o means, however, should the current image of the English or Spanish monarchy be taken at face value. Apart from the fact that it would be safe to assume that a positive public presentation for a monarch, as with any individual, is a consequence of the effort that went in to constructing it, there is the fact that the modern evolution of monarchy in England and Spain in the 20th century very much parallels the unfolding of historical process for western Europe more generally. During the 20th century that process was informed by the vicissitudes of large-scale war and significant geopolitical disturbance. Meaningful contemporary evaluation of the effectiveness of the Spanish and English monarchies in the current period must therefore be anchored in their responses to the geopolitical challenges that confronted them. The modern provenance of both of these royal houses is in the 1930s, when, each in its way, the crowns of England and Spain faced fundamental issues of survival.
The situation in England is more well known to the English-speaking peoples. In December 1936, King Edward VIII abdicated and was succeeded by his younger brother, who took the title George VI. The abdication, which left Edward with the royal title Duke of Windsor, had been at issue for virtually the whole of his reign, which began in January 1936. The circumstances of the abdication illustrate two things about the English constitutional monarchy: the importance that the (nonroyal) political leaders and by extension the people of England attach to the integrity of the English royal house; and the fact that political power and authority attach less to the monarchy as such than to the commoners who run the government.
The man who was to become Edward VIII was a grandson of Edward VII, the bon vivant son of Queen Victoria who, as WindsorÆs memoirs explain, assumed the throne late in life (Windsor, 1951, p. 280). Windsor characterizes his own father as much more a...