An honor to your family

On lines of succession, the choices of grown men and women, and why a full-ride scholarship in life is a call to do something useful

Suppose for a moment that every whisper, rumor, and accusation about Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor (or, as social media has dubbed him, the Andrew formerly known as Prince) could be conclusively disproven. Imagine that his arrest had never happened and that every loathsome email could be proven a forgery. Hypothesize for just a moment that his personal behavior had been entirely scrupulous.

■ He would still be a titanic failure of a human being. As one-time runner-up in the line of succession to the British throne, the man was given the equivalent of a full-ride scholarship in life. And with it, he has done nothing of exceptional personal merit.

■ Yes, there are expectations that go along with membership in a royal family -- including some that broke Harry’s relationship with the same family. And the whole family business is a ludicrous affair, practically guaranteed to make a ruinous mess of every individual member’s psyche. (On those grounds alone, it deserves to be scrapped.)

■ But everyone has some agency in life, and that includes princes. With his full-ride scholarship in life, did he choose to make himself a great researcher or vital fundraiser for a terrible disease? Did he transform a cause by cheerfully showering it in the light of his celebrity or grant his evidently abundant free time as a selfless volunteer?

■ No, he grumbled in private about his trivial responsibilities while evidently indulging in whatever pleased his hedonistic urges. To some, little is given, and yet they still manage to make themselves net contributors to the world around them. To others, even a storybook start in life isn’t enough to motivate them to show gratitude to their fellow humans. Benjamin Franklin anticipated just such a disappointment when he wrote, “’Tis a shame that your family is an honor to you! You ought to be an honor to your family.”