The monarchy would love for you to believe they're only a ceremonial head of state. It makes their sinister and self-serving wielding of power much easier. In fact the Queen routinely gets laws changed in her favor, and the details of the process by which this happens are not widely known. The monarchy is a vast and private rent-seeking apparatus that exists to perpetuate the interests of its family members and their business holdings, and is inexplicably afforded vast political power and reverence. It is a rotten leftover that has no place in the 21st century.

As for "some definition of fine", I think it is increasingly clear that the UK is not fine and has in fact never been fine, or even much of a democracy, and has been essentially run by a corrupt aristocracy for centuries. It's not a secret that the whole lot of them all went to Eton - that should raise eyebrows among anyone not inured to the whole sordid business.

(Well, I should say that it's only really England with this issue. But England is the imperial core of the UK. Its satellite states are more sane, but thoroughly subjugated.)

As an American, we don’t have anything like you corrupt aristocracy and class system. But we do have a corrupt billionaire class and systemic racism, so actually it’s the same thing after all. Instead of Eton, Harvard and Yale are the schools of the upper crust; it’s virtually impossible to be on the Supreme Court unless you attended one of those universities.

And instead of a queen, we have Kardashians and Elon (blessings and peace be upon him), who also seem to attract worship for things other people do. It’s almost like human nature tends to reproduce the same problems no matter the system of government.

>In fact routinely gets laws changed in her favor.

"Routinely" is a pretty substantial claim - certainly there have been occasions where the crown has been involved in negotiations over their own tax affairs.

Other than that, what 'routine' changes in legislation would you point to?

Well, that's the thing. No one can really say, because - get this - it's a secret.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/08/queen-lobbie...

> significant amounts of legislation regulating otherwise quite ordinary activities have required consent. The Queen pays tax, so (for example) finance laws require consent. The Queen is an employer, so (for example) child support and pensions laws require consent. And so on... All correspondence containing requests for consent, replies and the documentation of any related discussions have always been shrouded in absolute privacy.

But hey, I'm sure it's fine, no need to look any closer, right? The Queen is such a nice old lady, surely -

> The documents uncovered by the Guardian provide remarkable evidence that this process accords the Queen’s advisers a genuine opportunity to negotiate with the government over changes in proposed laws, that they do sometimes secure such changes before giving consent, and that they are even prepared to threaten to withhold consent to secure their policy preferences.

Ah. Oh dear.

>It turned out nobody liked a system without a superuser //

Somehow the guy who managed to take over was an even bigger shit of a person than most of the past monarchs and so the people agreed to have a monarch again under a 'better the devil you know [and can limit with magna carta]' sort of deal.

It's like how we got screwed out of PR by being offered AV.

If I were a Brit, I'd be more concerned that the Parliament can do literally anything with a simple majority vote.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_sovereignty_in_t...

> It turned out nobody liked a system without a superuser

I thinks it’s more the case that the commons at the time couldn’t get their shit together.