STOCKHOLM — What France and Russia did with guillotines and firing squads, Sweden is doing with the stroke of a pen.
In March, Parliament is expected to separate the nobility from the affairs of state once and for all. The monarchy is safe, but the 600 aristocratic families represented in the House of Nobility in Stockholm will lose a link to the government that became ceremonial and meaningless long ago.
The only surprise, perhaps, is that the final break has taken this long, given Sweden's famously egalitarian instincts and its membership in the new, united Europe of peaceful and stable democracies.
"We're taking the last step into the age of democracy," said Roger Pettersson, the government official who drafted the proposal. "It's symbolically wrong that an old remnant from undemocratic times should remain in modern society."
In many European countries, the nobility died with the monarchy in the ashes of two world wars. In France, it happened much earlier, after the 1789 revolution. Where aristocracies do survive, as in Sweden, they have no privileges.
Even in Britain's House of Lords, one of the only unelected chambers that still have a say in making laws, the 750 hereditary dukes, marquesses, earls, viscounts and barons are being ousted, leaving only lifetime members whose titles die with them.
Sweden's nobility dates to 1280, when King Magnus Ladulaas gave a tax break to landowners who agreed to serve as cavalry leaders in his army.
Swedish noblemen agreed to shed their economic and political privileges in 1865, and settled for a very limited and one-sided relationship with the government. The 26,000 nobles have no say in government decisions, but the government gets to approve changes to the noblemen's charter. That includes arranging summits of nobility and financing upkeep of the 328-year-old Riddarhuset, or House of Nobility, a striking Renaissance palace in Stockholm's Old Town.
Still, some say recognition of even a wholly toothless institution over dignifies it and is a painful reminder of a time when people inherited their station in life. It has no place, they say, in a modern welfare state that has been ruled by the left-leaning Social Democratic Party for 61 of the last 70 years.
"The nobility is a remnant from feudal society," said Bengt Silfverstrand, a former Social Democratic lawmaker who pushed for the legislation. "They can keep having their summits, but there's no reason for them to be linked to the government."
