What did Count Nicholas Tolstoy say at the start of his epic novel Anna Karenina?

 Tolstoy says in Anna Karenina: “happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”. 

This is so true for the British Monarchy today. Looking at the house of Windsor, it a bit like the grotesque Addams Family, shown on America TV from 1964-1966, by the ABC network. 

We have two errand sons: Andrew and Harry. Both are the notorious Spare - in the line of succession to the monarchy. Both are clearly disturbed in their own particular ways. Andrew with his hubris, entitlement and - disturbing sexual proclivities. Harry, emotionally untethered by the traumatic death of his mother at a young age and the ongoing alienation from his father King Charles. This is a dysfunctional family, by anyone’s standards of normality. When I was working as a family and couple psychotherapist in the NHS and privately - this would be an interesting case to take on. 

The big question is one of editing: meaning where did it all go wrong? I would start with the abdication in 1936 - as the major fault line in the trans-generational system failure and go from there. The late Queen would never have been Queen - had there never been this historic event. And from this one seismic occurrence - all the other psychological pathologies and dysfunctions follow - to where we are today.