Tea and Vitriol

Rasputin, the "Mad Monk," needs no introduction to anyone with even cursory knowledge of the end of Imperial Russia. The excremental taint of his relationship with Tsar Nicholas II and his hysterical wife Alexandra enveloped the autocratic regime and ultimately was one of the factors behind the collapse of Nicholas II's government, the two Russian Revolutions of 1917 and the death of the Imperial Family in a blood-spattered cellar in June of 1918. Among many of the pronouncements and prophecies of this "Holy Man" was one that concerned the United Kingdom. The monarchy would survive there, he said, until a Battenberg would sit on the English throne. As of September 2022, a Battenberg has been sitting upon the English throne in the person of King Charles III. And his reign is in deep shit! King Charles's paternal grandmother was none other than Princess Alice of Battenberg. Her son, Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, adopted an anglicized version of Battenbe...

Two hundred and fifty years ago, Americans rejected the British Monarchy, which is why I can't understand the American news media wasting so much time on the antics of one of the monarchy's errant members, Prince Harry, and his American-born wife, mattress actress (Rachel) Meghan Markle. The concept of monarchy and aristocracy is based on social inequality, of superior and inferior classes. The accident of birth determines the status of people born into such a system. And since such royal and aristocratic families considered themselves to be closed clubs to keep their blood pure, extensive intermarriage between cousins, uncles and nieces, and aunts and nephews were not unheard of. In fact, they were downright common. So common that the resultant mental problems and physical deformities that resulted from such inbreeding were merely considered to be the price one paid for having such pure royal or aristocratic blood, and didn't prevent the unfortunate offspring from such uni...