Illustration: Liu Rui

The UK government is sending mixed messages on the topic of the monarchy nowadays. Last January, the news came out that the Civil List, the funding given by the State to a few members of the royal family, would be kept to merely $60 million a year, just over half of what it was in the 1990s, until at least 2015.

At the same time, though, Michael Gove, the Secretary of State for Education, and also a close ally of UK Prime Minister David Cameron, proposed in a leaked letter that Queen Elizabeth II be given a new yacht at the taxpayers' expense as a present for her 60 years on the throne, with a price tag of no less than $90 million. The idea was killed by Cameron, but perhaps only because it was leaked to the press prematurely. After all, the Conservative Party first proposed buying the Queen a new yacht in 1997, where her old yacht, the Britannia, was sold.

Then, as now, the public was against it. In fact, despite the wave of enthusiasm for handsome young Prince William, his beautiful wife Kate Middleton, and his wife's sister's beautiful bottom at the royal wedding last year, the British people seem, in opinion polls, to be firmly opposed to increasing funding to the royals at a time of economic crisis.

The enduring British obsession with their monarchy can be curious. In my home country, the Netherlands, we also have a constitutional monarchy, but one that has a far lower profile than the British. They appear in our newspapers only occasionally, as opposed to the constant obsession of British tabloids with their royals.

Perhaps my ideas on this are skewed, as I first arrived in the country for post-graduate studies just after the death of Princess Diana, when the hysteria was at a peak. But even now, every time I arrive in London, the tabloids are running a headline to do with Diana's death, 15 years later.

The Dutch royal family, like the British, receives substantial amounts of public money every year, approximately $50 million. This has caused some outrage in recent years over incidents like the discovery that Dutch Queen Beatrix's sister, Princess Christina, was running a tax-evasion fund through the Channel Islands. And it's just been announced that another Princess Cristina, this one Spanish, won't be prosecuted for her role in a massive financial fraud in which her husband was strongly implicated.

Why do the citizens of constitutional monarchies like the UK and the Netherlands continue turning over money to our royal families every year? It's not like Saudi Arabia or other absolute monarchies, where the royals have the power to extort their subjects. These are voluntary commitments by democracies. Nor is it as if the royal pockets are empty. For example, Queen Elizabeth is still the second richest woman in the world. She, and the other European royals, could easily afford their own public expenses.

Looking into the financial affairs of the various European royals even more, one will see a wide range of scandals emerge.

The late Dutch Prince Bernhard, husband of then-Queen Juliana, was embroiled in scandal in 1976 when he admitted to taking a massive bribe of $1.1 million, about $4 million today, from US airplane manufacturer Lockheed. He was later discovered to have sold royal paintings to raise money, so as to fund mercenaries fighting under the South African government. Last year, Prince Andrew, Queen Elizabeth's second oldest son, was caught on tape boasting he could sell his influence for cash in the Arab world.

So isn't it about time we stopped paying these people, even if we like the ceremony they provide? Or maybe we should simply do away with the outdated systems altogether, and perhaps even reappropriate some of the massive private wealth their ancestors stole from the ordinary people of Europe.

The author is a Dutch national and a former student in the UK. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn