THANK you for the letter from Ann Leitch (November 16). She is absolutely right, a great many older people who now support us in our struggle for independence have due regard and respect for the Queen and the royal family.

I do not know much about our monarchy, but I cannot for the life of me understand why people would want their country to be represented by a president. Looking around the world, one can see presidents who are tyrants of different sorts. Some of them have reached their position by wading through blood, others have deliberately robbed their country’s economy through corruption, others hang on to power at all costs by waging war on their own people and with various types of oppression.

READ MORE: Letters, November 16

Even the best of presidents have usually arrived at their position through “o’er-vaulting ambition”. The two candidates in the recent presidential election in the USA are hardly men who can edify us; the USA is supposedly the most democratic country in the world, yet to enter into politics there one has to have so much money, one has to have spent an entire lifetime thinking about this and have learned little else.

What is wrong with having a constitutional monarch? Norway has one, Sweden has one and Denmark has one. They do not rob the national coffers and they are not allowed to wage wars.

Since time began, no-one can be held responsible for the accident of their birth, or guilty for being born. The crucial element in our present Queen’s ancestry is Mary Queen of Scots. With great courage and initiative, she preserved the life of her unborn child James VI. In the end, she was betrayed by Scotland and murdered by England, not to put too fine a point on it.

450 years later, through no fault of hers, our present Queen occupies the throne. Her chief enemies seem to be the yah-boo press and media. Protocol and good manners prevent her from entering into controversy with them. In this she is more sinned against than sinning.

Lesley J Findlay
Fort Augustus