[notahacker]

There's a massive difference between signing up for your dream job and being handed a responsibility with the right to abdicate it if you don't mind causing a constitutional crisis and still being stuck with the media obsessing over you.

Technically, I can take drastic action to negate things I received as an accident of birth if I don't mind getting flak for doing it, but it makes no sense at all to claim that on that basis my parents, physical appearance or manhood were all stuff I signed up for of my own free will.

[makeitdouble]

If tomorrow some guy from a small remote and completely obscure island came to you and told you're the last in the royal bloodline and need to reign the SNBXIHWJ people, leave your life and everything you own to come to their survival island and sit on the throne, you'd probably give them the middle finger.

In our current world wealth and royalty is preserved by free will and is nothing comparable to your manhood (which you can also give up if you want to, people do)

[notahacker]

> If tomorrow some guy from a small remote and completely obscure island came to you and told you're the last in the royal bloodline and need to reign the SNBXIHWJ people, leave your life and everything you own to come to their survival island and sit on the throne, you'd probably give them the middle finger.

Sure, I wouldn't necessarily be up for a lifestyle change involving playing Survivor with consonant-loving maniacs I wasn't actually related to and have never heard of before! However the Queen's situation is the exact opposite: she had a life built around being heir to the throne and whilst it was technically possible to give the middle finger to everyone in her life instead of fulfilling the role she'd been assigned at birth, that's a bit different from implying monarchy was the job she wanted or even a net positive.

Odd that a subthread which started with someone praising the late Queen for choosing not to run away from obligations requires so many followups pointing out that she could have run away from them...

> your manhood (which you can also give up if you want to, people do)

Well yeah, that was the point. You can change almost anything you're born with; the ability to give something up [at significant cost, and without necessarily getting a better alternative] clearly isn't remotely sufficient to describe it as something you "signed up for".

[makeitdouble]

> Odd that a subthread which started with someone praising the late Queen for choosing not to run away from obligations requires so many followups pointing out that she could have run away from them...

This goes in pair. You praise someone for the choices they make, it doesn’t make sense if it wasn’t a choice at all in the first place.

I think she was a brilliant and intelligent person, she proved it in so many occasions, and she didn’t become Queen or stayed for so long just because of social pressure and “daddy told me to”. So yes, I’m assuming it was a net positive for her, and that she dedicated her life to something she wanted to do.

Sure there are many shitty parts coming with the throne and the toxicity surrounding the whole royalty system, but I give be the benefit of the doubt on having done the right choices in her life.

[notahacker]

The easiest choice of all would have been to take up the role of monarch but decline to keep her opinions to herself or do stuff she couldn't be bothered with. The talk of her "signing up for it" upthread was all aimed at dismissing the notion that performing the role well was praiseworthy, as if they were responsibilities she'd actively looked for rather than merely been given.