In 1788 Britons were ruled by the House of Hanover. When they invaded and took over a part of the Australian continent for themselves in January 1788, they did so in the name of the then-reigning Hanoverian monarch, George III.

The resulting persistent royal connection graphically shows just how stubbornly past lives and events, no matter how remote, can maintain a ghost like grip over following generations.

The paralysis begins at the top. The House of Windsor in London, because of Australia's failed republic referendum of 1999, continues to the present moment to provide this nation with its head of state even though the royal family itself is a byword for chronic dysfunctionality. It is constantly forced to relive past traumas.

Our now widowed Queen, as was her late consort, is a direct descendant of the House of Hanover. This dynasty ruled over England and its fluctuating list of colonies from 1714 to 1837 when Queen Victoria took over (technically she too was a Hanoverian but she was truly exceptional and so does not count).

For much of this extended period the average reigning Hanoverian monarch never could abide the heir to the throne. Things got so bad that George III and the future George IV ended up supporting rival parliamentary factions.

For decades the late Duke of Edinburgh and the current long suffering Prince of Wales re-enacted a variant of the Hanoverian syndrome. An impatient heir was scarred by his experiences at the hands of an annoyed and disappointed father. Such a situation is a godsend to popular culture whether it be among the satirists of late 18th century London or in today's tabloid press.

The Hanoverian dynasty started off as an exotic transplant in England. The Hanoverians were installed in 1714 because they were the least worst Protestant dynasty available to rule an anti-Catholic empire. They were thoroughly German. They were not steeped in the English language and knew little about the intricacies of domestic British politics. To avoid a dangerous power vacuum opening up George I, the inaugural Hanoverian monarch, badly needed to find a trusty manager in the House of Commons to ensure that the royal court could connect with the local political elite assembled in Britain's two houses of parliament. A failure to connect would be fatal.

And so in 1721 - exactly 300 years ago this year - the office of prime minister was created albeit on a highly unofficial basis. George I discovered a top notch parliamentary numbers man in the person of Robert Walpole, the worldly wise member for King's Lynn in Norfolk.

In office Walpole demonstrated that a prime minister could accumulate serious power using political patronage and a strategic access to public funds. Until he was forced to retire in 1742, Walpole fused executive and legislative power in a way that has served as a model for every future prime minister operating in a parliamentary system, wherever he or she may be.

In Australia today the office of prime minister still bears the marks of its rough Hanoverian beginnings. Utter pragmatism and number crunching remain basic requirements. A proudly relentlessly transactional Scott Morrison bears some resemblance to the ever cynical Robert Walpole.

In its day the Hanoverian dynasty presided over a dynamic yet still shoddily cobbled together United Kingdom. The same issues of identity and security that had imposed them on the throne had earlier, in 1707, forced England and Scotland into a loveless parliamentary union. In 1801 Ireland was forced into a second great act of parliamentary union for the same reason. The fissiparous tendencies that existed on both occasions have never gone away as Boris Johnson can attest with constituent parts of the United Kingdom now succumbing to strong post-Brexit restiveness.

Like the House of Windsor today, the elite in Hanoverian England lived in lovely houses and wore fine clothes, but at least in their case their serenity was skin deep. The nation's finest historian - Edward Gibbon - told them clearly that history revolved around the endless decline and fall of empires.

In 1788 when they seized land in Australia, England's rulers knew full well that their kingdom's burgeoning cities housed a growing underclass that virtually formed a separate and hostile nation in its own right. Urban communities had their own distinctive argot and customs and also had, despite their supposed penchant for criminal behaviour, their own system of honour and hierarchy. Political and economic grievances among the lower orders led to sporadic riots culminating in 1780 when, whipped up by a mad aristocrat (Lord George Gordon - the true father of convict Australia), an anti-Catholic mob spent a week ransacking London.

These bad and disruptive elements had to be removed from the body politic. They could be condemned and exiled as convicts. They needed to be transported to some new colony far away. Convicts had earlier been sent to North America.

But a newly rebellious United States of America refused to take them. Paranoia had fuelled its declaration of independence in 1776. In a sad early example of fake news at work, the Americans laboured under the misapprehension that George III - a diligent and highly conscientious constitutional monarch - was in reality a would-be tyrant who was in the grip of sinister counsellors operating behind the scenes.

Such was the 18^th century matrix for the similar brand of paranoia that inspired the recent invasion of the Capitol. That is why the events of January 6, 2021 ended up resembling a scene from the pages of Edward Gibbon.

Madness cut off America from the mother country. And so in 1788 the remote southern continent recently claimed in part by James Cook for George III had to become the alternative destination for the unwanted inhabitants of Hanoverian England.

Transportation to Australia after 1788 was meant to ease the internal threat to the established order in England. The inevitable dispossession of the people who already lived here was not treated as a serious wrong. There was a pious hope that they would not suffer but such compassion remained purely theoretical.

The legacy of the ongoing stress and trauma visited on future generations because of things done in the name of the House of Hanover remains inescapable.

A traumatised royal dynasty continues to exert a ghostly aura. Rickety political systems are still enlivened at opposite ends of the earth by erratic acts, for good or evil, of prime ministerial will. The dispossession of First Nations communities in Australia remains. An entrenched culture of insurgency lives on in the United States. Powerful elites continue to outstay deep popular discontent. All roads lead backwards. To the Hanoverians.