What Would The King Say?

I recently watched the award-winning film “The King’s Speech” and enjoyed it. It is based on history as we are taught it. The acting is superb and the film making first class and it is well written. Later, that evening, I had a sudden urge to rewrite the whole story myself. This is going to be fun. And here it is-

It is 1934 Britain. The wife of a tongue-tied prince seeks out a specialist who has helped people who have lost the ability to speak clearly recover. She fears her husband might one day be called upon to be king although he is not first in line to succeed the reigning monarch, King George. She and the Prince have two daughters, Elizabeth and Margaret. Now, this woman was most reluctant to marry the tongue tied prince in the first place and turned him done more than once because she hated the idea of being a public figure and being robbed of a private life should he become king. Everyone who has studied the Modern History of England knows already that her husband does become King when his brother advocates the throne to marry the woman he loves. And we know Elizabeth became and remains to this day Queen upon the death of her father, also a King George. We also know that the once tongue tied prince recovers through the love of the teacher and wins World war II. Hurrah!

But, what if the teacher had stopped teaching for some reason and the stammerer had failed to recover and refused to be a clown king? Elizabeth was a minor. A war was upon the land. The wife we mentioned earlier who sought out a gifted teacher for her husband, the prince, as Queen mother might be in charge until Elizabeth reached the age of majority? But she hates the idea and refuses. So, is a younger brother to the stammerer to become king? The process is stupefying. I see the stage set perfectly for a revelation in all of Europe and beyond that causes people to rethink the whole circumstance of monarchs and what-not and see the absurdity of it all which is behind the impending war worldwide and about to kill millions including babies and mothers and grandmothers and, so, just cancel it on the obvious reason that most if not all people want a private life of their own making and so war is just obsolete.

The movie I just watched was justified as an historical account of bravery and loyalty at a time of peril which enabled the mad war to be won at tremendous cost in human life and suffering by us…the ones whose history tells we are good and righteous people. But it might have unfolded otherwise as I see it today. How many times might we have just barely missed the ending forever of war among humans on Earth and not been aware of opportunity knocking. Is that not a form of

blindness? So we return to the same movie again and again. 

  So long as we remain blind to our role, each one of us, in the making of blindness to the truth that freedom is not choice but clarity of thinking and do something drastic to change our own individual thinking it will go on and on and on until we destroy ourselves in a tragically grotesque manner.