Monarchy is closely related with all countries where the Orthodox Church is dominant.
There are also close links with our Australian Monarchy.Orthodox priest, Fr. Andrew Phillips has said, the Monarchy is, in fact, one of the few remaining vestiges of Orthodox Christianity in the West. Christian monarchy was inherited from the first Christian Emperors. It is not by chance, Fr. Phillips says, that the Golden Jubilee celebration of Her Majesty's accession coincides with the Feast of Sts. Constantine and Helen. Constantine himself was born in Eboracum or what is now York in England. “The Queen is herself the blood descendant of Orthodox saints such as St Edward the Martyr. “No less than three Orthodox saints are among the close relatives of Queen Elizabeth the Second. Two of these are granddaughters of the Regina-Imperatrix Victoria - St Alexandra the Tsaritsa and her sister, St Elizabeth the New Martyr. Tsar St Nicholas is the third.
The Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip, is an Orthodox Christian as well (he returned to Orthodoxy in the 1990's). On widowhood, his mother became an Orthodox nun and had her chapel in Buckingham Palace until her death in 1969 when she was buried beside St Elizabeth Fedorovna in Jerusalem.
One of the most popular features of The Spectator is High Life by Taki (Taki Theodoracopulos). His views on the situation in Greece are usually blunt, but probably more informative and authoritative -and certainly more entertaining- than the usual bland reports from the European Union media.
..Prince Nicholas Romanoff...
Writing from his home in the fashionable Swiss resort, Gstaad, he begins his column of 19 January, 2013,with this provocation:
“The sub-primate level of conversation, as prevalent as the snow up here in the Alps, took a turn for the better last week while a select few celebrated Prince Nicolas Romanoff’s 90th birthday.
"Yes, most people who live up here are illiterate, but they sure know how to count, some even up to ten billion. None of the counters was present at the birthday, however, given at the yacht club by Dino Goulandris for the head of the tragic Romanoff house, just many old friends who included some of Europe’s oldest and most royal families.”
“No camel drivers, thank you very much, no Russian oligarchs, just Former People, as Douglas Smith named his heartbreaking book on the final days of the Russian aristocracy.”
The irrepressible Taki, Taki Theodoracopulos, who writes The Spectator column “High Life” has given his assessment of the extraordinary situation in Europe where the French president and the German Prime Minister instructed the Greek Prime Minister not to proceed to a referendum on the latest bailout of Greece by the Eurozone powers.
Note that when he refers to a fake referendum on the monarchy, we Australians would call it a plebiscite. A plebiscite is like a blank cheque- the politicians fill in the details later. That is why ACM has always been opposed to any plebiscite on any matter for which the constitution prescribes a referendum
[ Royal Guard ]
He says in the 12 November edition:-
As I speak to Athens daily, I am constantly reminded of the lambent line a fat politico delivered 65 years or so ago, when asked why he was giving up power:
"Because there's nothing left to steal."
...fake referendum on monarchy ...
“These, then, are the power – hungry amateurs who got rid of the monarchy in a fake referendum, and whose only professionalism lies in cheating and stealing. These same crooks now demand sacrifices, yet among them in Parliament are those who took bribes of up to €250 million each, immune from prosecution by law.
Russia's historic Bolshoi Theatre, the glory of the Tsars, has reopened with an exclusive party to celebrate a luxurious renovation that has taken six years, cost $700m and revived a revered cultural symbol scarred by centuries of use and abuse.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev opened the gala, which was attended by politicians and celebrities from all over the world.
The 235-year-old building was shut down because of fears its foundations could crumble.
Al Jazeera's Neave Barker reported from the Russian capital, Moscow 28 Ocotber, 2011.
Recorded in London on the eve of the Royal Wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton, King Constantine, King of the Hellenes and the Queen talk with James Chau about Royal Weddings and about King Constantine's gold medal at the Rome Olympics 1960 and visit to Beijing for 2008 Games. The videos come from Beijing-based James Chau’s TV channel, and were referred to us by Ilias Bougias.
....popular...
The following clip from Ilias Bougias shows how popular The King and The Queen are:
It is interesting to speculate what would have happened had not the German High Command smuggled Lenin in a sealed train into Russia in 1917 with the intention of weakening and neutralizing the Russian Government and thus the Allies.
[ President Reagan and Oleg Gordievsky ...who famously compared the USSR with Tsarist Russia ]
When the Bolsheviks ruthlessly and opportunistically seized power, it could not have been said that they had a popular mandate.
But with dictatorial powers, they were able to change Russia, Lenin proclaiming world-wide socialist revolution. Had they not come into power, there would have been no significant Communist Party of Australia, and consequently, no second republican movement in the country for much of the first half of the twentieth century.
Rather than Australia or her Crown, that movement gave all of its complete and unswerving allegiance to Moscow and Bolshevism. With this and with the first racist republican movement, Australian republicans are unable to look back to some glorious past, or indeed anything about which they could be proud.
[ Oleg Gordiesky CMG with Baroness Thatcher after an investiture by The Queen ]
...constitutional government...
Certainly the Tsars were not constitutional monarchs. But from the issue of the October Manifesto in 1905 after the disastrous Bloody Sunday massacre, Russia became a constitutional state but not yet a constitutional monarchy but heading in that direction.
And with the remarkable economic growth in this period and the emergence of a middle class, it was clear that the Tsar (or his son) would be persuaded to concede more power. Absent a general war there could be no turning back.
...not a monster...
The Tsar, who had neither the strength nor the wisdom which the times demanded, had been raised to believe in the divinely ordained power which flowed from the Thron - he was, after all, not only " Emperor" but also "Autocrat of All the Russias". He was not an evil man and certainly not a ruthless monster like Lenin, Stalin or Hitler. Take for example anti-semistism. He did not bring it to Russia, and it continued well after his death.
He and the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna were tormented and distracted by the illness of the young Crown Prince, the Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich, who had been born with haemophilia. This led to the introduction to the court of the notorious monk Grigori Rasputin who claimed to be able to treat the disease but whose involvement hastened the fall of the Romanov dynasty.
[ Tsarevitch Nicolai Nikolaevich ]
....turning point...
The assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo in on 28 June 1914 not only catapulted Europe into a general war. It also brought all constitutional development in Russia to a sudden end, just as its aftermath was to destroy all constitutional government in most of mainland Europe by 1940.
The conduct of a major war always results in governments, even democratic governments, taking extraordinary powers. It is within living memory that American born citizens lost their liberty and their property for the sole offence of being of the Japanese race.
But in Russia the template for the increased powers needed to conduct the war was there in her very recent past. That template meant a return to near Tsarist absolutism. In advanced countries such as the United Kingdom, the existing institutions were endowed constitutionally with vast new powers – there was no thought of returning to some near absolute monarchy from the distant past.
We should not be surprised by this; when Ancient Rome was threatened by invasion, the Senate could authorise the Consuls, the joint heads of state, to appoint a Dictator ( formerly the Magister Populi or Master of the People) to govern for up to six months.
The governments of the United Kingdom and the United States enjoyed extraordinary powers in the Second World War; the Australian less so which notoriously led to communist strike action on the waterfront, a treacherous act which was sometimes even directed against the loading of ships with weapons for Australian troops.
...Tsarist system compared....
So how did the Tsarist system compare with the subsequent Soviet regime? Were the soviet republics, as we were constantly told, a great improvement?
Orthodoxy and Monarchy 
