Day 22

Today I got up at 11:30, had two bowls of Frosted Flakes (I will not call them 'Frosties,' no matter what the box says), got dressed, and took the Tube to the Tower of London. The Tower was an incredible experience, although the Norman White Tower, built in 1078 by William the Conqueror, was undergoing refurbishment and thus had ghastly plastic all over it. The ravens were there, of course, qwork-ing up a storm and fluttering about, their wings clipped so they could not fly away. The reason for this is the legend that if the ravens leave the Tower, the Tower will crumble, and the kingdom fall. I also went on a tour with one of the Beefeaters, or Yeoman Guards. These Yeoman Guards live on-site at the Tower inside the outer wall with their families, although, as our guide emphasized strongly, it's not for free. They still have to pay their council tax and utilities. I went inside the chapel of Saint Peter ad Vincula where Anne Boleyn and Lady Jane Grey are buried, but as the chapel is still a functioning church and a Beefeater was standing guard, I wasn't able to take pictures. After that, I entered the Jewel House, where the Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom are kept.

The Crown Jewels were beautiful, of course, although you aren't allowed to take pictures. There was a golden wine tureen, molded in the shape of a seashell, that held 144 bottles of wine in it; the Imperial Crown festooned with thousands of diamonds, thousands of dollars worth of gold, the ruby that supposedly belonged to Edward I, the Black Prince, and a sapphire allegedly from the ring of Edward the Confessor; the Imperial Scepter, capped with the largest high-quality cut diamond in the world; the Sword of Offering, dripping with emeralds; hundreds of millions of dollars worth of regalia all owned by one woman, who gained this wealth through no qualities of her own.

The Crown Jewels brought home to me a fundamental issue with Britain that I've been struggling with, though. The thing is, I love it here. I love their mass transport, their museums and galleries, their reverence for their own past, their humor, their tea and scones, their right to roam, their friendly pub culture, their nationalized health service, their lack of racism: so many things. If I could get a visa to return and stay here after graduation, I would.

But there's the one thing I just can't get over; why, in a country so full of smart people, do they continue to persist in having an aristocracy and a monarch, in perpetuating a system founded on giving wealth and power to people based on their blood, and not on what they do? For example, the Duke of Westminster is the sixth richest man in Britain and owns most of Central London, but he didn't achieve that through work; it was given to him because he was born to it, because a distant ancestor impressed a distant monarch and was given wealth in perpetuity. The aristocracy and the monarch don't do anything to receive their status; the monarch really doesn't do anything at all except open Parliament, give the running of the government to the Prime Minister, and live a life of luxury. And yes, she brings incredible amounts of money to the nation every year through tourism, but is that worth having a system where the common man can never hope to be at the top?

I know my ranting can be seen as hypocritical; after all, there have been reams of books written about how one's blood, and thus one's socio-economic status, determines one's outcome even- perhaps especially, in these last few years- in America. And I know that the whole 'some day, little Billy, even you can grow up to be President!' is, in the main, a comforting lie; if little Billy is born to a crack-addicted mother in the ghetto, does he really have any chance at all of becoming President or attaining wealth through hard work? But even if little Billy is born into poverty in the ghetto, there is always a chance, however small, that he could become something better. He could go to the library and self-educate. He could be lucky enough to have a teacher truly take an interest in him. He could gain scholarships. For an American child, there is always a chance- infinitesimally small as it may be- to be better than the generation before.

But in Britain, you can never be the Queen, or the Duke of Westminster. The Imperial Crown, and all the wealth and power contained in it, will never sit on your head. You may go to Eton if your parents are wealthy enough to pay the fifteen thousand pounds a year necessary, and to Cambridge if you're smart, but the power of the aristocracy, of the monarchy, will never be yours, and that's the fundamental difference for me.

Pictures: This is the largest piece of Roman wall still standing in London. It originally stood around the Roman city of Londinium, which became modern London. The area within those walls is today known as the City, and serves as the financial and business district of London. The lower half, with the cross-pieces of brick, is the Roman part; the sections above were added on during the medieval era.

This is Traitor's Gate, which leads to the Thames. Originally built to allow the Norman kings access to their home at the White Palace and for supplies to enter the Tower, it found a new purpose as an entryway for famous prisoners who were said to be traitors to the Crown. These included Anne Boleyn, Katherine Howard, Lady Jane Grey, Thomas More, and Thomas Cranmer.

The exterior of the White Tower.

This is a memorial standing on the site where most of the scaffolds used for private executions at the Tower were set up. It bears the names of all executed on Tower Green, which is a surprisingly small number; most of those condemned to die at the Tower had public executions a little to the north outside the Tower, on Tower Hill.

A royal suit of armor, although I've forgotten for which king it was made; I think one of the post-Restoration ones, possibly Charles II. Anyway, check out the amazing intaglio work which covers the entire thing.