Princesses

Speaker A: 00:00:00

Hello and welcome to the Cognitive Engineering Podcast produced by Tell Me Studios for Aleph Insights. In this series of podcasts we take a look at interesting topics and discuss what we think they tell us about analysis and decision making. I'm Fraser McGruer and I'm here with Nick Hare and Chris Wragg of Aleph Insights and this week we're discussing the question, what is a princess? So the reason why we're talking about this is recently in the UK we had an announcement from Prince Harry who's the youngest son of Prince Charles and the late Princess Diana that he's engaged to be married to the American actress Meghan Markle. Which means, I don't know if she'll officially be a princess or not but more or less let's just call her princess. But that got me thinking, well to what extent is she a princess? I guess sort of what got me first thinking about this was when Prince William married Kate Middleton. I remember looking at Kate and she definitely looks the part. She's very beautiful, she's very elegant, she looks very noble and she looks like a princess but standing next to her were Prince William's cousins which was Princess Eugenie and Princess who's her sister? Beatrice maybe? Beatrice, right. Who are officially princesses and definitely they've got one half of them is royal. Definitely more princessy than Kate and yet Kate very much looked like a princess and she ticks all the boxes of what we look for in a princess. And so brings us to Meghan Markle. So you know she kind of looks like a princess, she's very beautiful but actually I think her mum's a yoga teacher and her dad's a lighting director and in no way is she a princess so it just got me thinking will she really be a princess?

Speaker B: 00:01:57

sophia naturalization act of: 1705

Speaker C: 00:05:05

says you're a prince or a princess you are but but i i think this sort of um brings out uh an interesting question about um technical definitions of things so are you technically a prince or a princess and do people have a sense that you are a genuine prince or princess uh and um that's uh you know that applies to many broader things but it's particularly important in in the monarchy because the monarchy gets its legitimacy from some mystical sense of what it what it means to be part of the royal family to be part of the institution of of the monarchy um and and you know that's something which we don't actually want to delve too deeply into the technical ramifications of we want it to be an essence of of um you know of of royalty and um the the uh the tv show the um the crown on on netflix looks at this you know really interestingly on the queen's coronation the point at which she transforms uh from not being you know uh the sovereign to the sovereign it is a brilliant scene and um uh it's kind of narrated really by the the embittered uh edward the eighth um uh duke of windsor character um who's watching it on it on a tv screen and and at some point he says you know this ceremony where where this you know this mortal is transformed is an unfathomable weather web of arcane mystery and liturgy um and then he kind of concludes you know but but who wants transparency when you can have magic and and that is the essence of monarchy you know we want our prince princes and princesses to be differentiated from our us in some way which we we don't you know there's there's a wizard of of oz element to it we don't particularly want to look under the curtain and see what the technical definition is so that that being the

Speaker A: 00:07:08

case then uh megan merkel um markle sorry i do it halfway between the two actually there's markle right yeah okay so that being the case uh megan markle uh fits that quite nicely because if we start looking too closely into her into her background i mean perfectly lovely label normal um background like any of us really um then we would be disappointed but if we stick her in a castle and buckingham palace she's definitely a princess well i think we've got to think about

Speaker B: 00:07:42

this distinction with the meanings of words between denotation and connotation so denotation is the set of things which are absolutely strictly speaking included in the in uh in the in what a term refers to so when we say prince and princess we can as it happens list every individual that those things refer to but um the fact that there's lots of other connotations that we have which are the things you're talking about of being wispy and beautiful and uh wearing a cone-shaped hat with a bit of veil dangling off it which i'm given to understand from watching the films is also very important if you're going to be a princess um and and so there's all those other things that we would be perfect we wouldn't die in a ditch and say well this person doesn't have a cone-shaped hat they can't be a princess um we would accept they were but there's obviously and you know a whole host of things that we expect to come come with that and um a lot of arguments are kind of arguments about denotation versus connotation so you know if you if if the debate about for example whether you know abortion doctors are murderers really sort of i mean on one purely denotational level they kind of are because they they um they're ending the life of something and you know so well that's you know but does that mean that the connotation that we have with murderers which is that they're bloodthirsty uh you know killers with tattoos and and you know no right so so there's this question about whether or not it's fair to import a connotation along with a denotation and whether or not we should subdivide terms differently and say well there's you know there's a sort of proper princess with the cone-shaped hat and then there's these people

Speaker C: 00:09:20

who are just technical princesses but uh i think this is this is uh really interesting historically because denotation was far more important historically for the monarchy because of things like wars of succession and you wanted to have it uh you know categorically defined who who was who in the royal family and you know what the what the line of succession is now we're unlikely to have a civil war over you know who is a prince or princess or you know who should who should be the next the next monarch speak for yourself yeah well quite but the sim you know the the monarchy gets its legitimacy now not from denotational definitions but from connotational ones and we want it to feel like it's a monarchy and that's the thing we want to sort of invest our our loyalty in and so actually uh the connotations have become more important and so coming back to your point about uh you know she she has the um the the sort of essence of a princess you know that that might be true but um his i think there's a historic element to our our monarchy as well you know we we it part of the mystery and part of it or part of its legitimacy is about is about lineage and you know so so you know you look at the spencer family or indeed prince philip themselves as consorts they were um legitimate from the point of lineage again that's a fairly vague way of of defining that but some of the new consorts uh as you know nick was saying are are you know in in this um parlance commoners uh and and it's that sense that i think um is quite interesting for the monarchy as we move forward whether we whether we actually accept that in you know a number of generations time whether we accept that somebody to all intents and purposes who's just the same as us in terms of breeding uh is a legitimate monarch if they if they become unpopular for some reason or whatever yeah i mean

Speaker B: 00:11:24

but always you know i mean everyone no one started out as a king right i mean at some point someone was just like everyone else and they said right i'm owning this bit of land and i'm going to be your boss now um you know and it's in so it certainly it obviously arises you know these differentiations can arise over time and what's what's interesting is the way they disappear as well you know the way you think about um prince harry now he's pretty high status he's he's a he's you know the son of the son of the heir to the throne he's now actually only about fifth in line to the throne i think um and uh but his kids they're going to be um you know what are they going to be cousins of of a king one day and then their kids will be like second cousins of a king and they'll be one of possibly hundreds of people in that position and um you know over that over just a few generations those those differences can can um because of the way that inheritance

Speaker C: 00:12:14

works you know can be completely evaporated and i and i think you know that's that's why this issue of of lineage and and you know is is quite an important one for the monarchy and why we look very unfavorably on um other for you know recently established monarchies you know nick's absolutely right at some point there there was no king and they either usurped somebody or they just you know got enough followers together to call themselves a king but you look at you know king king zog or the um the house of saud uh you know the saudi arabian royal family and um they because they are you know were set up were fairly fairly new monarchies uh they seemed to carry

Speaker B: 00:12:59

seem to carry less less legitimacy newcomers just just yeah yeah nouveau nouveau royales i um yeah i think just to slightly broaden broaden the question is sticking with the royal theme though but is this question of status i think there's this interesting thing that's going to happen to megan markle which is that she's going to go to bed one day uh a uh a nobody and she'll you know go to bed the next evening being a princess and she and it seems that her status will go up dramatically when she becomes a princess even though she's the exact same person and um i contrast that with someone like dimitri panciera you know who dimitri panciera is well he that last year he balanced 109 scoops on a uh on an ice cream cone in just two minutes and 50 seconds thus becoming the world record holder for ice cream scooping now why is it that he's not considered high status and megan markle who hasn't even got an achievement like that to her name becomes high status you tell me how have we what kind of crazy mixed up world are we in where dimitri panciera is lower status than megan markle who's megan markle who's who's done nothing more than you

Speaker C: 00:14:11

know than say yes to a marriage proposal well perhaps if he turned the cone upside down and

Speaker A: 00:14:15

good point good point let's try and answer that question seriously and it's to do with um um perceptions of monarchy let's say in bhutan the um someone who can balance a load of ice cream cones on uh on an ice cream sorry a bunch of ice cream bits of scoops scoops on the cone yeah would have greater social cachet than someone who rocks up and says yeah actually

Speaker B: 00:14:39

i'm married to um someone who's a prince why would i mean i think bhutan is an absolute monarchy isn't it well i mean i mean they would they would they would have much more respect let's say an amazonian tribe yeah no i mean indeed right so the question is where does royal status come from because the queen isn't by any means the richest person in britain anymore um royal nor is she the most powerful no she has almost no power um and yet uh she's still the top of the status hierarchy you know any dinner so how have we how do we decide and i and i was trying to work this out and i thought well actually the thing is it's kind of self-sustaining in the sense that um it's a bit like celebrity someone's a celebrity if people think they're a celebrity right so if everyone has decided that um pick someone a celebrity i don't know the names of any celebrities

Speaker A: 00:15:30

um strictly come dancing uh no what about deckland donnelly that who's he he's from

Speaker B: 00:15:39

anthem deck yeah uh he does do something he is quite a talented tv presenter so that you know i'm trying to think of someone who's been on big brother and i'm a celebrity all right all right someone like that right who's as far as we can tell that hasn't it isn't really done anything ever um but you know i have to acknowledge that she's a celebrity i've got it's an objective fact that enough people think she's a celebrity that by definition she is and i just i think this is sort of how you know let's say everyone's decided if everyone thinks that um that megan markel as being a princess will be high status uh then i have to acknowledge she is because being high status is merely um that lots of people think you're high status that's right which is why

Speaker C: 00:16:21

monarchies uh can can fall at the drop of a hat when everybody decides yeah if we say i'm no

Speaker B: 00:16:26

longer yeah but mate but may she reign for a thousand years um we need to finish off but

Speaker A: 00:16:34

just what we do very quickly a quick um experiment um we've all got children yeah i want to work out how much of a monarchist you are or not right so you and your family are going to be introduced to uh the queen yeah um would you and i think the protocol is is the the a male has to bow and a female has to curtsy would you say to your children right you've got to bow and you've got to curtsy would you what would what would be your thoughts on that uh well i sort of have a bit

Speaker C: 00:17:02

of experience in this in that um i was uh i haven't met the queen but i've been in a room uh that the queen was being shown shown around for for work uh but i have met princess anne uh and on both occasions i was um unexpectedly sort of awestruck um so i think it's deeply rooted in your your your psyche you can be as republican as you like uh but um if you're raised in this country you sort of have a inherent um not subservience but an inherent uh respect deference deference quite

Speaker A: 00:17:44

and did you even though you weren't sued because you were just in the presence you didn't need to

Speaker C: 00:17:47

bow you did or uh he licked her shoes yeah no but i i sort of i averted my gaze it was odd you mustn't look upon her holy features you were quite um okay so well okay so what about

Speaker B: 00:18:02

you nick you've got well i'm i'm a sort of i'm a sort of rationalist monarchist in the sense that i don't um think there's anything special about the monarchy but i really like having it i think it's just fun and the fun outweighs the cost uh and i think all of the kind of all of that show business that goes with monarchy is all part of the fun so yeah i'd be i'd be happy to do that i think i think the key thing is is doing it with the right frame of mind to think look this i'm sort of not acknowledging that this person is in any sense my superior but they're the you know they're the queen and part of and i'm sort of uh bowing to the person whose job is the queen because it's my job as a subject to do that it's like going to see father christmas it is you're not i mean i wouldn't be i wouldn't be thinking well i'm inferior to the queen so i'm going to bow it's more like no it's your job as a subject really is to bow in front of the queen that's part of the fun of if we didn't do that sort of thing she wouldn't be the queen and the fun would have gone got it you know yeah willful suspension of our disbelief i think that's it i think it's like you know we okay it's not um you know i don't if there was a balloon debate and it was between me and the queen i wouldn't jump out i'd still argue my case um okay look sorry just one i want i'm trying to drum up support for this idea i saw on twitter yeah uh which is that we all on the day before harry's wedding we all have a national stag do we all go to the pub and and uh i feel i feel like harry's really carved a niche for himself in terms of a personality whereas prince william because it's his job really has remained very bland uh harry has been allowed to grow this kind of quite quite endearing yeah it's not quite i mean it's endearing kind of persona and i i quite

Speaker A: 00:19:37

like i quite like this idea of a national stag do i'm up for that especially in in in the absence of we're not getting a day off right when they get married right exactly so so yeah um okay so gentlemen thank you very much we're going to finish there um you've been listening to the cognitive engineering podcast i'm fraser mcgrew i've been here with chris ragg and nick here of aleph insights thank you for listening and until next time bye