[quiet music plays]
[narrator] Once upon a time,
most of the world was ruled by kings and queens.
In almost every society on Earth, they sat at the top,
claiming their absolute power came from God.
[chimes]
And it worked that way for millennia.
But in the 1600s, a radical idea spread among the masses.
What if everybody was born equal
and people had the right to choose who ruled over them?
This was a revolution of thought,
which turned the monarchy on its head
and inspired actual revolutions.
The world went from almost total royal rule
to this.
There are only 43 monarchies left, with a range of power.
Some still have absolute power.
They all operate differently, but every king...
-[chimes] -...there are no absolute queens,
can make decisions for their citizens,
and their citizens can't vote them out.
That's how monarchies have traditionally worked.
The newer, stranger monarchies,
are over here.
-Some have special protections... -[crowd cheers]
...but they all rule over democracies symbolically.
But not too long ago,
they also ruled their countries with unquestioned power.
That's how they got these jobs.
Most of them are European
or former British colonies, like Jamaica.
Having the Queen of England as the head of state of Jamaica
is really ridiculous in the 21st century.
We're supposed to be a post-colonial country,
yet we're hanging on to all of these vestiges of empire.
It's time to get rid of the queen as head of state.
[narrator] But in Britain, most people support the monarchy.
In fact, every ceremonial monarchy, except one,
enjoys majority support in their home country.
In part, because they sell us on a fairy tale.
We have all grown up on these fairy tales.
Kissing the frog and the frog turns into this prince.
So many of us would have grown up with those kinds of stories.
[man] These fairy-tale moments, these grand weddings,
this sort of a spectacular display.
These are things people can only dream of.
It's sort of Disney movies personified.
[narrator] And this fantasy, perfected by the British royal family,
is now a big part of how royal families everywhere survive.
The royal family's main goal, above everything else, is survival.
As an elite institution,
more than anything, they're worried about continuity.
[narrator] So how on earth did they pull it off?
How did they go from absolute rulers
to fairy-tale celebrities?
And how long can the fantasy last?
[announcer] Now the robe royal is put upon the queen.
[theme music playing]
[announcer 2] The Japanese, they call him the God Emperor.
[announcer 3] How well Britain can hold this loose, worldwide structure together
at war's end is of enormous importance for the future.
[announcer 4] Tens of thousands lined the streets to glimpse the royal couple.
[announcer 5] This was a royal fairy-tale wedding like no other.
[announcer 6] The royal family hold a place of respect
and affection in all our hearts.
Their happiness is our happiness.
[theme music fades]
[Dawson] Ceremonial monarchs are fascinating to watch.
They have all the royal trappings you'd expect from old kings and queens.
Crowns, thrones, palaces.
But they're virtually powerless.
Even the most famous monarch in the world,
Britain's Queen Elizabeth II,
is just a figurehead.
She doesn't have any political power per se.
She doesn't make laws.
She isn't meant to influence
the policies of different politicians or political parties.
[Dawson] Instead, royals do symbolic things,
like officially open Parliament with speeches.
Host monarchs and presidents from around the world.
And stand on balconies and wave.
They really, really like to do that.
[crowd cheers]
Not having political power means that you are essentially uncontentious,
that you can't make decisions that can later be disagreed with by your public.
So being impartial is key to modern constitutional monarchy.
I like most their apolitical nature. They don't take stances on anything.
Having a neutral figure
above all petty politics
couldn't be achieved
if the figurehead, the head of state,
had been elected.
They also have this incredible power to unify a country.
We only need to look at the recent pandemic,
how the queen was able to bring a country together.
We should take comfort that while we may have more still to endure,
better days will return.
[Dawson] It can also provide a comforting continuity,
seeing the same figure over the years and the decades.
And the same family over centuries.
[Mozart's "Symphony No. 40" playing]
That is my great-great-grandfather,
Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria.
Emperor Franz Joseph was the longest-reigning monarch
in Europe at that time.
He represented the main line of the Habsburgs.
[Dawson] The Habsburgs are one of the oldest European royal dynasties.
Géza's ancestors ruled for more than 600 years.
Today, he lives in Bronxville, New York.
Here in the United States, I am just a commoner,
but back in Europe, there are many circles
where the Habsburgs are still considered as something special.
[Dawson] Other Habsburgs weren't so lucky.
One branch of the family, which split off in the 16th century,
became so concerned with keeping power within their bloodline,
they married each other.
A lot.
Cousins, uncles and nieces,
and more cousins,
with unfortunate results.
Like the protruding Habsburg jawline.
It was so deforming,
painters and sculptors tried to minimize
this deformation.
Because of these intermarriages,
in the year 1700,
because no more children were born,
the Spanish line died out.
[Dawson] For Géza, the greatest blessing of not being a reigning royal
is that he can choose who to marry.
I am incredibly blessed
not to have had to marry a royal.
I have the most extraordinary wife,
who has exactly the same interests as I do.
I am a truly lucky man.
[Dawson] Most ceremonial royals have relaxed their rules.
Queen Elizabeth is married to her third cousin.
They both descend from Queen Victoria.
But her grandkids had a lot more freedom to pick their partners.
And in nearly half the countries with ceremonial royals,
the next monarch could be a queen.
Modernizing can be key to survival.
The Japanese monarchy
is the longest hereditary and continuous dynasty in the world.
The current emperor is actually the 126th emperor of Japan.
[Dawson] And the current Empress Masako faced a lot of pressure
to produce the 127th.
So much so, she withdrew from view.
When she finally did give birth, it was to a girl
and girls legally can't take the throne.
Even though she's the daughter of the emperor,
the future of this millennia-old dynasty
rests on the shoulders of this boy.
Her kid cousin.
[Goto] The big challenge for Japan is going to be this issue of succession.
They are at risk literally of dying out.
[Dawson] In every monarchy,
the basic rule hasn't changed.
Power is inherited.
And so is money.
[bell dings]
["Paperboy" by JS playing]
♪ Paper ♪
♪ All the money paper ♪
[Dawson] Most ceremonial monarchies get taxpayer money.
Each country calculates it differently,
but none of them get as much as the British royal family.
Some believe this investment pays for itself,
because they generate so much tourism revenue.
By some estimates, more than 700 million dollars every year.
But that's a hard thing to calculate.
Buckingham Palace gets about 15 million visitors a year,
but the Palace of Versailles gets ten million
and France hasn't had a royal family for centuries.
The British monarchy doesn't just rely on tax money, though.
They privately own spectacular properties
bought with public funds.
Expensive collections.
Plus investments we just don't know about,
although we got a glimpse in 2017.
It's one of the biggest data leaks in history.
Millions of leaked documents reveal how the powerful and wealthy,
including the queen, secretly invest vast amounts of money in offshore tax havens.
Around ten million pounds from the queen's personal fortune
were paid into funds in Bermuda.
The fascinating thing for a historian like me
is just how inscrutable royal finances really are.
We don't know what they have. We don't know where they have it.
[Dawson] But we do know a lot of the start-up capital
came from their royal subjects, back when they ruled with absolute power.
They required the lower classes to pay taxes
in exchange for favors, land, protection, or nothing.
Royals could just get what they wanted. Their word was law.
And they used that money to build palaces,
which, in Japan and in Britain,
they still call home today.
They also spent that money on war.
The more places they conquered,
the more people in their lower classes and the more wealth they could extract
to fund more conquests, creating more subjects.
And so on and so on.
And then there was a whole other layer underneath this.
[Dawson reads]
In the 15th century,
European powers began conquering land and people overseas,
until the world was mostly under European royal rule.
This would go on to inspire Japan to invade its neighbors
and build an empire of its own.
But the British Empire was the largest one the world has ever seen.
In 1655, they invaded Jamaica
and turned it into the newest jewel in their empire.
They set up the Royal African Company,
which would go on to ship more enslaved African people to the Americas
than any other single institution ever.
Starting with Charles II, all the way to King William III,
the British royal family had a monopoly on the entire slave trade.
They profited off kidnapping human beings,
transporting them across the world
and selling them to plantation owners as free labor.
Colonialism and enslavement were integrally tied to the monarchy.
A kind of racist ideology of conquest.
The whole business of empire
was about gathering subjects across the globe.
[Dawson] Under William III,
the Royal African Company lost its monopoly.
The royal family had been key early investors in the slave trade,
but it grew into one of Britain's biggest industries,
trafficking nearly three million people
and making many along the routes rich.
And that money compounds.
A major study estimates that Britain owes Jamaica
at least three trillion dollars in reparations,
mostly for the labor of enslaved people.
For the whole Caribbean, it's 9.7 trillion.
Follow the money trail and you can see just how much
the British Empire profited from its colonies around the world.
We must recognize that a grave injustice was done
and the legacy of that injustice remains.
Britain's wealth was fueled by slavery.
[Dawson] The slave trade ended in the early 1800s,
but the world's empires held strong until the next century.
[explosions]
[announcer] The battle of the continent becomes Europe's total war.
[Owens] The great shocks of the 20th century,
the First World War, the Second World War.
These events lead to revolution.
[Dawson] And dozens of monarchies fell.
We fled from Hungary,
left everything behind,
and we lived the next years
as refugees.
[Dawson] Japan lost World War II.
[Goto] The emperor is stripped of this idea
of being a divine being.
He is a mere mortal.
[Dawson] Japan was also stripped of its colonies.
But Britain wasn't
and since it was on the winning side of the wars,
it enjoyed a lot of goodwill.
The monarchy had to figure out how on earth it changed its behavior,
it changed its public image,
in order to survive in the era of democracy.
[Dawson] So they took off their crowns and robes,
and went out into the streets.
[Owens] The royal family very quickly
pioneers a very deliberate public relations strategy.
It's determined to make its natural enemies, the working classes,
its allies.
[Dawson] This type of reinvention, this spin,
is at the heart of their survival.
Everywhere.
On August 6th, 1962,
Jamaica became an independent nation.
[Cooper] I would have been 11 at Independence.
This was a momentous occasion.
We were moving from being a colony to being an independent country.
[Dawson] But there was a catch.
One of the paradoxes of independence
was when Princess Margaret came to represent the queen.
[Dawson] This was happening around the world.
[Owens] What we see are carefully choreographed scenes.
They are, according to the images we see in the newsreels,
welcomed by the locals.
They have sought to present this idea that the Empire, now Commonwealth,
is characterized by ideas of harmony, unity, democracy, equality.
And yet, for so long,
the monarchy held an empire together
based on oppression and violence.
[Dawson] Of the 63 British colonies
that gained independence in the 20th century,
nearly half chose to become Commonwealth realms
and 15 of them still are.
In other words, Queen Elizabeth II is their queen.
In the early days of independence, there would have been a lot of individuals
who only knew a Jamaica under British rule.
We used to sing,
"Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves."
"Britons never never shall be slaves."
And it never struck our teachers that we were the children of slaves.
How could we be singing a foolish song like that?
That's because we identified with the British.
We were Britons.
[Dawson] Every year, Jamaica’s parliament opens with this.
Men in British-style military uniforms,
and British robes and wigs.
And a speech by Jamaica's Governor-General,
appointed by the Queen of England to represent her.
She also gave him a royal insignia,
which was part of his uniform
until it recently came under scrutiny.
That image that's on the St. Michael insignia
is of an archangel with his foot on the neck of the devil.
And people began to see the symbolic link
between a white colonial master
oppressing a Black subject.
You're like, "Whoa, hold on a minute."
Even the governor-general himself made a comment about revisiting it.
[Dawson] The queen technically owns all of Jamaica’s public land
and the capital has a prominent statue of Queen Victoria.
And the truth is that these are the things that remain
that sometimes we are not conscious of,
but, unconsciously, they kind of reorient the mind.
Having the queen as the head of state
is a classic example of mental slavery.
That we need to emancipate ourselves
from some of these traditions that bind us to the past
and do not enable us to claim full freedom.
[Dawson] But that history is not the story the monarchy wants to tell.
Its brand isn't political anymore.
It's personal.
[announcer] To be head of the Commonwealth entails long absences abroad.
And what a sacrifice that must be is brought home to us
by these glimpses of the happiness that comes to the royal family
when they are all at home together.
The monarchy have turned this idea of family into a business.
And into a very successful business. It's about emotion.
We can all relate to the image of an ordinary family.
[Dawson] We see this every day now.
It's one of the most popular TV genres,
but the royals pioneered this decades earlier.
For the first time, they started to celebrate things like royal weddings,
royal births, funerals,
as national events.
[Dawson] And global ones.
It's estimated that Prince William and Prince Harry’s weddings
were watched by more than a quarter of the people on Earth.
[cheering]
I have to confess that I watched the wedding of Prince Harry.
It was a grand occasion.
So we do in Jamaica pay attention to these royals,
but it is with a kind of attention you pay to a celebrity.
Why am I a royal watcher?
Because at a thousand years old,
they are the longest, continually running
reality show family in the world.
And the drama never stops.
My favorite memory
is when the queen dressed up in pink
and when Prince Harry and Meghan get their kiss.
It is quite cool to have that tradition there,
because I consider myself a real traditionalist.
I love the influence it has.
[Dawson] In a democracy, we like to think of power working like this.
From the people to the government.
But in our culture, it's still the old triangle.
Royals are at the top,
but instead of God giving them their power...
-[popping sounds] -...the media does.
They use it and we buy into it.
And that's now the strategy of royals everywhere.
All that media attention comes with a lot of power
and nobody knew that better than Princess Diana.
She was the first royal to redirect that attention
to other issues.
[announcer] The princess is an inspiration.
By touching and talking to patients,
she reduces the prejudice, stigma, and fear of AIDS.
This visit has convinced me that I must continue to play a part
in the ongoing worldwide campaign to ban landmines.
In many ways, she took on a new role here.
She presented herself as a humanitarian.
[Dawson] Her sons have followed in her footsteps
with their own charity work.
What’s happened with us and with others
is that you have to prioritize your mental health.
[Dawson] But on certain issues,
it's hard to be a humanitarian and stay uncontroversial.
[Scobie] The resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement
was a particularly important moment.
Given the colonial past of the UK,
the Commonwealth, and the British royal family,
it makes for a very difficult conversation to have.
[Dawson] Kate and William's charity showed support on Instagram,
but that wasn't under their own names.
The two people we did hear from at that point were Harry and Meghan,
who had already stepped away from the institution.
Prince Harry is on a mission for social change.
Now he's focusing on systemic racism.
[announcer] He's had an awakening to the issues facing minorities.
There's no way that we can move forward
unless we acknowledge the past.
[Dawson] The world soon learned how personal the issue was
when, in 2021, they did a blockbuster interview with Oprah,
adding that the institution had missed an opportunity.
I could never understand how it wouldn't be seen as
an added benefit,
and a reflection of the world.
At all times, but especially right now.
Here you have one of the greatest assets to the Commonwealth
the family could have wished for.
[Dawson] The royal family responded in a statement.
[Dawson reading]
But for many people who live in Commonwealth realms,
these issues are a lot more than a family matter.
It has sparked another debate in Jamaica.
An individual who "rules" us
that doesn't look like us, sound like us.
[Dawson] Even before that Oprah interview,
only 30% of Jamaicans, a record low,
wanted to keep the queen as their head of state.
And Barbados announced that it will officially remove her.
Other countries may follow.
Unlike the British royal family,
the Japanese emperor has started to confront his country's imperial past.
[Akihito in Japanese] Recalling the past with profound remorse
over the previous war.
[Goto in English] That can be seen as a political action,
but at the same time, it is something that has garnered
a lot of respect from the Japanese themselves.
[Dawson] The royal fairy tale has always cut out the other chapters.
The real challenge of monarchy in the 21st century
is about how to keep that mystique and aura.
If you open the doors too widely,
the aura is gone, the mystique is gone,
and you are no different than anyone else.
People want the magic of monarchies.
[Dawson] But for some royals,
holding on to that fairy tale has been a heavy burden
that could cost them their happy ending.
For others, leaving royalty turned out to be their happy ending.
For most royals, maintaining the fairy tale
may mean finally facing the full story.
There is an African saying that until the lion tells a story,
we won't hear the full story,
because the story's traditionally told by the hunters and not by the lions.
And I think it is time for the story of the lion to be told.
[whimsical music playing]
[music ends]
[closing theme music playing]
[theme music fades]