We have been enjoying the BBC production of Victoria. At the same time, I am mystified by Americans’ obsession with royalty.

The radical Chartist Movement is featured in the current Victoria series. It is well to appreciate that what these people asked for should not sound radical to Americans. They were asking for what seems perfectly rational and reasonable today. They asked for rights we should take for granted. That anyone would dispute these demands sounds about as outdated and absurd as arguing whether women have souls. (Yes, this happened repeatedly, and even in America.)

The Chartists’ six main demands were:
• votes for all men;
• equal electoral districts;
• abolition of the requirement that Members of Parliament be property owners;
• payment for M.P.s;
• annual general elections; and.
• the secret ballot.

It’s all taken for granted today. (Payment for M.P.s would have allowed ordinary working men to run for office without starving. Wealthy men who then held these positions could afford to attend Parliament because they had no job; they were rich.) At that time, rich men had complete control beyond the Crown. This was considered right and proper because they believed a person’s position in society was ordained by God. If you were born a tenant farmer, God meant for you to work hard all your life and to do as you were told. If you were born to an aristrocratic family, you were supposed to be respected, bowed to, and to be the ones doing the telling.

This is not an American value. We’re not supposed to believe that some people matter more than others at birth. The Declaration’s insistence that “all men are created equal” was a radical departure from Old World God-ordained dogma. Americans are not supposed to believe that some people are born inherently more important or privileged  than the rest of us.

And yet, according to a recent headline, America’s favorite redhead is a British prince?

Why do we care?

It is unAmerican.

Is it a harmless fantasy? I refuse to believe that such assumption of inherited entitlement is “harmless.” Indeed this belief undermines the very ideals of every modern democratic society. Yet we cling to this pretty story, especially for girls, this notion that the story of a pretty princess, born to power matters.

The princess stories, even the more empowered princess stories are unAmerican. Why feed this propaganda to our daughters? The “princess” is a woman who, by accident of birth alone, matters more, is valued more, who possesses greater power and influence and personal importance.

Did you miss it?

That’s unAmerican.

Americans are not supposed to stand for such nonsense. We’re not supposed to believe that some people are born to rank and privilege. Our nation is founded on the belief that we are all equal at birth. Our destiny is not infinite, but neither is it defined by our birth. Someone, please, inform Disney.

True, our founders, most of them, even the ones who wrote the words, believed some people mattered more than others, and those founders had been born to superior rank and actively perpetuated their own privilege. But still . . . in theory, they recognized a better world. They recognized ideals beyond their current existence.

And in that better world they imagined, a Queen is merely a wealthy woman, poorly educated, and participating in an archaic system of privilege and posturing. Princes are mere men who have done nothing personally noteworthy other than being born.

And the “princesses” in those stories? However decorated and enlightened, however brave or capable, however dressed or redressed, whatever their race or ethnicity—they are mere girls, never even women, just pretty female children born to rank.

It is a subtle indoctrination. It is propaganda.

And that, my dears, is unAmerican.

It is fundamentally wrong.