The last Queen of Canada?

The heirs of King George III have rarely left the script they were bequeathed more than two centuries ago. Because they found themselves encased within a constitution that is almost immutable, they are doomed—again and again—to embrace the absurdity of carrying on like Hanoverian demi-autocrats as the 21st century pushes on, democracy and common sense be damned. It’s the direct political heirs of King George III we are talking about here—the ones in the White House, not those duty-bound and sweetly dotty hereditary members of the House of Windsor who have somehow survived to this day regardless of media brickbats, republican detractors, the “wisdom” of policy wonks, and the logic of the times.

It’s those hereditary heirs, the official heads of state of Canada, which a new book just out is trying to get us to understand, in a more rounded way than we are accustomed to doing...