Question 1: What is Tuvalu?

Until reading the BBC website this morning, I had never heard of this word, although my first guess was that it might be the name of a town in New Zealand, or some such antipodean place. However, Wikipedia put me to rights-it is a Polynesian island nation, formerly known as the Ellice Islands, comprised of 10,470 souls dispersed over 4 reef islands and 5 atolls. It is the fourth smallest country in the world, larger only than the Vatican City, Monaco and Nauru, wherever that might be. Now that our edification has moved a quantum leap upwards, we are ready for the next question.

Question 2:

What does the now-famous Tuvalu have in common with Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Jamaica, Antigua and Barbuda, Belize, Papua New Guinea, St Christopher and Nevis, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Tuvalu, Barbados, Grenada, Solomon Islands, St Lucia and the Bahamas?

Unless you are a student of the history of the far-flung British Empire, now defunct, you might be surprised to learn, as I was, that these 17 nations owe their allegiance to Queen Elizabeth II, viz., they are her 17 sovereign realms.  Nice for her, one might rejoinder, but so what?

Question 3:

What momentous decision did the prime ministers of these disparate realms, meeting in Australia, arrive at yesterday?

They voted to establish absolute cognatic primogeniture to the British Monarchy.  As from this breathless moment, the peoples of these realms can rest assured that the crown will be passed to the first child of the reigning monarch, regardless of the gender of that lucky personage.  Up to now, a woman could only inherit if she were lucky enough that  no brothers were around at the time of the death of the preceding monarch.

As one of those peoples of those 17 realms, I am delighted by this decision, as you would have guessed.  I am especially enthralled that the first child of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, one day to be enthroned themselves, will be the first offspring to receive the benefit of this ruling.  I hope that their Cantabrian subjects are equally thrilled.

Unfortunately the BBC did not reveal what other world-shaking decisions were made at this convocation in Australia, but surely they did not travel all that way just for that?  If so we might ask whether it justified all those carbon emissions…

One item that did not make the agenda for that illustrious gathering to ponder was a proposal to rescind the law that forbids a British monarch to join in holy matrimony with a member of the Roman Catholic persuasion.  Marriage to Moslems, Buddhists, southern Baptists and seven-day Adventists is apparently condoned but, alas, not to the luckless Papists.  The problem, you see, is that since the reign of the Henry the wife slayer, the monarch is titular head of the Church of England which is eternally locked in conflict with Rome. For people who care about such matters, to have to admit a papist into the inner sanctum would be anathema – it would bring rot and decay to everything that is great about Britain.

It is surely refreshing to know that even in these days where “anything goes”, Britannia continues to rule!