I wonder often, in this supposed royal right kingdom, how people reconcile the lofty ideals of justice and mercy with the notion that the king’s word is law, even though that word be abusive and hurtful.
The first and greatest feature of justice is that it protects the weak against the caprices of the strong. The strong need no further protection. The abuse of power by those in high places is the height of injustice, and has been accounted such in period and out. This is the very injustice that knights, and by extension all peers, pledge in their vows to prevent.
How is it, then, that the Crown is portrayed so often as the victim, whose sensitive rights and prerogatives need constant husbanding. Poor frail flowers. It always seems that the next line of retreat is that restricting the Crown’s rights somehow damages the ‘Dream’, that this is the suspension of disbelief we all must, evidently, maintain to keep playing this game. Yet, when in order to maintain this Dream, real people’s real feelings are hurt or abused, this is somehow discounted as the price of doing business. At least, then, it is more honest of those who say: “if you don’t like what happens, win Crown”. That is, of course, tantamount to saying that the strongest (literally) get to make the rules. That is also unjust, but perhaps not surprising.
If we must err on any side, let us err to prevent the weak from being damaged, not the strong. That is my ‘Dream’. And it isn’t the real world either.
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