RoyaltyMonarchy.com at 20

 

Today is the 20th birthday of my website!

It was on September 29, 2000, shortly after beginning graduate school at Juilliard, that I signed up with Angelfire, beginning with a number of royal charts and lists I'd already compiled. Originally the URL was awkwardly long and my pages carried unrelated ads; I purchased my unique domain in 2004. The style hasn't changed much in 20 years; I've never been an artsy web design person and it retains something of a "primitive" late 20th century feel, though there's a lot more content, including color images, now than there was. I launched my forum in 2006 and this blog in 2008, both still available from the main page. While in recent years I've devoted more monarchist energy to social media, I still keep it updated as best I can, having maintained it from addresses in New York, Miami Beach, Charlotte, and Dallas, and all over the world when traveling. I've always enjoyed hearing from visitors who appreciated the site, some of whom are now friends. 

 

(I learned while typing this that the Emir of Kuwait has died, so that will be my next update.)

 

Both the world of royalty and the world in general have changed considerably since September 2000; when I started my website from the Juilliard dorm computer lab, the World Trade Center towers were still standing a few miles south of me, five of Europe's ten current hereditary monarchies had different sovereigns than they do today (two of whom are now deceased), Nepal still had its monarchy under King Birendra, and luminaries like Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, who linked the age of the internet to the Victorian era, were still alive. I like to think that for those who care about its subject matter I've provided a little corner of constancy in an often bewildering world.