Nicholas Stuart | Royal pomp and pageantry after Queen Elizabeth II death serves one purpose

Almost imperceptibly, he shuddered.

"Nothing - not the parades, the pomp, the pageantry - none of that is really about us at all. It's great fun, of course, but all those people ... "

And here he paused momentarily while we considered the great unwashed, the sort of people who couldn't trace their ancestry back in a direct line to William the Conqueror or from families who, as he put it, "bought their own furniture"'. He reached down,slightly adjusting the razor-sharp creases in his trousers where they fell over his knees. "It's all of those who are odd", he continued. "They're the ones busy investing their time and energy in our lives, peering in and making up whatever stories they want about us. Quite extraordinary, really."

As far as James was concerned there was no relationship whatsoever between his life and those of the millions who read, gazed or obsessed over what may, or may not have been happening behind the gates of the grand houses, where life went on much as it always had.

We can learn a lot from the props surrounding monarchy.

Grand institutions don't exist to bring us closer, but rather to remove the reality of the way fortune and power are shared out in our democracy. We mentally construct the royals they way we want them. It's us who choose to either see perfectly understandable frustration in someone whose pen has leaked all over their hand, or whether we prefer to read petulance into such behaviour. As if anyone cares what you think, anyway. You're welcome to spend as much time as you like considering such vital and significant issues as long as you remember, all the time, that this is nothing more than a gee-gaw, a shiny bauble intended to confuse you about the real issue: the way society works.

Perhaps this is why so few people are particularly excited about the current push for Australia to become a republic. There's a bored (and apathetic) agreement about our future. Desultory calls for a republic are hardly shaking the public sphere. Who really cares if the real head of state happens to live in London or at Yarralumla when there are so many other issues calling out for urgent reform. Start talking about the over-representation of Tasmanian senators, a Voice for Indigenous and other people who lack the ability to advocate for themselves, or sharing out wealth more equitably, or any one of a hundred issues that appear far more urgent and you've got my attention. This, however, is not the obsession of the chattering class, which explains exactly why the issue of replacing the monarchy doesn't have any broader traction. It's a distraction and irrelevance.

It's perhaps no coincidence that the three British monarchs whose reigns have witnessed stunning progress have all been women: Elizabeth I, Queen Victoria, and now Elizabeth II. Perhaps male personalities intrude too much because they actually want to do something or make a difference, rather than simply allowing others to flourish and basking in reflected glory. King Charles appears to be under the influence of such confusion. He seems to believe he should be more than a cipher and is something more than an invention to keep the masses distracted and believing in fairytales.

His life has been nothing more than an emphatic demonstration of the irrelevancy of the monarchy. The one time he expressed a desire to get a "real" job was during the brief push - rapidly quashed by the Queen - for him to become governor-general. This should have told us everything we need to know about the role together with, incidentally, the way Buckingham Palace once felt about Australia. Pleasant and quaint to visit perhaps, but not really the sort of place one would want to call home.

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And that's the deal. The royals do their thing and the guards do theirs. You do get to peer in through the palace windows, however that's not where the real deals are being made and besides, the curtains are always quickly drawn when there's any danger of anything embarrassing emerging into view. So this is why we are indulging in a festival of febrile fatuousness - not because of the relevance of the monarch but rather the reverse. All our obsessing about the trappings and the parades; the funeral and the coronation; all this simply builds up to convince us that what's occurring is, somehow, and in some strange way, important. It's not, and yet this is the most invaluable service the crown can provide.

In other news an investigation into the billion-dollar gambling industry excoriated the casinos but no, don't worry about that; is Prince Andrew wearing a uniform? Pubs and clubs make multiple times this amount from exploiting punters but that's irrelevant; are Wills and Harry getting on? Julia Gillard reneged on her deal with Andrew Wilkie to reform the industry but who cares about that; does she think we will become a republic soon?

Ideology determines how you think when you don't know you're thinking. It makes some things appear obvious while others are literally unthinkable. We don't possess the language to make such possibilities visible. Our media (with the notable exception of the ABC) has been less obsessed with the death of a 96 year-old woman than the UK's, where gushing tribute crushed effusive testimonial. "We loved you ma'am", the papers proclaimed, and who could possibly argue with that.

The reality is, of course that society will continue as it did before. Yet it proceeds just that little bit more easily when you really do believe that magic has touched the earth.