DESPITE the ruling of the UK Supreme Court last week, effectively instructing Scotland to get back in its box and leave questions of Scotland's status to our “betters” in Westminster, this so-called United Kingdom gives every appearance of coming apart at the seams. A few decades ago, the news that the British monarch was giving one of their grandchildren the title to the Duchy of Edinburgh would have been warmly applauded by much of Scotland as a symbol of the unity of the Kingdom, and ignored by the republican minority as an irrelevance.

Now, however, in this unitary state that masquerades as a union, in which Scotland has been informed in no uncertain terms that it is politically and constitutionally subordinate, the news that King Charles (and I still keep mentally adding “spaniel” whenever anyone says that) is reportedly planning to award his young granddaughter Charlotte the title of Duchess of Edinburgh has been met in Scotland with widespread derision. No one is blaming the child Charlotte, she is only seven years old and as such has no real understanding of how she is being used as a political pawn to bolster support for a dying pretendy union. Sadly, however, if the rest of her deeply dysfunctional family is anything to go by, by the time she is old enough to understand what is going on, she will most likely regard the immense wealth and privilege into which she has been born as her entitlement.

READ MORE: Backlash in Scotland over King Charles's 'Duchess of Edinburgh' plan

However, by that time, at the rate at which the UK is unravelling, her title will become as irrelevant as those of those Irish peers who continued to sit in the House of Lords following Irish independence in 1922.

Very few realised that Edinburgh was a duchy and even fewer cared. However, rather more care that Scottish territory can be parcelled up and doled out to aristos like fancy baubles they can add to their title collections, as if they were football stickers needed to complete a set. Naturally, we mere plebs who live in these quasi-colonial possessions are not consulted on whether we agree with the appointment of our new aristocratic overlords. Edinburgh SNP MP Tommy Sheppard condemned the plan to hand the title Duchess of Edinburgh to the King's granddaughter, a child with no connection to the city as "feudal patronage of the worst sort," and added, "says it all that they take whatever titles they want, rather than asking the people who live here”.

The royals have a collection of Scottish titles, such as Will n' Kate holding the titles Earl and Countess of Strathearn, titles which only get an outing when the supine British media informs us that the couple are known in Scotland as the Earl and Countess of Strathearn. Eh no, speaking as an actual Scottish person who lives in Scotland and who knows a great many other actual Scottish people, I can assure the British media that the couple are not known in Scotland as the Earl and Countess of Strathearn. They are instead known in Scotland by a range of colourful epithets, most of which cannot be printed in a family newspaper.

Charles's brother, Andrew, the discredited and disgraced former friend of sex-traffickers, still possesses the title Earl of Inverness, a title he has made use of in some of his highly questionable business dealings.

There is undoubtedly widespread antipathy to the monarchy in Scotland and there seems little doubt that in the normal course of events this country would be seeking to emulate Barbados and declare itself a republic. Certainly, that would be my personal preference. However, we must be careful not to tie the independence movement too closely to republicanism. Scotland as an independent state was a monarchy for centuries and there are still those who would prefer a slimmed down and more accessible Scots monarchy, perhaps along more Scandinavian lines.

The question of the monarchy is for the people of Scotland to decide after independence. We can be certain that it is not a question that the British state will ever allow Scotland to decide, just like it will not allow us to decide for ourselves whether we want to revisit the question of Scotland's relationship with the other nations in this not-a-union.