William and Mary: The 335-Year-Old Coup That Still Pays Global Dividends

William and Mary, the Cosmic Double-Act Still Haunting the 21st Century
by Our Man in the Duty-Free Lounge

Somewhere between the duty-free perfume cloud at Dubai International and the 3 a.m. noodle counter in Bangkok, I found myself staring at a commemorative tea-towel emblazoned with the joint profiles of William III of Orange and Mary II of England. The towel—made in Bangladesh, retailed in Qatar—was celebrating events from 1689 as if they were last week’s Premier League scores. That, dear reader, is your first hint that William and Mary are not merely two dead monarchs but a durable global brand, the Coke Zero of constitutional monarchy: zero calories, zero accountability, still inexplicably everywhere.

The Glorious Revolution that installed the Dutch stadtholder and his Stuart wife on the English throne was originally marketed as a triumph of Protestant liberty over papist tyranny. Fast-forward 335 years and the same slogans are being recycled in Jakarta think-tank papers, Delhi op-eds, and Lagos Twitter threads whenever someone needs a historical precedent for kicking out a populist strongman “with minimal bloodshed (offer void where oil is discovered).” The Bill of Rights 1689—drafted in a hurry because Parliament had a hangover and a foreign army breathing down its neck—is now cited by Burmese lawyers arguing against martial law, by Hong Kong barristers pleading for jury trials, and by confused Texan secessionists who think “Williamite” is a craft beer.

International lawyers adore the couple; they’re the gateway drug to every subsequent argument about sovereignty, consent, and “who invited the mercenaries?” The Hague’s newest interns can recite the 1689 Toleration Act verbatim but still forget their own Wi-Fi passwords. Meanwhile, in the glass towers of Singapore, risk consultants price emerging-market coups by calculating the “William Factor”: the probability that a foreign prince with good credit will parachute in, marry the local heiress, and keep trade lanes open for Dutch East India Company 2.0 (now headquartered in Palo Alto).

Of course, the pair also pioneered the modern art of monetizing regime change. William arrived with 14,000 troops, 400,000 guilders in backhanders, and a marketing budget that would make today’s Super PACs blush. Swap the guilders for greenbacks and the pamphlets for Facebook ads and you’ve got the template for every color revolution since Yerevan’s Velvet to Beirut’s Cedar. Historians still debate whether the invasion was bloodless; the Dutch national debt certainly hemorrhaged, and the English taxpayer has been stuck with the invoice ever since—now labeled “Royal Household Sovereign Grant, adjusted for inflation, Brexit surcharge, and inflation on the surcharge.”

Yet the true genius of William and Mary lies in their after-sales service. They exited the stage early—Mary of smallpox in 1694, William of a broken collarbone that turned septic in 1702—leaving behind a constitutional monarchy so cleverly engineered that it could be franchised across five continents. Today you can buy a slice of it in Canada (where the Crown is a polite abstraction), Australia (where it doubles as a cricket umpire), or Jamaica (where it’s mostly kept for the tourist stamps). The couple’s faces still circulate on the coins of small island tax havens, an eternal reminder that if you can’t beat imperialism, at least incorporate it offshore.

And so, at 38,000 feet somewhere above the Hindu Kush, I sip an airline gin labeled “Bols—Est. 1575” and toast their ghostly health. William and Mary: the original influencers who turned a hostile takeover into a constitutional upgrade, leaving humanity with two enduring lessons. First, if you’re planning to invade, bring a Protestant marriage certificate and a decent line of credit. Second, never underestimate the market power of a dead royal on a tea-towel. The world has changed currencies, borders, and climate zones since 1689, but the merch endures. In the end, every revolution is just another licensing opportunity, and every monarch—living or merely merchandised—charges royalties in perpetuity.