With support from the University of Richmond

History News Network

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.

Some Doubt if Any King Is Still Fit for Sweden

Two dozen members of an association to abolish the monarchy were settled around a table in a spacious apartment in the north end of the capital when someone in the back of the room muttered, “Two hundred years since the French Revolution, and still we have a king.”

In other times and in other places, these would-be regicides might have been hounded by the king’s agents. But here in liberal Sweden, they are thriving.

Indeed, so fast has membership in the Swedish Republican Association grown in recent months, rising to more than 7,300 from 2,500 one year ago, that the meeting was called to discuss a number of ambitious proposals, including the opening of a permanent office, the founding of an antimonarchist newspaper and the formation of a pan-European antimonarchist movement....

“Support for monarchy is falling across Europe,” said Mona Abou-Jeib Broshammar, the association’s secretary general.

To be sure, 7,300 members is not much in a country of nine million, yet the association’s growth is notable, given that Sweden is riding a monarchist high in the wake of the fairy-tale wedding in June of Crown Princess Victoria, 33, to her former fitness trainer....
Read entire article at NYT