ? Anything is possible, as the saying goes, when you’re used to farting higher than the hole.
Still, to be a prince is to be pushed to respond to a zoological instinct of the dynasty and its reproduction, while pretending not to consider itself for a simple redundancy. It is being rich like Croesus, to the point of being covered with a respectability capable of making people forget the brutality of the origins now sedimented by his power.
Monarchy or republic, each regime can be, of course, a prison in its own way. And aspiring to be free is not enough to shake a prison. The basic question therefore remains whether, in either regime, we have the history we deserve.