Royalty on the front line?

It cannot have escaped anyone's notice that Prince Harry... you know, the one who turned up to a fancy dress part dressed up as a Nazi, and who smokes a lot of weed... has been in the news as of late. Yes, anyone with half a mind and half an opinion has been chipping in their two cents, usually centered along the lines of "My God... the party prince? Fighting? On the front line? with our boys?"

Some papers have gone as far as to say that Prince Harry is something of a hero. I find this a little churlish... He' s not gone and liberated a country from a despotic rule, he hasn't furthered any regime's plans upon a stockpile of oil, and details are scant on the ground about how much action he has actually seen while over in Afghanistan. Now presumably, because he was stationed in the Helmand province, one known for not exactly subdued by the heavy military presence, one can surmise that he may well have seen some combat, and who knows, maybe he may have killed a man. Or Men. Maybe great numbers of both. This is not cause to call the guy a hero, this is cause to call him a soldier.

Yes, that's right. He's a soldier. Nothing more, nothing less. He's someone doing a job that people have been doing for time immemorial. Soldiering.

It is admittedly somewhat of a surprise to see him in that role; the mantle of battle hardened soldier is not one that would look like it would immediately fit someone who is third in line to the throne of Great Britain, but there he is, in Desert Camo, clutching his semi-automatic Rifle, and he looks every inch the soldier. So why is he getting any extra praise being heaped upon him?

Back in the Feudal periods of any nascent country, being a King, ruler or Emperor used to mean something. Either you or your family is the one responsible for bloodthirsty power struggles that result in rule, or they unite a country a single, or become a Ruler to defend your lands from a foreign threat. Kings used to lead the charge into battle.

Now obviously, things have moved in since then, but detractors of the Monarchy have always argued that they serve no real purpose and that they are literally an ornamental and ceremonial drain upon the taxpayers of Great Britain. It is a pervasive as well as persuasive argument. Even though it is supposedly only the Queen who can declare war upon another sovereign country or state, she never does, because it's not a decision she really gets to make. It is made by the be-suited men and women in Westminster. But there's something comforting about the idea of seeing Prince Harry, gun in hand on the battlefront. It almost seems like he's fulfilling a contractual obligation as monarch to fight when fighting needs to be done.

But he's being treated like a VIP. People may argue "of course he's getting special treatment, he's third in line to the throne," but all Kings ever were to begin with were the soldiers that were the best, or the soldiers that happened to head an army. While I don't necessarily agree with his 'outing' by the press of his deployment, I don't see it as that big a problem. At the end of the day, he's a soldier, just like everyone else in his unit. The fact that he's royalty in my mind means he should stay where he is, and not be pulled out by the powers that be. As a decent monarch who is supposed to be willing to fight, he should face all of the dangers that the rest of his fellow soldiers would have to face, whether that's being shot or blown up, or kidnapped and beheaded by Afghan religious insurgents.


Hero? He has yet to prove it.