I'm Really Pissed At My Ancestors

To paraphrase Twain, my parents were neither particularly poor nor conspicuously honest. And I sort of imagine that's true of all my ancestors. While I've never bothered to look into it, I'm pretty sure that somewhere back there there were a few horse thieves, a couple of pickpockets, and undoubtedly a gaggle of philanders. (Maybe an adulteress or two also.)

However, apparently, none of my ancestors had the decency to be truly and thoroughly despicable. And that really fries my ass.

Every time I see Queen Elizabeth or Prince Charles on television sashaying around the world in wardrobes that cost enough to support a small country, I can't help but think that that could be me if only my ancestors, just one of them, had been considerate enough to slaughter a few hundred thousand people, torch countless villages, and torture enough traitors.

Is that too much to ask of them?

(A quick aside. I know I have a couple readers on the other side of the pond. And I don't want to piss any of you off by speaking ill of your sovereign. But hell, we won the friggin' war that gave us the right to tell your royalty to bugger off. So get over it already. Besides, this is personal. I wouldn't mind at all if it were me living in your castles and wearing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of jewels. I'm just pissed at my worthless ancestors for not making that possible.)

But back to the subject. I've never done anything constructive in my life, and probably never will. But if my ancestors had just sacked on small, itsy-bitsy country, no one would care. Has anyone ever looked at Prince Charles and said: "There goes that philanderer who can't hold down a job?" No! Has anyone ever looked at Queen Elizabeth (Let's just call her Lizzie) and said: "There's that great-great granddaughter of that white-trash Victoria who married her first cousin," or: "She's the one related to that family with all the cousins that started World War I?" No!

And why? Because Lizzie's ancestors were the biggest, baddest bastards in the valley. People who opposed them lost their heads. (I think my useless ancestors probably only spit on anyone who gave them a hard time and then ran like hell.)

As a result, all the royalty in all the countries in the world (including that little wild-haired asswipe in North Korea) are looked up to, admired, feared, and envied; while I'm expected to work for a living just because my rotten ancestors didn't have the gumption or the cunning to eradicate anyone who got in their way.

You can't chose your ancestors, but I certainly hope I raised my kids well enough to slaughter enough people so that their progeny can be admired, live in the laps of luxury, and never be required to contribute anything noticeable to society in order to have their royal asses kissed.

(OK, so above I didn't know how to properly punctuate the sentence mentioning Lizzie's family. If I were royalty, no one would dare question it!)