Monarchy: No One Is Born to Kneel

Monarchy is sold to us as tradition. As culture. As harmless pomp and pageantry. But it’s not harmless, it’s a blueprint. It’s the prototype for every hierarchy that tells someone they matter more than someone else. And it’s not just bad for humans. It’s bad for every other animal we share this world with.

Because at the root of monarchy is a lie. A lie we’ve been fed since birth: that there are “higher” beings and “lower” beings, and that some lives naturally belong on pedestals while others are stepped on. That’s the logic behind monarchy. It’s also the logic behind animal use.

Monarchy says, “Some people are born to rule.” Animal use says, “Some beings are born to serve.” Neither is true. Both are supremacism.

Royalty doesn’t earn power. It inherits it. The concept of “royal blood” is a myth so entrenched many don’t stop to ask how absurd it is. Power passed down through bloodlines is nothing more than glorified nepotism wrapped in velvet.

And this idea, that birth determines worth, is the exact same lie that props up speciesism. If someone is born human, they’re seen as worthy of rights, protection, and freedom. Born a pig? You’re property. Born a cow? You’re a resource. Born a sheep? You’re wool on someone’s back. Just as monarchy ranks humans above each other based on recent lineage, speciesism ranks lives by distant lineage and grants or denies rights accordingly. One hierarchy justifies the next.

We’re taught to bow. To curtsy. To address monarchs with titles like “Your Majesty,” to walk behind them, not speak before them, not look them in the eye unless permitted. It’s easy to laugh this off as old-fashioned theatre, but it trains us, from childhood, to see hierarchy as natural. To accept inequality. To internalise the idea that some people deserve more than others by default, and once you’ve accepted that some humans are more important than others, it’s a short step to believing that some lives don’t count at all.

You don’t abolish animal use without abolishing the mindset that enables it.

Monarchy is always defended as a source of stability. But stability for who? For the elite? For the institution? It certainly doesn’t provide stability for the lives opressed to uphold the illusion, whether they’re humans working under exploitative systems or animals confined, commodified, and killed by those same structures.

Animals are displayed in royal zoos and murdered on royal estates. The British royal family alone is tied to blood sports, horse racing, trophy hunting, and gamebird shooting, all carried out in the name of tradition and prestige. Every royal parade, every wedding, every coronation is a ceremony of human superiority. Not just over other humans, but over all beings. It’s a celebration of power acquired by birth and maintained by obedience. It says, “Some lives are meant to be worshipped. Some lives are meant to serve."

To those who claim that monarchy is “just symbolic,” ask yourself what it symbolises. You can’t separate the crown from the concept. And the concept is this: there is a natural order. And in that order, some beings are born to be served, and others are born to serve. 

That’s the same mindset that drives every form of domination. Patriarchy. Racism. Ableism. Classism. Speciesism. Monarchy doesn’t challenge those systems, it reinforces them. It’s the royal stamp of approval on injustice.

And if you think it ends with humans, you’re not paying attention.

To believe in monarchy is to believe in hierarchy. And to believe in hierarchy is to accept that freedom isn’t universal. That some deserve it, and some do not. That belief spills over into everything: how we treat animals, how we treat the planet, how we treat each other.

The cost of obedience isn’t just a bowed head or a silent voice, it’s a blind eye. It’s the belief that because something has always been done, it should continue.

Obedience is not peace. It’s suppression.

You can’t dismantle supremacism selectively. You can’t say you believe in justice while defending a monarchy. You can’t say you oppose oppression while still categorising lives into worth and worthlessness. Emancipation doesn’t stop at humans. It doesn’t stop at classes. It doesn’t stop at borders. It stops when no one is property.

A world with true justice has no throne.