There is something profoundly, almost surgically ironic about the spectacle of royalty on ice. One might imagine that the scions of a house that once commanded the waves and carved up continents with a blunt quill would find the act of sliding a granite stone across a frozen pond a trifle redundant. And yet, here we are, witnessing Prince William and Princess Kate engage in the ancient, Scottish art of curling—a sport that is, for all intents and purposes, the competitive application of a kitchen broom to a problem that doesn't exist.

To the uninitiated or the hopelessly sentimental, the image of the Prince and Princess of Wales huddled on the ice is a charming vignette of modern monarchy, a testament to their ‘relatability.’ To those of us who have spent the better part of a lifetime watching the slow-motion collapse of the European experiment from the comfort of a mahogany-panelled library, it is a masterpiece of the absurd. Curling is a sport defined by the desperate need to smooth the path for a heavy, immovable object that is headed, quite inevitably, toward a predetermined goal. If there is a more fitting metaphor for the current state of the British monarchy, I have yet to encounter it.

Observe the technique. There is the ‘skip,’ who directs the stone with the frantic authority of a bureaucrat issuing a white paper on a crisis that has already passed. Then there are the sweepers—those poor souls tasked with frantically scrubbing the ice to reduce friction, ensuring the stone’s trajectory remains true. In this sub-zero pantomime, one cannot help but see the entire machinery of the royal household. The stone is the Crown: ancient, heavy, and polished to a mirror finish by centuries of tradition. The sweepers are the PR consultants, the courtiers, and the long-suffering tax-paying public, all working in a feverish, synchronized sweat to ensure that the heavy lithic inertia of the institution doesn't veer off into the gutter of total irrelevance.

William, a man whose forehead appears to be in a permanent state of strategic retreat from the mounting pressures of his birthright, handled his broom with the weary resignation of a man who knows that no matter how hard he sweeps, the ice will always be cold. Kate, on the other hand, performed with that terrifying, porcelain perfection that has become her trademark. Her smile is so precisely calibrated that one suspects it was designed by an aerospace engineer to withstand the G-forces of public scrutiny. Together, they presented a tableau of domestic harmony that was as flawless as it was utterly devoid of meaning.

While the rest of the world grapples with the disintegration of the post-war order, the rise of populist demagogues, and the encroaching shadow of economic stagflation, the heirs to the British throne are concerned with the coefficient of friction. It is a marvelous distraction. There is a certain genius in it, really. By engaging in a sport so quintessentially mundane—so domestic, so reminiscent of a particularly vigorous Sunday morning cleaning the linoleum—they manage to humanize the inhuman. They invite us to forget that they live in palaces while the rest of the country wonders if it can afford to turn on the heating. They suggest that they, too, are subject to the laws of physics, that they too must struggle against the slipperiness of the path.

But the irony runs deeper. Curling is a game of millimeters, played in a vacuum of significance. It is the ultimate exercise in exerting enormous effort to achieve a result that changes absolutely nothing. The stone reaches the house, or it doesn't. The sweepers stop, the ice refreezes, and the world remains exactly as it was. It is the perfect pastime for a vestigial institution in a post-imperial age. It mimics the motions of labor without the indignity of a paycheck. It provides the thrill of competition without the risk of actual consequence.

One must admire the sheer, galling stamina required to maintain this performance. To stand on a sheet of ice in the biting cold and pretend that the trajectory of a piece of granite is the most important thing in the world requires a level of theatrical commitment that would make a Method actor weep with envy. It is a testament to the enduring power of the British spirit—the ability to keep a stiff upper lip while performing a task that would make Sisyphus look like a man with a productive career path.

As I watched the footage, I was struck by the silence of the arena, broken only by the rhythmic scuttle of the brooms. It felt like a requiem. A quiet, chilly farewell to a world where we believed that if we just swept hard enough, if we just followed the rules of the game, the stone would eventually land where it was supposed to. Instead, we are left with the image of two attractive, well-dressed people scrubbing a frozen floor, while the stone of history slides past them, indifferent to their efforts, heading toward a target we can no longer see.