#abolish the crown

[radicalgraff]

"Fuck the Queen! Abolish the Monarchy"

Seen in Sydney

[creatrixcymraes]

"abolish the crown" is now an A3 print! visit my shop here ✨

[bisexualseraphim]

Anyway regardless of how you feel about the Royals, even if you’re like me and think they’re all parasites, here are some things to remember:

The UK taxpayer is funding Kate’s high-end treatments whilst millions of citizens are on years-long NHS waiting lists for their own treatments and waiting hours upon hours to be seen in A&E when they’ve had a severe incident; so much money that could be going towards funding the NHS properly is instead going to the Royals. Kate is very likely going to be perfectly fine. Millions of regular tax-paying UK citizens will not.

HOWEVER. Kate isn’t going to see your memes making fun of her on tumblr dot com — but other people whom have suffered because of cancer will. If common decency won’t stop you from posting crab rave GIFs celebrating the illness of a mother to three young children, hopefully the chance of someone else with cancer or with a friend or relative with cancer seeing it will.

Seriously does no one else think Kensington’s PR nightmare is kind of fucked up like the fact they were so Weird about all this and let a sick woman in their “family” take all the blame for their shitty Photoshop skills. Royalist stan blogs I’ve seen you on here and I ask you: is THAT not some kind of indication as to how fucking evil they are if absolutely nothing else is. Please tell me you’ve seen the light by now I can’t cope anymore

[fuckyeahanarchistposters]

“Anti-Monarchist Action”

[prernatalvaar]

Diana would have been so proud. The strength to stand up for your better half should be admired. Don't be a follower and try to come out of the fog of fed made up stories and baseless gossips. Like everyone else, they are entitled to tell their story. Two people just loving each other and having a beautiful family together. Standing side by side for one another. We are not that ignorant to see how the tabloids work. How jealousy works. How hatred is spread through gossip for amusement. Do independent research. Have a brain of your own. The #harry&meghan documentary is enlightening and beautiful. See for yourself. Be better. Do better.

[navii-blaze]

Royalty designs wips

[ingek73]

India archive reveals extent of ‘colonial loot’ in royal jewellery collection

File from India Office archive details how priceless items were extracted from colony as trophies of conquest

by David Pegg and Manisha Ganguly

Published: 14:00 Thursday, 06 April 2023

Five years ago, Buckingham Palace marked its summer opening with an exhibition celebrating the then Prince Charles’s 70th birthday with a display of his favourite pieces from the royal collection, Britain’s official trove of items connected to the monarchy. “The prince had a very, very strong hand in the selection,” the senior curator said.

Among the sculptures, paintings and other exhibits was a long gold girdle inlaid with 19 large emeralds once used by an Indian maharajah to decorate his horses. It was a curious choice to put into the exhibition in light of the violent means by which it had come into the hands of the royal family.

Emerald girdle of Maharaja Sher Singh, c 1840. Photograph: Royal Collection Trust / © His Majesty King Charles III 2023

As part of its Cost of the crown series, the Guardian has uncovered a remarkable 46-page file in the archives of the India Office, the government department that was responsible for Britain’s rule over the Indian subcontinent. It details an investigation, apparently commissioned by Queen Mary, the grandmother of Elizabeth II, into the imperial origins of her jewels.

The report, from 1912, explains how priceless pieces, including Charles’s emerald belt, were extracted from India as trophies of conquest and later given to Queen Victoria. The items described are now owned by the monarch as property of the British crown.

Plundered stones

To fully understand the context behind the jewels, and their place in India’s history, it was necessary to visit the archives.

A journal records a tour in 1837 of the Punjab area in north India by the society diarist Fanny Eden and her brother George, the governor general of the British Raj at the time. They visited Ranjit Singh, the maharajah in Lahore, who had signed a “treaty of friendship” with the British six years earlier.

The half-blind Singh wore few if any precious stones, Eden wrote in her journal, but his entourage was positively drowning in them. So plentiful were the maharajah’s gems that “he puts his very finest jewels on his horses, and the splendour of their harness and housings surpasses anything you can imagine,” she wrote. Eden later confided in her journal: “If ever we are allowed to plunder this kingdom, I shall go straight to their stables.”

Twelve years later, Singh’s youngest son and heir, Duleep, was forced to sign over the Punjab to the conquering forces of the British East India Company. As part of the conquest, the company did indeed plunder the horses’ emeralds, as well as Singh’s most precious stone, the legendary Koh-i-noor diamond.

The queen mother’s crown sits on top of the coffin during her funeral in 2002. Photograph: Dan Chung/The Guardian

Today, the Koh-i-noor sits in the crown of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, on display at the Tower of London, and it has become an emblem of Britain’s tortured relationship with its imperial history.

Anita Anand, a journalist and historian who co-wrote a book titled Koh-i-noor on the diamond, said it was “a beautiful and cold reminder of British supremacy during the Raj”, the period between 1858 and 1947 when India was ruled by the crown.

“Its facets reflect the fate of a boy king who was separated from his mother,” Anand said. The stone too was “taken far away from his home, recut and diminished”. Anand said: “That is not how India sees itself today.”

Buckingham Palace is plainly aware of the sensitivities surrounding looted artefacts. After the Indian government let it be known that for Camilla, the Queen Consort, to wear the Koh-i-noor at Charles’s coronation would elicit “painful memories of the colonial past”, the palace announced she would swap it for a less contentious diamond.

But, as was discovered by Queen Mary, the Koh-i-noor was not the only gem taken from Singh’s treasury to have found its way to the British monarchy.

Royal with a pearl necklace

Among the jewels identified in the document found by the Guardian is a “short necklace of four very large spinel rubies”, the largest of which is a 325.5-carat spinel that later came to be identified as the Timur ruby.

Its famous name is erroneous: research by the academic Susan Stronge in 1996 concluded it was probably never owned by Timur, a Mongol conquerer. And it is a spinel, a red stone similar to, but chemically distinct from, a ruby.

Elizabeth II was shown handling it in the 1969 BBC documentary Royal Family, and was clearly acquainted with the myths surrounding it. “The history, of course, is very fascinating. It belonged to so many kings of Persia and Mughal emperors, until Queen Victoria was sent it from India,” she observed.

The Timur ruby necklace, 1853. Photograph: Royal Collection Trust / © His Majesty King Charles III 2023

The queen was never pictured wearing the item. However, she may have worn another of the Lahore treasures, identified in the India Office report as “a pearl necklace consisting of 224 large pearls”.

In her 1987 study of royal jewellery, Leslie Field described “one of the Queen Mother’s most impressive two-row pearl necklaces … made from 222 pearls with a clasp of two magnificent rubies surrounded by diamonds that had originally belonged to the ruler of the Punjab” – almost certainly a reference to the same necklace.

The queen wearing pearls at the Royal Opera House in 2012. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

In 2012, Elizabeth II attended a gala festival at the Royal Opera House in London to celebrate her diamond jubilee. Photographs showed her wearing a multi-string pearl necklace with a ruby clasp.

Were these Ranjit Singh’s pearls? There was speculation they may have been, though Buckingham Palace was unable to confirm either way.

Queen Mary’s interest appears to have been prompted by curiosity about the origin of some of her pearls rather than any moral concern about the manner in which they were obtained. But a Buckingham Palace spokesperson said slavery and colonialism were matters that “his Majesty takes profoundly seriously”.

Shashi Tharoor, formerly an undersecretary at the United Nations, and currently an MP in India, said: “We have finally entered an era where colonial loot and pillage is being recognised for what it really was, rather than being dressed up as the incidental spoils of some noble ‘civilising mission’.

“As we are seeing increasingly, the return of stolen property is always a good thing. Generations to come will wonder why it took civilised nations so long to do the right thing.”

[a-dowryofblood]

The Crown season 5 really tried so hard to portray Charles as a "saviour" to the monarchy, The UK and the whole world. The CLOWNERY. He did some charity ok and???

[mona-liar]

anyway, my deepest condolensces to everyone living in the UK right now for having to suffer through the inescapable shitshow of news coverage that's gonna follow

[groenendaelfic]

Young Royals Snippet #5

Convincing people that the monarchy had to be abolished was a lot harder than it should be.

Nowadays people simply no longer saw it as a threat.

At best they rolled their eyes and said, "So what? It's not just the monarchy causing class division and inequality. They don't have any political power, not like that one CEO, you know the one who—"

Most merely shrugged and didn't care, or they pretended not to, while secretly or not so secretly romanticizing the royal family and all their hanger-ons, speculating about their love lives for entertainment, like celebrities, but ones which had to be addressed by a deferential title and who received millions each year to dress pretty and shake hands, their privilege a matter of pride and tradition, a deserved compensation for representing their country on the world stage.

And oh look, isn't the Crown Prince handsome? Don't you just have to feel for him after how sad he looked at his brother's funeral almost a decade ago? How time flies by, the poor dear, so handsome and strong despite his grief, all grown up now, but well, you are probably too young to remember how cute he was as a toddler when he ...

It was infuriating.

It didn’t matter that the monarchy had no more power on paper, was entirely useless in theory, because when the Crown Prince visited an animal sanctuary journalists and random people alike suddenly paid attention to the cause, had an opinion and cared, acting as if the concept of such a thing was entirely new to them, as if they couldn’t conceptualize the importance of animal welfare without the heir to centuries of injustice and exploitation showing up for a minute to shake hands and cuddle a puppy, cameras of course always ready to capture every second and to make the visit seem much longer than it actually had been.

The fact that said Crown Prince looked cute cuddling puppies was entirely beside the point.

Or rather it wasn’t, because that was intentional as well, was another way for the establishment to romanticize the monarchy, to make it seem benign and harmless, and Simon had no doubt that countless teenage girls were right at this moment saving the pictures of the puppy cuddling prince on their phones, dreaming of being his future princess and to one day be cuddled by the privileged waste of taxes in turn, not spending a second caring about the starvation and death his palaces were built upon, about the countless other animals the Crown Prince hadn’t cuddled, nor about the puppy which had most certainly gotten dozens of adoption requests the moment the pictures were posted, completely ignoring the fact that that wasn’t what animal sanctuaries were for, that they weren’t shelters eager to find a forever home for their charges, that this wasn't even a dog sanctuary, that the puppy was just a prop, one which was safer and less divisive than having the heir to the throne pet the actual wildlife there, and it made Simon so angry, because all of that shouldn’t be necessary.

People shouldn’t require pampered mascots to highlight worthy causes, especially not when the only reason said mascots did anything worthwhile was to distract from their own scandals and shady dealings. And anyway, what about all the other causes which didn’t come with a charming photo opportunity or glitzy galas?

Simon hated the monarchy, and the fact that its currently most popular face was objectively aesthetically pleasing and constantly surrounded by an alluring air of melancholy didn’t change that one bit.

Still, know your enemy, or so the saying went, and Simon very much understood the reasons for that, pressing save on the picture he was never going to look at again, because being hot did not magically make one a good person, nor did it make profiteering off of inherited wealth and inequality any less inexcusable, and really, fuck the monarchy, fuck it very much.

and then 30k later wilmon have angry sex

somehow

[radicalgraff]

"Down with the Crown / FTQ / Land Back"

Covering up pro-Monarchy graffiti in Sydney

[creatrixcymraes]

I sold some badges yesterday!! Everybody happy dance with me

This means hand mirrors and magnets will be coming before the festive season 💖

[secretagentsagainstwhatever]

i just don’t understand how you can be anti pay strikes whilst there’s currently coronation expenses coming out left right and centre

[fuckyeahanarchistposters]

“Abolish the Monarchy”

[prernatalvaar]

instead of watching the crown on netflix, watch these two documentaries on Diana, in her own words. Not made up, or edited, or fabricated. Just in her true words. It needs to be seen in order to have a better understanding about the royal family and the system.

[thankyoumskobayashi]

Chojiro: I'm his right-hand arm-- Man. His confidante. His silly rabbit--

Rangiku, taking notes and not just for Seireitei Bulletin: His "silly rabbit?" That's what he calls you?