Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Czech monarchists march in Prague

Heroically refusing to accept the past 91 years of republicanism as permanent, Czech monarchists recently marched through Prague advocating a restoration of the monarchy. The question of who would be king might appear thorny, since Czechs are probably even less likely to be persuaded to reunite with Austria than to restore the monarchy. However, unless an entirely new dynasty were to be established (perhaps from a Czech aristocratic family with distant royal roots), for the moment there is no obvious candidate other than Otto von Habsburg. Failing a full-blown restoration of the pre-1914 (or, for that matter, pre-1789) status quo, an ideal compromise might be for the present-day countries which made up the Habsburg Empire (principally Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Croatia) to adopt some sort of [British] Commonwealth-like arrangement, retaining separate parliaments and prime ministers while sharing the head of the Habsburg family as head of state, thus restoring the monarchy while retaining their independence. Sadly all this would appear to be quite hypothetical at present, but the Czech monarchists are to be commended for not giving up.

1 comment:

AndrewWS said...

The Habsburgs are wide-ranging tribe, and there are surely enough of them for all their former dominions to have one.

This surely would be the future for Eastern Europe - independent countries linked by bonds of kinship between their monarchs. Beats the ghastly European Union any day.