My guess is that people respected the royal family more when they were forced into marrying other nobles (blue bloods), but now they are pretty much picking people off the street. Like Queen Camilla, and one day Queen Kate Middleton aka Waity Katie.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
