Laughing at the Royal Family is an age-old tradition, from jesters in medieval courts to Monty Python, The Windsors and Australia’s Rubbery Figures. Turns out the very notion of a king or queen is actually really quite funny. Nations led not by the person whose expertise and vision earned the job, but the person whose mum or dad just so happened to have the job before! Fronted on location—as Shaun Micallef so elegantly puts it—by their ‘local stunt double’, the governor-general! Authority conferred not by the democratic will of the people, but by arcane ceremony and glittering crowns! A population expected to keep fabricating the semblance of democracy by indicating consent through curtseys and bows! ‘It’s just weird to kneel in front of another adult,’ laughs British comedian John Oliver on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert…

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HEADER IMAGE: A man is being taught how to bow. Coloured etching, 1801. The Wellcome Collection.
INSET IMAGE: The Age/SMH