I come from a class which used to be called the gentry - which is nowadays mistakenly used to include the nobility, but in fact is not. The gentry was essentially the untitled landowning class.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Nobility is a graceful ornament to the civil order. It is the Corinthian capital of polished society.
The other classes of which society was composed were, first, freemen, owners of small portions of land, independent, though they sometimes voluntarily became the vassals of their more opulent neighbors, whose power was necessary for their protection.
There's nobility in hard work, traditional values.
Nobility, without virtue, is a fine setting without a gem.
I'm reluctant to use the word class so much.
Indeed, the existence of class, of social hierarchy, is as old as man himself. It prevails in the jungle where strength determines hierarchy; among men, it has also been savagely the same, whereby rulers vested with power through personal combat, or through lineal heritage as in the case of royalty, ravage their subjects.
And though it is much to be a nobleman, it is more to be a gentleman.
Everything is about class in England, whether it's upper, lower or middle. Why should that be?
Loyalism, or Unionism, or Protestantism, or whatever you want to call it, in Northern Ireland - it operates not as a class system, but a caste system.
Upper class to me means you are either born into wealth or you're Royalty.