Hey, everybody. Mr Chuck Bryant here, Charles w. That is, if you want to know how royalty works, we can sort of explain that. This is from Jeez about six years ago, from September eleven. We talk all about royalty and probably get about right. Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w. W W, Chuck Bryant and Jerry. What's your problem? This is should know? My problem is I got an eye twitch. Yeah, it's a little weird. Okay, you can see it. Who can't? My left eyes is going crazy? All right, it's I think stabilized. Yeah it seems too. Yeah. Mitosis kicking in. You're what mitosis? What kind of toasts you got? Uh? Tosis is when you have a droopy eyelid. You know I told you about that recently. You're like, you do see that left eyelet is is more exposed. It's like a forest Whittaker. I know what you're saying. I see that. Like if I compare it to the other eyelid, I can see more of your left eyelid, but it doesn't appear droopy. I think that's the right term for it. Tosis no droopy No, well it's tosas is a droopy eelid, and I have it. I think it's a toasta highlid. That's what you got, man. I was diagnosed and it's uh apparently going to get worse. So who is it? Forest Whittaker? Who else? I think Tom York of Radiohead, Oh yeah, you're company. And I think Paris Hilton has tosis. Oh yes she does, and me the four It's worse when I'm sleepy or if I drunk. Yeah, I could see that, but I'm never either one of those. So so you're always fine. Yeah. I don't know why, stroop. Are you drunk right now? That's good? Should not be drunk while we do these? Chuck, it's too important, that's right. So I've got an actual infro for this, oh man, like the old days in my head. It could be up to like twenty minutes long. So just sit back and around perfect um, So chuck up. Until about nine years ago, all humans walked around and gathered food and followed herds of animals which they hunted and killed and eight and on any given day, you eight what you gathered and then you just kind of moved along to the next spot. That was typically the way things were done. They were called hunter gatherer societies. Then, during what's called the Neolithic Revolution, people started selecting plants in their area and realizing that they could replant the seeds from those plants, and all of a sudden you had agriculture, which is made things very stable, very stable, more stable tie people to the land. But it also gave rise to something that hadn't been around before, which was surplus. Because if you're a hunter gatherer and all of your buddies and family and friends or hunter gatherers, and you're all just hunting and gathering just enough to sustain you for that day, then there's no such thing as surplus. That means everybody's pretty much equal. Maybe one guy takes mushrooms more than the rest of you, so he's your religious leader or something like that, but for the most part, everybody's roughly equal. Now that there's a surplus, say somebody has a particularly good bounty on the year where everybody else in the area has a bad bounty. That person is in what's called the position of power. Yeah, they have an advantage, Yes, they do that happens a few times to the same people. And if they are clever enough to consolidate that power and have more and more kids in a larger and larger kin group, at which they would if they're more powerful, you know they're gonna have more kids, then they conform what you would recognize today as a dynasty. And then over time these people would say, you know what, this is my birthright to rule you guys, to be rich. I'm going to just say that I'm connected to the Sun, which is our god that we worship, So by proxy, I'm the Sun, God's ruler here on earth, which means I'm in charge of you. And while you're at it, give me some of your surplus, and all of a sudden, now you have a king a kingdom. And this happened roughly all around the world, independently, but following almost the exact same course. You've got agriculture, you have surplus. You have certain people consolidating power, rising to power, associating themselves with gods to um to make their power that much more stable and unchallenged, and then you have kingdoms. That's what happened. Boom. Over time, these kingdoms did more and more crazy stuff, but they all they all followed roughly the same thing. Yeah. And if you're out in the middle of a desert, you don't have a lot of options to go other places, so that helps along the king, Yeah, because you don't have any choice. Or if you're in Peru there's a big mountain range there, kind of stuck. Yeah, because you still need you know, your potatoes, you still need your grain. Um. And if you can't move very easily, if you're getting resources from being a member of a community, then that explains why you, as this normal, independent minded person, might go along with some guy saying he's a descendant of the Sun God and you have to give him half of your grain for no good reason. Yeah. Or if you're in the Amazon where it's you're not surrounded by desert or mountains and you can say, screw this guy, I'm out of here, then you may be a little slower to have something like a king, yeah, or maybe not at all. And so all this whole mentality, this whole process took place independently, like I said, the world around and also everybody seemed to have come to the same idea that you need to export this stuff. The more power or the more land and there therefore the more um crops or whatever you can get under your power, more powerful you are. And the way to get that is to get a bunch of guys who are sick of farming and like to mess around with spears, to go conquer some other cities and make those people give you half of their grain. Then you become even more powerful, so you export this kind of um mentality of being ruled by a single person who's getting fat off of taxing everybody else. And still today we have virtually all of these same processes just in a different guys. Yeah, and we should give credit to uh, Simon Powers, because we didn't just make all that stuff up. No, as the Simon Powers, the researcher or the writer, he is really uh an author of the study that um kind of looked at that theory that we've been talking about and made a model that UM, I don't know if it proved it, but made it seem pretty likely. Yeah, why how despots arose during the Neolithic Revolution. Yeah, so way to go, Simon Powers. And if you're interested in that kind of thing, also go back and read Dr Jared Diamond's The Worst Mistake in the History of the human race, which talks a lot about this transition and basically argues that we were all better off as hunter gatherers. Yeah, Dustin Diamond wrote the same article and it was the answer was saved by the Belle the worst mistake in the human race. Hey, that's a good show. Um, alright, all the wrong way. You're right. So in this article how royalty works, like, we're going to kind of default to England. Yeah, here and there for the most part, I'm sorry, great Britain. Well, we're gonna explain all that stuff finally and for all, because that's, you know, that's what we were exposed to. That's the kind of the Western English speaking standard, the British monarchy. But you can kind of substitute in a lot of ways. This this um a lot of the way that it developed for just about anywhere in the world. Because again, the idea of hierarchies, of class, of social stratification and then some group of people being at the absolute pinnacle is extraordinarily ancient. Yeah, and it all comes down to land and owning land. Since people have tried the earth, the most powerful ones are the people that owned more of it than their neighbor. Yeah, but not scessarily tried the earth. I mean we're talking just in the last ten thousand years. And even after that, the English didn't create them this idea that you could take land and say this is my land. Now you used to farm it, but you can still farm it, but you owe me because this is my land and I'm letting you farm on it. Yeah. And after everybody was like, wait what, and you say, oh, I forgot to tell you. If you don't do this, I'm gonna kill you in your entire family. So do it. And they created what's known as the feudal system. Yeah, let's get in our our way back machine. Awesome, let's pull the cover off this bad boy and let's go back to oh like anywhere between the ninth and fifteenth century. Let's do it because it doesn't matter. It's all about the same. That's not true, but it's similar, uh to the feudal systems of medieval Europe. Um. Basically what went on was there were very few people that owned a lot of the land, um a lot of territory. But they basically looked around at one point and says, you know what, I have too much stuff to govern on my own. So I'm gonna divide it up and I'm gonna let other people use it. And I call them vassals. And you're my vassel. You're gonna go out and you're gonna manage that territory for me, going to collect some taxes, you can keep some of that. You can farm and keep some of that. Well, they didn't farm, They had people farming for them. Well, sure, so it's like a hierarchy habit farmed. Like you can imagine all of England is being owned by the king and then you divide it up, and then those people further divided it up. Yeah, because the vassal could divide their's up. And for sub sub vessels, I guess serfs, Yeah, I guess so either they're called um And you know, you guys, how about raising some armies for me? Um, You're all gonna be beholden to me, but I'm gonna let you keep a lot of the dough, um, as long as you still give me something. Yeah. And and prior to this, chuck like, this is kind of a sweet deal. And the way that you ended up in vassal is you had an army that could conceivably challenge this guy who said I'm a king of England and everybody and um, everyone said where and he's like here this, this is England now, and I'm the king. Uh. And so if you had an army that he could probably defeat with his army, but could still like pose a problem. He turned you onto his side, sure, and said, well, wait before you say anything, I'm going to give you. Let you handle some of this land, like you said, and you can get these people who are farming the land to give you some of their grain. You give some to me, but you keep some yourself. Yeah, you'll be like a smaller version of me. Yeah, and we'll will be more powerful together exactly. And that's how this hierarchy, at least in under the feudal system began, that's right. And these vassals, they had rules of succession a lot like inheritance. Um, you could pass your your land onto your children and then they would be a vassal. Yeah. You also passed your obligation to the king onto the children too. It wasn't just the sweet life. Oh no, no no, no, they could you could never. You are always beholden as long as you maintain that land, um, and it was the same in other parts of the world. Japan had the imperial system that was similar to the European monarchies, and Japan's actually their monarchy is the oldest in the world. Did you know that? Yes? I did. The Japanese imperial family traces their lineage back to the sixth century b c e. That's crazy, although they are purely ceremonial at this point right well, yeah, but they were the exact opposite of just purely ceremonial up until and uh g I Joe came in and like said, you guys aren't divine deities any longer, which is what everybody considered them up until and check out my kunk fu grip. Uh. So everything was going along well until about the seventeenth century when republicanism began to uh kind of just chip away at the royals and the power that they held throughout Europe, and democracy starts to form, and sometimes it happens gradually and kind of nicely. Sometimes it happens via revolution, like in France, and uh sometimes when they would kick out the monarchy, they would come back um with a vengeance, like after the English Civil War between the Roundheads and the cavaliers. Um, we had King Charles executed, his heir, Charles two was exiled to France. Parliament gained a lot of control, but they would later come back of course. Charles the second, well, just the monarchy period, yeah, but after that the monarchy just was never the same now, although maybe under like Elizabeth, she was pretty powerful. Yeah, but I think, um, Parliament had gained a lot of control. Yeah, everybody after that point had to deal with Parliament before anybody had. Under Charles the first, the same stuff was going on in the Middle East. Um, it was a little different though because religion was so much more a part of uh, their their monarch's um they had was it called a caliph? Yeah, was was the head? Uh? I guess that would be the king, Yeah, I guess so if you had if you compared it to like the English model, the caliph would be the head, the king of England, and then beneath them would be sultans, which would be like vassals, which are powerful kings, but they they are not the religious leader. So you got the caliph and the sultans. Yeah, and sultans were like military commanders but not priests, right, but they were involved. Everything was all tied into religion still is of course. Yeah. And then if you look at the Middle East model UM, you know, very early on, like like look at Egypt, all of the Egyptian UM rulers were considered deities up until America said no, no, no. The Imperial King, the Emperor of Japan was considered a deity of the Shinto religion like a god um In in the Middle East, the caliph is a religious figure. In uh, the Holy Roman Empire, the king's ruled along with the pope. So there's always been this real um marriage, either in the form of one person or in the form of like some sort of allegiance between the holy ruler and the political ruler, because they the religious aspect of it gives um credibility to the rule of the the political ruler, and like like even in England they went so far as to come up with the Divine Right of Kings, which said, the king is God's emissary here on planet Earth, and the king is therefore infallible. Nobody can get rid of the king. But exactly, but I mean it ended up been going on for millennia since before then. But that was like they just put it down into text like, yeah, that's that's the way it is. Unfortunately for the king, that meant that the only way to get be gotten rid of was to be murdered. Yeah, but they figured it will be a pretty wild ride until then. Yeah, I mean that's one of the risks when you're the king. Uh So now you have you have royalty, you have this class system. Royalty is actually transcends class because uh, it's it's the bloodline like a noble. That's the differencetween nobility and royalty is nobility. The nobles didn't have the bloodline going. Yeah, it depends on the country that you're in. So like in some countries, there are more than one royal family, right, yeah, different houses, but just one of them holds the throne at a time. Yeah, just one of them has uh the ability to be the heir to the throne um. So in other countries, it's like there's one group of royals and they're the only royals, and everybody, no matter how powerful, no matter their noble title, they're still technically commoners exactly. They're they're almost always wealthy, even though technically wealth doesn't have anything to do with it because it's about your bloodline. But if you're if you're in the monarchy, you're going to be wealthy. And in some cases also they're considered an actual part of their country. Yeah, they're that much ingrained into the national fabric. So we said that, Um, in some countries there can be more than one royal family and um, this kind of comes into play when there's not a clear line of succession. Yeah, things can get a little messy when the king dies. So like if you have, um, what's called an agnatic succession, that that means that the oldest male heir inherits the throne. Yeah, and actually agnatic, uh, it means your brother takes over and not your son. Okay, So it's patrilineal. It's it's on the father's side, but instead of giving the throne to your child, like your firstborn son, it goes to your your little bro okay, your oldest little pro Okay, got youa um. And then in in other lines, it can be the oldest heir, right, that's right, whether it's male or female, like how Queen Elizabeth is the queen Now, yeah, you can be a female heir Britain of course, so all of these people are all related. They're part of the royal family. They're either a sibling, a child, a grandchild, even a cousin. But there's still a member of that family, which is also known as the house. In a country where there's more than one royal house and there's a dispute or a problem with the succession the normal succession rights, then you can have a challenge to the throne by another royal house. Yeah, or it's just simply elected by a committee of nobles. Maybe who that next king is going to be? Yeah, Or if there's not a very clear line, they can say, you know what, it's it's no man's land here, and whoever ends up with the crown may not even be a part of the bloodline. Maybe they just had the best military or the most money, right, And that's I mean, that's how original houses were set up. Yeah, I mean the only difference between that situation happening now and someone else's house, like taking control of the throne, is they just descended to royalty, you know, millennia ago, rather than right now. Yeah, all right. Titles, it's all about the title. The very top of the chessboard. You're gonna have your king and queen or an emperor empress, depending on if that's the kind of game you play in your country or your empire. Uh, then the elatives are the king and queen. Um. It really depends on the country in the monarchy. A lot of times their princes and princesses can be your children, your grandchildren, could be your brothers, could be your cousins. Um. It just kind of varies depending on what country you're in. And those titles are called peerages, and there's hereditary peerages, and then there's life peerages. That's right, and um. The peerages, as at least in uh in European royalty, go in from an order of importance and from the lowest number to the most number duke, marquess or marquis, earl, viscount and baron. So the barons are at least powerful, but there's the most of them, is it viscount. I've been saying viscount my whole life. Viscount. It's all right, man, everybody says viscount. Um. And then the dukes are the most powerful, but there's the fewest of them. And so if you have an hereditary peerage, you inherited that at some point in time, some king or queen said, you are now the Duke of blah blah bah, and you're noble, but you are not royal, right exactly, so um, the although you can be royal like I believe Prince Charles is the Duke of Windsor, you know, yeah that man, it gets confusing. It definitely does get confusing. It gets even more confusing because when Prince Charles becomes King Charles, the Duke of Windsor will vanish. That title will vanish because he became king, which he'd much rather be king than Duke of Windsor, you know what I mean. Yeah, And that's called being absorbed into the crown by the crown. The title can also just be left, like if there's no air. You can also take it and give it to another family, although I think that that probably is subject to being approved by the queen or the king. Um. And then there's a whole other cattle of fish called life peerages, which basically says you are now a baron or baroness while you're alive, right, And and then your kids will still receive some sort of honor. They won't receive the title, but they can call themselves the honorable, which suggests that their parents had a life peerage, but that that it wasn't a hereditary title, so the kids don't inherit it. Yeah. And to add further confusion, a prince isn't always the male child of the king. Sometimes that is the king, um, sometimes it's just a noble. When Britain ruled India, they made a very clear distinction that, um, your rulers and your provinces in India, um are going to be called princes, just so it's clear you're not going to call yourself a king, which is bs because India already had its own monarchy system, um, but now they were all downgraded by the British. Yeah. Um. We should also say that if you receive a peerage of any sort it you are automatically a member of the House of Lords, which is the upper chamber of British Parliament. Um. And so it's part of them the duty of the Queen to appoint these things, to appoint these peerages, but in these modern times she wants to kind of appoint them along party lines to make sure they're an appropriate representation of everybody in the House of Lords. Yeah. And you also get season tickets to uh men you games? Do you know? I don't think so, I'll bet you do. Uh. All right, So I guess we can move on to the functions of these royals, because it really has varied throughout the years and depending on which country, whether or not your ceremonial figurehead or you're actually have real duties. Um, and I guess it's well, let's just start with England. Okay, So with England? Do you want to read her her Majesty's full title? Should we get into this now? I think we should, all right, because boy, we have botched this over the years with saying Britain and England and Great Britain and the UK. We're gonna set the record straight here today because technically calling q E two, we know her, we love her, calling her the Queen of England is not correct now and it's pretty disrespectful to some people. It is. And we're gonna explain this right now, follow along with our little history lesson and a man, I hope we get this right. Where did you find this? By the way, Oh I found it on the internet. I can't remember where it's all over. There's many different versions, but um, here we got seven. You have King James the sixth. He ascended to the throne of Scotland after Mom, who was married Queen of Scott's, advocated the throne. At the same time, you have Elizabeth one, daughter of Henry the eighth. She was a Queen of England and she was Mary, Queen of Scott's, first cousin. Once removed. Go forward a little bit to sixteen oh three, Elizabeth one dies. Then James was King James one of England and King James six of Scotland at the same time. Just making sense. They have united the crowns of England and Scotland. Even though they were separate kingdoms. They had separate parliaments, separate institutions. It is a crown united with England and Scotland. Now we have the birth of Great Britain that was in seven Yeah, and man, everyone in the UK right now, it's just saying like following along so closely, waiting first to mess up. So after the union of the crowns of England Scotland, it was a rough time. There were different monarchs, there were a lot of wars. Eventually the wars ended uh in sixteen sixty the monarchy rose restored, and in seventeen o two Queen Anne became Queen of England, Queen of Scotland and Queen of Ireland. It's very confusing where well, Scotland was still independent, they still had their own parliament, their own legal system. Uh. In seventeen o seven, during Queen as Queen Anne's reign, the English and Scottish parliaments passed separate Acts of Union, and on May first, seventeen o seven, the kingdoms of England and Scotland ceased to exist and were replaced by the Kingdom of Great Britain. So now Anne as the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland. Okay. So that means that while Anne was Queen, she was the last Queen of England. Yes. And then after these acts were passed in seventeen o seven, she automatically became the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland. That's right. Since seventeen o seven it has been incorrect to call anyone the king or Queen of England. Yes. Stories not over yet gets more complicated. The next century, Ireland was separate, separate kingdom. It gained its own parliament and then eight hundred that all changed when Irish and British parliaments passed separate Acts of Union, creating the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland one country eighteen o one. So it was three separate kingdoms prior to seventeen o seven. Now one kingdom ruled from London. The active Union passed an eighteen hundred and it's still in force today, although there's been amendments of course along the way. Then George the Third at that time was the King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. It's even more confusing because Ireland had their problems. Nineteen twenty two, they partitioned off what was the Irish Free State and then eventually the Republic of Ireland was created. In the nineteen twenty seven the name was changed to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland UH and at that same time United Kingdom was removed from the title King. George the Fifth, the king at the time, became King of Great Britain and Ireland. Eventually, in nineteen fifty three, we arrived at Her Majesty Elizabeth the Second, by the grace of God, the Kingdom of Right Britain, in Northern Ireland and of her other realms and territories, Queen Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the faith man. So she's not the Queen of England, Nope, not. You don't hear England in that title. And then you know she also has titles in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Jamaica. Yes, she's the Queen of Canada. I didn't know all that stuff. The Queen of Australia, yeah, And they're not the Queen, not the Queen of England, no man. She's the Queen of the United Kingdom, of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. But the reason why she is the um the Queen of England and the Queen of Australia is because there was a treaty in agreement amongst these other countries and Great Britain that basically said, you guys can go off on your own, but keep the queen, will you. And she's not the Queen of like you guys aren't part of this territory, but keep her as your queen. So she is, in addition to the Queen of Great Britain and Northern Ireland separately, the Queen of Canada and the Queen of Australia, but she assigns a governor to like do all the work, right, and so she's strictly a figurehead there. And the reason why she's strictly a figurehead there is because in practice she's supposed to approve all treaties and and all sorts of powerful legislation, but her her agent never opposes the Parliament of Canada or Australia. Yeah. Man, it's super confusing, but she's still the Queen of Canada and the Queen of Australia. Back in the day, it was a lot easier because the monarchs had absolute power, well not absolute power, well remember the Pope could get them or they could be subject to train aside. Yeah, and basically they they had the last word, but they had all these other people that were advising them. And you don't want to make enemies of the people that are taking care of your land and making you money and raising their own private armies, because that's where the taraniside can come in exactly. So you want to pretty much kind of keep things copacetic as much as possible, or you're gonna have the English Civil War yes, if you're smart and not an inbred dingbat, you know, because there are plenty of kings that ruled like complete nuts jobs. And then those nobles too that we talked about, um, that weren't royal but noble. They also formalized and the dukes and bishops started evolving eventually into what became the House of Lords, which is the upper house of British Parliament. And even today the House of Lords is still made up of several dozen of those hereditary nobles and a lot of life peers that are appointed by the Queen. And that's when you were talking about with you know, she has to sort of balance it out politically with these peerage appointments. And she still plays an enormously ceremonial role in England. You know, she's a huge tourism draw. She's the head of state, all that jazz. Yeah. Um. But and in other countries the monarchies are are even more ceremonial, like in Japan, the Imperial family UM the heir to the um the emperorship. Sure, his name is Prince he Saihido, and he recently got his um ceremonial age six haircut really and more pants for the first time. There's like apparently if you're from the outside, you're like, what are these people doing? But this is like these are traditions that are steeped back again to the sixth century BC for this lineage, um, but they are strictly ceremonial as a result of World War two treaties, it's the same lineage. Yeah, yeah, remarkable, but then and supposedly they're no longer deities. But if you're a Shinto in Japan, you like view the emperor as the highest apex of your religion and of you know, the monarchy is why wow uh sometimes you it's it's not ceremonial at all. Like in Jordan's they're a constitutional monarchy, and the king of Jordan's um in this article they equated to the US president. So they have appointments, appoint judges, they sign laws, um. But they can be overruled by the National Assembly. But they actually have a job to do. In Jordan, it's good, good for them. Although it might be nice just to be purely ceremonial. I bet that's a that's a cushy life right there. I bet it wouldn't be very nice for whatever transitional monarch lost power and now has to just do whatever Parliament says. But yeah, I'm sure if you're like Harry, he's having fun. Yeah, you bet he is. Some of them, some royals are famous for not letting all of this go to their head. Like apparently Scandinavian royals are called bicycle monarchs. Just regular folks. Yeah, they ride bikes. Yeah, I don't know about it's like everybody. Yeah, they're not even expensive bikes, not bit. They're pretty nice. But when you think royals typically you think like Sultan of Brunei or um King of Monico and Princess Grace Kelly and just incredible wealth for the British monarchs. Again, that's a good will to go back to for this one too. Yeah, let's go over a couple of these things, because life is pretty good at Buckingham Palace two hundred forty bedrooms in London, four hundred servants, not bad. That seems excessive windsor q E two's family retreat eight thrones, eight thrones among six d and fifty rooms, not bad, but you mentioned it's a pretty good ratio. Brunei. Uh. That is where things get really crazy. That is the world's largest palace um almost eighteen hundred rooms and they have a throne room tiled and solid gold and chandeliers that cost twelve million dollars. Wow. They must be royal in the Britannia, which um, I don't think they use anymore. I wonder why not the royal yacht? Did they retire it because it was wasteful? Do you know? No? I don't know. Someone will tell us. I know that Jimmy Carter sold the presidential yacht because he thought it was wasteful and excessive? Did he really? Did he sell it to private company? Really? That's kind of cool? Um? And then the I guess we should talk about pretenders to the throne. Yeah, that's an important thing. Um. That is not someone pretending um to be king, although sometimes it's a case. But a pretender is someone who uh doesn't hold the crown but lays claim to it. They're saying like, hey, that person is an illegitimate king. I should be king, but I'm really just a sad pretender. That that happens sometimes when like a monarchy is deposed. Okay, it doesn't necessarily mean that there's somebody who's holding the throne, although it can it can like there can be no throne anymore. And this whatever family was in charge when the monarchy was deposed is still keeping track of all this stuff in case they can never go back. And whoever is the king in that secession is the pretender to the throne. Okay, I got you. That's the other way it can happen, all right. Right for this break, we're gonna talk a little bit more about what life is like if you are a royal m m all right. So we talked about some of the opulence, uh of the royals and how they love to to show off their wealth and stick your nose in it. You're a commoner. Um. These days, children, if you're a royal child, you have all the best education. But that wasn't always a case. They used to be big dummies for the most part. Like they didn't even want them to go to school or to learn military tech dicks because they wanted them to just sit around and eat you know, turkey turkey legs all day, don't even worry about the book learning. Right, So you gotta had a bunch of dumb royals back in the day, dumb monarchies. Yeah again, um, Prince he Sahito is the first in the Japanese Imperial family to go to an elementary school rather than the specific school designed just for the youngest kids of the royal family, like a school of three people, yeah, or one at the time. Yeah, that's private tutelage, right, yeah, I guess so, yeah, but they call it a school if you're really young, like sometimes you'll be a king and you're just a little baby or like a like you said, like a little little toddler. You're gonna be assisted by people called regents, and they are going to be running the show for the most part until the king or queen can come of age. So chuck, here's the thing, um there. People often take potshots at royal saying that they're genetically unsound. It is true, apparently, um. Pretty much around the world, royal families are fairly well in bred. It's because of power consolidation over millennia, and so even if you had let's say two or three royal families in a country that were considered royal, but only one was in line for the throne at the time, they might want to kind of keep it amongst themselves. So even though they're intermarrying between the families. It's still just basically like intermarrying between three families. Yeah, and it's to keep the bloodline pure, which has always struck me as odd because it's uh results in some uh you know, disease and genetic defects pretty much. Yeah, and and um like, apparently that's where hemophilia came from. Yeah, and that was a gift courtesy of Queen Victoria. Apparently. The reason why this happens is you can't just say it's inbreeding. It's when you have a narrower, shallow gene pool that you're pulling from, the possibility of recessive genes appearing is increased. So if you have two people who have both have a copy of a recessive gene, that genes going to become dominant and come to the forefront, and so a lot of stuff that normally wouldn't pop up in a person when you just are inter mingling in a normal sized gene pool, you're gonna have a lot of problems because these people all share the same genes roughly, and so recessive genes are popping up in pairs. That's right, that's a big problem actually. Yeah, and a lot of royals throughout the years, and a lot of different countries have been um have been mad. Yeah, you found an article on some mad ones since Yeah, I picked out a few of these. Um, King Georgia third, he was probably the most famous. Um. The movie Madness of King George is in my top one by the way. Oh yeah, great, great movie. So I was listening to is it Keneth Durant who does uh MPR movie reviews? I think? So? He did this awesome like essay on on sequels and now there's an art to naming a sequel, And he was saying that the stage play originally was the Madness of George the Third, but when they turned it into a movie in America, they decided they need to rename it because they didn't want American filmgoers to think that this was the Madness of George three than that missed the first two. So yeah, wow it's not interesting. Yeah, dumb Americans. Yeah, Madness of King George. Uh he had all kinds of wacky behavior. Um, supposedly attempting to shake hands with a tree because he thought it was a King of Prussia. Didn't that sound like something Mr Burns would do? Yeah, totally Uh these days Um, you know, they tried and diagnose all the people now with what they think they might have had. And they believe he might have had schizophrenia, or maybe he was bipolar, or maybe he had this blood disorder called poor porphyria and that is hereditary and um, it can mimic madness. And then you have Christian the seventh of Denmark from seventeen eight seven to eighteen o eight. He um had these wild mood swings, hallucinations, paranoia, self mutilation. Um, he may have been schizophrenic and also may have suffered from porphyria or porphyria. So that was another one. And then more recently Farouk of Egypt. This one is my favorite. In ninety six, Like you can find pictures of this guy, which is kind of fun. Well, yeah, he was around in nineteen thirty six. He loved his sports cars so much so he loved his red sports cars. They he decreed no one else was allowed to have a red car in all of Egypt. Yeah, and he would apparently shoot out the tires of people that passed him on the road. And they think that he had misophobia, which was a fear of contamination, so he would search for germs and little imaginary bits of dirt and um. It was also reportedly a kleptomaniac who may or may not have stolen Winston Churchill's watch. So he was a little wacky. Two I'd lied, Chuck. That guy was tied for first from my favorite king Charles the sixth of France. Melissa's deal. Dude, he was. He was pretty out of it. He um apparently got very paranoid that people were after him, so he murdered some of his own nights and he uh man, I thought that he was made of glass and had clothes made for him, special clothes. He wouldn't allow to anyone to touch him um because he thought that he would shatter. Actually, apparently he would forget he was king. He didn't recognize his family. They're not exactly sure what it is like all these guys. They diagnose the schizophrenia, bipolar, right right. I think the most um, the most exact one was missophobia for Farouk. Yeah, but the rest of them is how do you diagnose somebody like that? Now? You can't like hundreds of years later. It's tough. But there have been some wacky mad rulers. There have some monarchs. You got anything else? Yeah, this one last bit about crowns. I learned this. I thought there was one crown that was like, if you're the king or the queen, you've got your one single crown. Yeah, that's what I thought too, but that isn't true. Apparently they have different crowns worn by their ancestors, and they even create their own for special events like coronation. Yeah, where to have your own crown or something made for you. Yeah, and you've heard the term heavy ways to crown. They can be super heavy. King William the Force coronation crown with seven pounds. That's heavy crown. That is heavy. King George the Fifth had a two pound crown with six thousand diamonds. But Queen Victoria it was like that stuff. I want a little light crown because that's obnoxious and it hurts my head. I was trying to find. I have this idea that um crowns were originally fashioned to um represent a halo. So I don't know, I'm making it up. Oh gotcha, but it sounds right because remember, like forever, monarchs has been like remember I'm holy um. And the closest I could find is that in pre Christian Rome. There was a cult, a sun cult that I think a lot of the Roman emperors were members of, and they would wear crowns that look like the Statue of Liberties crown, which emulated rays of sunlight. Ah, so that's what those early crowns are based on. I like your theory. I'm going with it. Statue of Liberty is a member of a Roman sun cult. Well, no, I like the about the halo. I'm just gonna start telling people it's true. I think. Yeah, tell him Josh you, Yeah, tell him Josh sent you. Yeah that I got nothing else? All right, Well, if you want to learn more about royals, you can type that word into the search part at how stuff works dot com and it will bring up this excellent article by Ed Grabmanowski. Yeah, the grab Store. Uh. And since I said grab Banowski, it's time for listener. Now, I'm gonna call this random number generation. We did our show on number stations and random number number generation is a key to the number station. This is from Aaron in Toronto, Ontario, Okay, Canada. Hey guys, just listen to your recent podcast and number stations. It was fascinating. Had no idea what these words till you described them, gave an example. Then I suddenly remembered scanning through the frequencies on my little shortwave radio. I'm picking up some of those trainsmissions. Never really thought about what they were and what they meant at the time. I was too caught up in thinking about where they were broadcasting from. Since of vice has always had an accent, I wanted to add a small detail about computers generating random numbers. Modern computers are indeed capable of generating truly random numbers, but often the random data is generated too slowly to be of great use. So what they do is UH use some true random data to see the high quality pseudo random generator algorithm which can generate random numbers as quickly as needed. But doesn't that make it less than random? I don't know. It seems like every so often the algorithm is receded from the true random source to keep the sequences more random. While what you said is not wrong, it was missing a bit of detail that those of us who enjoy the nitty gritty details don't want to be overlooked. Smiley face, Thanks for a great podcast. My wife and I often listen to pass the time on our two hour road trip to and from the cottage. Well, Aaron, good for you for having a cottage. And I said, you're coming to see us in Toronto for our lives. He's like, I didn't even know. How do you not know? And then he bought tickets and I think he's gonna come. Awesome. Yeah, I'm very excited. Is it gonna be fun shows. If you want to get in touch with Chuck and I, you can tweet to us at s y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know. You can send us an email to stuff Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com, and as always, joined us at our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Hey, everybody. Mr Chuck Bryant here, Charles w. That is, if you want to know how royalty works, we can sort of explain that. This is from Jeez about six years ago, from September eleven. We talk all about royalty and probably get about right. Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w. W W, Chuck Bryant and Jerry. What's your problem? This is should know? My problem is I got an eye twitch. Yeah, it's a little weird. Okay, you can see it. Who can't? My left eyes is going crazy? All right, it's I think stabilized. Yeah it seems too. Yeah. Mitosis kicking in. You're what mitosis? What kind of toasts you got? Uh? Tosis is when you have a droopy eyelid. You know I told you about that recently. You're like, you do see that left eyelet is is more exposed. It's like a forest Whittaker. I know what you're saying. I see that. Like if I compare it to the other eyelid, I can see more of your left eyelid, but it doesn't appear droopy. I think that's the right term for it. Tosis no droopy No, well it's tosas is a droopy eelid, and I have it. I think it's a toasta highlid. That's what you got, man. I was diagnosed and it's uh apparently going to get worse. So who is it? Forest Whittaker? Who else? I think Tom York of Radiohead, Oh yeah, you're company. And I think Paris Hilton has tosis. Oh yes she does, and me the four It's worse when I'm sleepy or if I drunk. Yeah, I could see that, but I'm never either one of those. So so you're always fine. Yeah. I don't know why, stroop. Are you drunk right now? That's good? Should not be drunk while we do these? Chuck, it's too important, that's right. So I've got an actual infro for this, oh man, like the old days in my head. It could be up to like twenty minutes long. So just sit back and around perfect um, So chuck up. Until about nine years ago, all humans walked around and gathered food and followed herds of animals which they hunted and killed and eight and on any given day, you eight what you gathered and then you just kind of moved along to the next spot. That was typically the way things were done. They were called hunter gatherer societies. Then, during what's called the Neolithic Revolution, people started selecting plants in their area and realizing that they could replant the seeds from those plants, and all of a sudden you had agriculture, which is made things very stable, very stable, more stable tie people to the land. But it also gave rise to something that hadn't been around before, which was surplus. Because if you're a hunter gatherer and all of your buddies and family and friends or hunter gatherers, and you're all just hunting and gathering just enough to sustain you for that day, then there's no such thing as surplus. That means everybody's pretty much equal. Maybe one guy takes mushrooms more than the rest of you, so he's your religious leader or something like that, but for the most part, everybody's roughly equal. Now that there's a surplus, say somebody has a particularly good bounty on the year where everybody else in the area has a bad bounty. That person is in what's called the position of power. Yeah, they have an advantage, Yes, they do that happens a few times to the same people. And if they are clever enough to consolidate that power and have more and more kids in a larger and larger kin group, at which they would if they're more powerful, you know they're gonna have more kids, then they conform what you would recognize today as a dynasty. And then over time these people would say, you know what, this is my birthright to rule you guys, to be rich. I'm going to just say that I'm connected to the Sun, which is our god that we worship, So by proxy, I'm the Sun, God's ruler here on earth, which means I'm in charge of you. And while you're at it, give me some of your surplus, and all of a sudden, now you have a king a kingdom. And this happened roughly all around the world, independently, but following almost the exact same course. You've got agriculture, you have surplus. You have certain people consolidating power, rising to power, associating themselves with gods to um to make their power that much more stable and unchallenged, and then you have kingdoms. That's what happened. Boom. Over time, these kingdoms did more and more crazy stuff, but they all they all followed roughly the same thing. Yeah. And if you're out in the middle of a desert, you don't have a lot of options to go other places, so that helps along the king, Yeah, because you don't have any choice. Or if you're in Peru there's a big mountain range there, kind of stuck. Yeah, because you still need you know, your potatoes, you still need your grain. Um. And if you can't move very easily, if you're getting resources from being a member of a community, then that explains why you, as this normal, independent minded person, might go along with some guy saying he's a descendant of the Sun God and you have to give him half of your grain for no good reason. Yeah. Or if you're in the Amazon where it's you're not surrounded by desert or mountains and you can say, screw this guy, I'm out of here, then you may be a little slower to have something like a king, yeah, or maybe not at all. And so all this whole mentality, this whole process took place independently, like I said, the world around and also everybody seemed to have come to the same idea that you need to export this stuff. The more power or the more land and there therefore the more um crops or whatever you can get under your power, more powerful you are. And the way to get that is to get a bunch of guys who are sick of farming and like to mess around with spears, to go conquer some other cities and make those people give you half of their grain. Then you become even more powerful, so you export this kind of um mentality of being ruled by a single person who's getting fat off of taxing everybody else. And still today we have virtually all of these same processes just in a different guys. Yeah, and we should give credit to uh, Simon Powers, because we didn't just make all that stuff up. No, as the Simon Powers, the researcher or the writer, he is really uh an author of the study that um kind of looked at that theory that we've been talking about and made a model that UM, I don't know if it proved it, but made it seem pretty likely. Yeah, why how despots arose during the Neolithic Revolution. Yeah, so way to go, Simon Powers. And if you're interested in that kind of thing, also go back and read Dr Jared Diamond's The Worst Mistake in the History of the human race, which talks a lot about this transition and basically argues that we were all better off as hunter gatherers. Yeah, Dustin Diamond wrote the same article and it was the answer was saved by the Belle the worst mistake in the human race. Hey, that's a good show. Um, alright, all the wrong way. You're right. So in this article how royalty works, like, we're going to kind of default to England. Yeah, here and there for the most part, I'm sorry, great Britain. Well, we're gonna explain all that stuff finally and for all, because that's, you know, that's what we were exposed to. That's the kind of the Western English speaking standard, the British monarchy. But you can kind of substitute in a lot of ways. This this um a lot of the way that it developed for just about anywhere in the world. Because again, the idea of hierarchies, of class, of social stratification and then some group of people being at the absolute pinnacle is extraordinarily ancient. Yeah, and it all comes down to land and owning land. Since people have tried the earth, the most powerful ones are the people that owned more of it than their neighbor. Yeah, but not scessarily tried the earth. I mean we're talking just in the last ten thousand years. And even after that, the English didn't create them this idea that you could take land and say this is my land. Now you used to farm it, but you can still farm it, but you owe me because this is my land and I'm letting you farm on it. Yeah. And after everybody was like, wait what, and you say, oh, I forgot to tell you. If you don't do this, I'm gonna kill you in your entire family. So do it. And they created what's known as the feudal system. Yeah, let's get in our our way back machine. Awesome, let's pull the cover off this bad boy and let's go back to oh like anywhere between the ninth and fifteenth century. Let's do it because it doesn't matter. It's all about the same. That's not true, but it's similar, uh to the feudal systems of medieval Europe. Um. Basically what went on was there were very few people that owned a lot of the land, um a lot of territory. But they basically looked around at one point and says, you know what, I have too much stuff to govern on my own. So I'm gonna divide it up and I'm gonna let other people use it. And I call them vassals. And you're my vassel. You're gonna go out and you're gonna manage that territory for me, going to collect some taxes, you can keep some of that. You can farm and keep some of that. Well, they didn't farm, They had people farming for them. Well, sure, so it's like a hierarchy habit farmed. Like you can imagine all of England is being owned by the king and then you divide it up, and then those people further divided it up. Yeah, because the vassal could divide their's up. And for sub sub vessels, I guess serfs, Yeah, I guess so either they're called um And you know, you guys, how about raising some armies for me? Um, You're all gonna be beholden to me, but I'm gonna let you keep a lot of the dough, um, as long as you still give me something. Yeah. And and prior to this, chuck like, this is kind of a sweet deal. And the way that you ended up in vassal is you had an army that could conceivably challenge this guy who said I'm a king of England and everybody and um, everyone said where and he's like here this, this is England now, and I'm the king. Uh. And so if you had an army that he could probably defeat with his army, but could still like pose a problem. He turned you onto his side, sure, and said, well, wait before you say anything, I'm going to give you. Let you handle some of this land, like you said, and you can get these people who are farming the land to give you some of their grain. You give some to me, but you keep some yourself. Yeah, you'll be like a smaller version of me. Yeah, and we'll will be more powerful together exactly. And that's how this hierarchy, at least in under the feudal system began, that's right. And these vassals, they had rules of succession a lot like inheritance. Um, you could pass your your land onto your children and then they would be a vassal. Yeah. You also passed your obligation to the king onto the children too. It wasn't just the sweet life. Oh no, no no, no, they could you could never. You are always beholden as long as you maintain that land, um, and it was the same in other parts of the world. Japan had the imperial system that was similar to the European monarchies, and Japan's actually their monarchy is the oldest in the world. Did you know that? Yes? I did. The Japanese imperial family traces their lineage back to the sixth century b c e. That's crazy, although they are purely ceremonial at this point right well, yeah, but they were the exact opposite of just purely ceremonial up until and uh g I Joe came in and like said, you guys aren't divine deities any longer, which is what everybody considered them up until and check out my kunk fu grip. Uh. So everything was going along well until about the seventeenth century when republicanism began to uh kind of just chip away at the royals and the power that they held throughout Europe, and democracy starts to form, and sometimes it happens gradually and kind of nicely. Sometimes it happens via revolution, like in France, and uh sometimes when they would kick out the monarchy, they would come back um with a vengeance, like after the English Civil War between the Roundheads and the cavaliers. Um, we had King Charles executed, his heir, Charles two was exiled to France. Parliament gained a lot of control, but they would later come back of course. Charles the second, well, just the monarchy period, yeah, but after that the monarchy just was never the same now, although maybe under like Elizabeth, she was pretty powerful. Yeah, but I think, um, Parliament had gained a lot of control. Yeah, everybody after that point had to deal with Parliament before anybody had. Under Charles the first, the same stuff was going on in the Middle East. Um, it was a little different though because religion was so much more a part of uh, their their monarch's um they had was it called a caliph? Yeah, was was the head? Uh? I guess that would be the king, Yeah, I guess so if you had if you compared it to like the English model, the caliph would be the head, the king of England, and then beneath them would be sultans, which would be like vassals, which are powerful kings, but they they are not the religious leader. So you got the caliph and the sultans. Yeah, and sultans were like military commanders but not priests, right, but they were involved. Everything was all tied into religion still is of course. Yeah. And then if you look at the Middle East model UM, you know, very early on, like like look at Egypt, all of the Egyptian UM rulers were considered deities up until America said no, no, no. The Imperial King, the Emperor of Japan was considered a deity of the Shinto religion like a god um In in the Middle East, the caliph is a religious figure. In uh, the Holy Roman Empire, the king's ruled along with the pope. So there's always been this real um marriage, either in the form of one person or in the form of like some sort of allegiance between the holy ruler and the political ruler, because they the religious aspect of it gives um credibility to the rule of the the political ruler, and like like even in England they went so far as to come up with the Divine Right of Kings, which said, the king is God's emissary here on planet Earth, and the king is therefore infallible. Nobody can get rid of the king. But exactly, but I mean it ended up been going on for millennia since before then. But that was like they just put it down into text like, yeah, that's that's the way it is. Unfortunately for the king, that meant that the only way to get be gotten rid of was to be murdered. Yeah, but they figured it will be a pretty wild ride until then. Yeah, I mean that's one of the risks when you're the king. Uh So now you have you have royalty, you have this class system. Royalty is actually transcends class because uh, it's it's the bloodline like a noble. That's the differencetween nobility and royalty is nobility. The nobles didn't have the bloodline going. Yeah, it depends on the country that you're in. So like in some countries, there are more than one royal family, right, yeah, different houses, but just one of them holds the throne at a time. Yeah, just one of them has uh the ability to be the heir to the throne um. So in other countries, it's like there's one group of royals and they're the only royals, and everybody, no matter how powerful, no matter their noble title, they're still technically commoners exactly. They're they're almost always wealthy, even though technically wealth doesn't have anything to do with it because it's about your bloodline. But if you're if you're in the monarchy, you're going to be wealthy. And in some cases also they're considered an actual part of their country. Yeah, they're that much ingrained into the national fabric. So we said that, Um, in some countries there can be more than one royal family and um, this kind of comes into play when there's not a clear line of succession. Yeah, things can get a little messy when the king dies. So like if you have, um, what's called an agnatic succession, that that means that the oldest male heir inherits the throne. Yeah, and actually agnatic, uh, it means your brother takes over and not your son. Okay, So it's patrilineal. It's it's on the father's side, but instead of giving the throne to your child, like your firstborn son, it goes to your your little bro okay, your oldest little pro Okay, got youa um. And then in in other lines, it can be the oldest heir, right, that's right, whether it's male or female, like how Queen Elizabeth is the queen Now, yeah, you can be a female heir Britain of course, so all of these people are all related. They're part of the royal family. They're either a sibling, a child, a grandchild, even a cousin. But there's still a member of that family, which is also known as the house. In a country where there's more than one royal house and there's a dispute or a problem with the succession the normal succession rights, then you can have a challenge to the throne by another royal house. Yeah, or it's just simply elected by a committee of nobles. Maybe who that next king is going to be? Yeah, Or if there's not a very clear line, they can say, you know what, it's it's no man's land here, and whoever ends up with the crown may not even be a part of the bloodline. Maybe they just had the best military or the most money, right, And that's I mean, that's how original houses were set up. Yeah, I mean the only difference between that situation happening now and someone else's house, like taking control of the throne, is they just descended to royalty, you know, millennia ago, rather than right now. Yeah, all right. Titles, it's all about the title. The very top of the chessboard. You're gonna have your king and queen or an emperor empress, depending on if that's the kind of game you play in your country or your empire. Uh, then the elatives are the king and queen. Um. It really depends on the country in the monarchy. A lot of times their princes and princesses can be your children, your grandchildren, could be your brothers, could be your cousins. Um. It just kind of varies depending on what country you're in. And those titles are called peerages, and there's hereditary peerages, and then there's life peerages. That's right, and um. The peerages, as at least in uh in European royalty, go in from an order of importance and from the lowest number to the most number duke, marquess or marquis, earl, viscount and baron. So the barons are at least powerful, but there's the most of them, is it viscount. I've been saying viscount my whole life. Viscount. It's all right, man, everybody says viscount. Um. And then the dukes are the most powerful, but there's the fewest of them. And so if you have an hereditary peerage, you inherited that at some point in time, some king or queen said, you are now the Duke of blah blah bah, and you're noble, but you are not royal, right exactly, so um, the although you can be royal like I believe Prince Charles is the Duke of Windsor, you know, yeah that man, it gets confusing. It definitely does get confusing. It gets even more confusing because when Prince Charles becomes King Charles, the Duke of Windsor will vanish. That title will vanish because he became king, which he'd much rather be king than Duke of Windsor, you know what I mean. Yeah, And that's called being absorbed into the crown by the crown. The title can also just be left, like if there's no air. You can also take it and give it to another family, although I think that that probably is subject to being approved by the queen or the king. Um. And then there's a whole other cattle of fish called life peerages, which basically says you are now a baron or baroness while you're alive, right, And and then your kids will still receive some sort of honor. They won't receive the title, but they can call themselves the honorable, which suggests that their parents had a life peerage, but that that it wasn't a hereditary title, so the kids don't inherit it. Yeah. And to add further confusion, a prince isn't always the male child of the king. Sometimes that is the king, um, sometimes it's just a noble. When Britain ruled India, they made a very clear distinction that, um, your rulers and your provinces in India, um are going to be called princes, just so it's clear you're not going to call yourself a king, which is bs because India already had its own monarchy system, um, but now they were all downgraded by the British. Yeah. Um. We should also say that if you receive a peerage of any sort it you are automatically a member of the House of Lords, which is the upper chamber of British Parliament. Um. And so it's part of them the duty of the Queen to appoint these things, to appoint these peerages, but in these modern times she wants to kind of appoint them along party lines to make sure they're an appropriate representation of everybody in the House of Lords. Yeah. And you also get season tickets to uh men you games? Do you know? I don't think so, I'll bet you do. Uh. All right, So I guess we can move on to the functions of these royals, because it really has varied throughout the years and depending on which country, whether or not your ceremonial figurehead or you're actually have real duties. Um, and I guess it's well, let's just start with England. Okay, So with England? Do you want to read her her Majesty's full title? Should we get into this now? I think we should, all right, because boy, we have botched this over the years with saying Britain and England and Great Britain and the UK. We're gonna set the record straight here today because technically calling q E two, we know her, we love her, calling her the Queen of England is not correct now and it's pretty disrespectful to some people. It is. And we're gonna explain this right now, follow along with our little history lesson and a man, I hope we get this right. Where did you find this? By the way, Oh I found it on the internet. I can't remember where it's all over. There's many different versions, but um, here we got seven. You have King James the sixth. He ascended to the throne of Scotland after Mom, who was married Queen of Scott's, advocated the throne. At the same time, you have Elizabeth one, daughter of Henry the eighth. She was a Queen of England and she was Mary, Queen of Scott's, first cousin. Once removed. Go forward a little bit to sixteen oh three, Elizabeth one dies. Then James was King James one of England and King James six of Scotland at the same time. Just making sense. They have united the crowns of England and Scotland. Even though they were separate kingdoms. They had separate parliaments, separate institutions. It is a crown united with England and Scotland. Now we have the birth of Great Britain that was in seven Yeah, and man, everyone in the UK right now, it's just saying like following along so closely, waiting first to mess up. So after the union of the crowns of England Scotland, it was a rough time. There were different monarchs, there were a lot of wars. Eventually the wars ended uh in sixteen sixty the monarchy rose restored, and in seventeen o two Queen Anne became Queen of England, Queen of Scotland and Queen of Ireland. It's very confusing where well, Scotland was still independent, they still had their own parliament, their own legal system. Uh. In seventeen o seven, during Queen as Queen Anne's reign, the English and Scottish parliaments passed separate Acts of Union, and on May first, seventeen o seven, the kingdoms of England and Scotland ceased to exist and were replaced by the Kingdom of Great Britain. So now Anne as the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland. Okay. So that means that while Anne was Queen, she was the last Queen of England. Yes. And then after these acts were passed in seventeen o seven, she automatically became the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland. That's right. Since seventeen o seven it has been incorrect to call anyone the king or Queen of England. Yes. Stories not over yet gets more complicated. The next century, Ireland was separate, separate kingdom. It gained its own parliament and then eight hundred that all changed when Irish and British parliaments passed separate Acts of Union, creating the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland one country eighteen o one. So it was three separate kingdoms prior to seventeen o seven. Now one kingdom ruled from London. The active Union passed an eighteen hundred and it's still in force today, although there's been amendments of course along the way. Then George the Third at that time was the King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. It's even more confusing because Ireland had their problems. Nineteen twenty two, they partitioned off what was the Irish Free State and then eventually the Republic of Ireland was created. In the nineteen twenty seven the name was changed to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland UH and at that same time United Kingdom was removed from the title King. George the Fifth, the king at the time, became King of Great Britain and Ireland. Eventually, in nineteen fifty three, we arrived at Her Majesty Elizabeth the Second, by the grace of God, the Kingdom of Right Britain, in Northern Ireland and of her other realms and territories, Queen Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the faith man. So she's not the Queen of England, Nope, not. You don't hear England in that title. And then you know she also has titles in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Jamaica. Yes, she's the Queen of Canada. I didn't know all that stuff. The Queen of Australia, yeah, And they're not the Queen, not the Queen of England, no man. She's the Queen of the United Kingdom, of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. But the reason why she is the um the Queen of England and the Queen of Australia is because there was a treaty in agreement amongst these other countries and Great Britain that basically said, you guys can go off on your own, but keep the queen, will you. And she's not the Queen of like you guys aren't part of this territory, but keep her as your queen. So she is, in addition to the Queen of Great Britain and Northern Ireland separately, the Queen of Canada and the Queen of Australia, but she assigns a governor to like do all the work, right, and so she's strictly a figurehead there. And the reason why she's strictly a figurehead there is because in practice she's supposed to approve all treaties and and all sorts of powerful legislation, but her her agent never opposes the Parliament of Canada or Australia. Yeah. Man, it's super confusing, but she's still the Queen of Canada and the Queen of Australia. Back in the day, it was a lot easier because the monarchs had absolute power, well not absolute power, well remember the Pope could get them or they could be subject to train aside. Yeah, and basically they they had the last word, but they had all these other people that were advising them. And you don't want to make enemies of the people that are taking care of your land and making you money and raising their own private armies, because that's where the taraniside can come in exactly. So you want to pretty much kind of keep things copacetic as much as possible, or you're gonna have the English Civil War yes, if you're smart and not an inbred dingbat, you know, because there are plenty of kings that ruled like complete nuts jobs. And then those nobles too that we talked about, um, that weren't royal but noble. They also formalized and the dukes and bishops started evolving eventually into what became the House of Lords, which is the upper house of British Parliament. And even today the House of Lords is still made up of several dozen of those hereditary nobles and a lot of life peers that are appointed by the Queen. And that's when you were talking about with you know, she has to sort of balance it out politically with these peerage appointments. And she still plays an enormously ceremonial role in England. You know, she's a huge tourism draw. She's the head of state, all that jazz. Yeah. Um. But and in other countries the monarchies are are even more ceremonial, like in Japan, the Imperial family UM the heir to the um the emperorship. Sure, his name is Prince he Saihido, and he recently got his um ceremonial age six haircut really and more pants for the first time. There's like apparently if you're from the outside, you're like, what are these people doing? But this is like these are traditions that are steeped back again to the sixth century BC for this lineage, um, but they are strictly ceremonial as a result of World War two treaties, it's the same lineage. Yeah, yeah, remarkable, but then and supposedly they're no longer deities. But if you're a Shinto in Japan, you like view the emperor as the highest apex of your religion and of you know, the monarchy is why wow uh sometimes you it's it's not ceremonial at all. Like in Jordan's they're a constitutional monarchy, and the king of Jordan's um in this article they equated to the US president. So they have appointments, appoint judges, they sign laws, um. But they can be overruled by the National Assembly. But they actually have a job to do. In Jordan, it's good, good for them. Although it might be nice just to be purely ceremonial. I bet that's a that's a cushy life right there. I bet it wouldn't be very nice for whatever transitional monarch lost power and now has to just do whatever Parliament says. But yeah, I'm sure if you're like Harry, he's having fun. Yeah, you bet he is. Some of them, some royals are famous for not letting all of this go to their head. Like apparently Scandinavian royals are called bicycle monarchs. Just regular folks. Yeah, they ride bikes. Yeah, I don't know about it's like everybody. Yeah, they're not even expensive bikes, not bit. They're pretty nice. But when you think royals typically you think like Sultan of Brunei or um King of Monico and Princess Grace Kelly and just incredible wealth for the British monarchs. Again, that's a good will to go back to for this one too. Yeah, let's go over a couple of these things, because life is pretty good at Buckingham Palace two hundred forty bedrooms in London, four hundred servants, not bad. That seems excessive windsor q E two's family retreat eight thrones, eight thrones among six d and fifty rooms, not bad, but you mentioned it's a pretty good ratio. Brunei. Uh. That is where things get really crazy. That is the world's largest palace um almost eighteen hundred rooms and they have a throne room tiled and solid gold and chandeliers that cost twelve million dollars. Wow. They must be royal in the Britannia, which um, I don't think they use anymore. I wonder why not the royal yacht? Did they retire it because it was wasteful? Do you know? No? I don't know. Someone will tell us. I know that Jimmy Carter sold the presidential yacht because he thought it was wasteful and excessive? Did he really? Did he sell it to private company? Really? That's kind of cool? Um? And then the I guess we should talk about pretenders to the throne. Yeah, that's an important thing. Um. That is not someone pretending um to be king, although sometimes it's a case. But a pretender is someone who uh doesn't hold the crown but lays claim to it. They're saying like, hey, that person is an illegitimate king. I should be king, but I'm really just a sad pretender. That that happens sometimes when like a monarchy is deposed. Okay, it doesn't necessarily mean that there's somebody who's holding the throne, although it can it can like there can be no throne anymore. And this whatever family was in charge when the monarchy was deposed is still keeping track of all this stuff in case they can never go back. And whoever is the king in that secession is the pretender to the throne. Okay, I got you. That's the other way it can happen, all right. Right for this break, we're gonna talk a little bit more about what life is like if you are a royal m m all right. So we talked about some of the opulence, uh of the royals and how they love to to show off their wealth and stick your nose in it. You're a commoner. Um. These days, children, if you're a royal child, you have all the best education. But that wasn't always a case. They used to be big dummies for the most part. Like they didn't even want them to go to school or to learn military tech dicks because they wanted them to just sit around and eat you know, turkey turkey legs all day, don't even worry about the book learning. Right, So you gotta had a bunch of dumb royals back in the day, dumb monarchies. Yeah again, um, Prince he Sahito is the first in the Japanese Imperial family to go to an elementary school rather than the specific school designed just for the youngest kids of the royal family, like a school of three people, yeah, or one at the time. Yeah, that's private tutelage, right, yeah, I guess so, yeah, but they call it a school if you're really young, like sometimes you'll be a king and you're just a little baby or like a like you said, like a little little toddler. You're gonna be assisted by people called regents, and they are going to be running the show for the most part until the king or queen can come of age. So chuck, here's the thing, um there. People often take potshots at royal saying that they're genetically unsound. It is true, apparently, um. Pretty much around the world, royal families are fairly well in bred. It's because of power consolidation over millennia, and so even if you had let's say two or three royal families in a country that were considered royal, but only one was in line for the throne at the time, they might want to kind of keep it amongst themselves. So even though they're intermarrying between the families. It's still just basically like intermarrying between three families. Yeah, and it's to keep the bloodline pure, which has always struck me as odd because it's uh results in some uh you know, disease and genetic defects pretty much. Yeah, and and um like, apparently that's where hemophilia came from. Yeah, and that was a gift courtesy of Queen Victoria. Apparently. The reason why this happens is you can't just say it's inbreeding. It's when you have a narrower, shallow gene pool that you're pulling from, the possibility of recessive genes appearing is increased. So if you have two people who have both have a copy of a recessive gene, that genes going to become dominant and come to the forefront, and so a lot of stuff that normally wouldn't pop up in a person when you just are inter mingling in a normal sized gene pool, you're gonna have a lot of problems because these people all share the same genes roughly, and so recessive genes are popping up in pairs. That's right, that's a big problem actually. Yeah, and a lot of royals throughout the years, and a lot of different countries have been um have been mad. Yeah, you found an article on some mad ones since Yeah, I picked out a few of these. Um, King Georgia third, he was probably the most famous. Um. The movie Madness of King George is in my top one by the way. Oh yeah, great, great movie. So I was listening to is it Keneth Durant who does uh MPR movie reviews? I think? So? He did this awesome like essay on on sequels and now there's an art to naming a sequel, And he was saying that the stage play originally was the Madness of George the Third, but when they turned it into a movie in America, they decided they need to rename it because they didn't want American filmgoers to think that this was the Madness of George three than that missed the first two. So yeah, wow it's not interesting. Yeah, dumb Americans. Yeah, Madness of King George. Uh he had all kinds of wacky behavior. Um, supposedly attempting to shake hands with a tree because he thought it was a King of Prussia. Didn't that sound like something Mr Burns would do? Yeah, totally Uh these days Um, you know, they tried and diagnose all the people now with what they think they might have had. And they believe he might have had schizophrenia, or maybe he was bipolar, or maybe he had this blood disorder called poor porphyria and that is hereditary and um, it can mimic madness. And then you have Christian the seventh of Denmark from seventeen eight seven to eighteen o eight. He um had these wild mood swings, hallucinations, paranoia, self mutilation. Um, he may have been schizophrenic and also may have suffered from porphyria or porphyria. So that was another one. And then more recently Farouk of Egypt. This one is my favorite. In ninety six, Like you can find pictures of this guy, which is kind of fun. Well, yeah, he was around in nineteen thirty six. He loved his sports cars so much so he loved his red sports cars. They he decreed no one else was allowed to have a red car in all of Egypt. Yeah, and he would apparently shoot out the tires of people that passed him on the road. And they think that he had misophobia, which was a fear of contamination, so he would search for germs and little imaginary bits of dirt and um. It was also reportedly a kleptomaniac who may or may not have stolen Winston Churchill's watch. So he was a little wacky. Two I'd lied, Chuck. That guy was tied for first from my favorite king Charles the sixth of France. Melissa's deal. Dude, he was. He was pretty out of it. He um apparently got very paranoid that people were after him, so he murdered some of his own nights and he uh man, I thought that he was made of glass and had clothes made for him, special clothes. He wouldn't allow to anyone to touch him um because he thought that he would shatter. Actually, apparently he would forget he was king. He didn't recognize his family. They're not exactly sure what it is like all these guys. They diagnose the schizophrenia, bipolar, right right. I think the most um, the most exact one was missophobia for Farouk. Yeah, but the rest of them is how do you diagnose somebody like that? Now? You can't like hundreds of years later. It's tough. But there have been some wacky mad rulers. There have some monarchs. You got anything else? Yeah, this one last bit about crowns. I learned this. I thought there was one crown that was like, if you're the king or the queen, you've got your one single crown. Yeah, that's what I thought too, but that isn't true. Apparently they have different crowns worn by their ancestors, and they even create their own for special events like coronation. Yeah, where to have your own crown or something made for you. Yeah, and you've heard the term heavy ways to crown. They can be super heavy. King William the Force coronation crown with seven pounds. That's heavy crown. That is heavy. King George the Fifth had a two pound crown with six thousand diamonds. But Queen Victoria it was like that stuff. I want a little light crown because that's obnoxious and it hurts my head. I was trying to find. I have this idea that um crowns were originally fashioned to um represent a halo. So I don't know, I'm making it up. Oh gotcha, but it sounds right because remember, like forever, monarchs has been like remember I'm holy um. And the closest I could find is that in pre Christian Rome. There was a cult, a sun cult that I think a lot of the Roman emperors were members of, and they would wear crowns that look like the Statue of Liberties crown, which emulated rays of sunlight. Ah, so that's what those early crowns are based on. I like your theory. I'm going with it. Statue of Liberty is a member of a Roman sun cult. Well, no, I like the about the halo. I'm just gonna start telling people it's true. I think. Yeah, tell him Josh you, Yeah, tell him Josh sent you. Yeah that I got nothing else? All right, Well, if you want to learn more about royals, you can type that word into the search part at how stuff works dot com and it will bring up this excellent article by Ed Grabmanowski. Yeah, the grab Store. Uh. And since I said grab Banowski, it's time for listener. Now, I'm gonna call this random number generation. We did our show on number stations and random number number generation is a key to the number station. This is from Aaron in Toronto, Ontario, Okay, Canada. Hey guys, just listen to your recent podcast and number stations. It was fascinating. Had no idea what these words till you described them, gave an example. Then I suddenly remembered scanning through the frequencies on my little shortwave radio. I'm picking up some of those trainsmissions. Never really thought about what they were and what they meant at the time. I was too caught up in thinking about where they were broadcasting from. Since of vice has always had an accent, I wanted to add a small detail about computers generating random numbers. Modern computers are indeed capable of generating truly random numbers, but often the random data is generated too slowly to be of great use. So what they do is UH use some true random data to see the high quality pseudo random generator algorithm which can generate random numbers as quickly as needed. But doesn't that make it less than random? I don't know. It seems like every so often the algorithm is receded from the true random source to keep the sequences more random. While what you said is not wrong, it was missing a bit of detail that those of us who enjoy the nitty gritty details don't want to be overlooked. Smiley face, Thanks for a great podcast. My wife and I often listen to pass the time on our two hour road trip to and from the cottage. Well, Aaron, good for you for having a cottage. And I said, you're coming to see us in Toronto for our lives. He's like, I didn't even know. How do you not know? And then he bought tickets and I think he's gonna come. Awesome. Yeah, I'm very excited. Is it gonna be fun shows. If you want to get in touch with Chuck and I, you can tweet to us at s y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know. You can send us an email to stuff Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com, and as always, joined us at our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.