ABSTRACT
Individuals have invested time, effort and money on bringing up their children not merely to satisfy their own parental urges, but from the intellectual recognition that a successful childhood will enhance their offspring’s careers. In recent years psychologists have confirmed what the poets have told the reader, and what every parent instinctively knows. Just as royal families and morality have been atypical, so have royal childhoods. Kings and queens played little part in the daily upbringing of their offspring. Since the Conquest the role of the monarchy as a political institution has altered far more than that of the family. Modern monarchs need passivity rather than drive, ordinariness instead of brilliance, patience as opposed to ambition. Today, sovereigns chosen on the archaic basis of primogeniture have become a contradiction in a democracy founded on principles of equality and opportunity.
