Today I would just like to ask a question; it’s something I’ve been pondering for a few days. When you look at it, the James Bond film franchise has quite astounding links to the British state, going back decades: as illustrated here, each new film in the series gets a royal premiere, and over the years there have been many other links between 007 and royalty. As this article outlines, “The Royal Family willingly associates with the James Bond ‘brand’ largely due to the ‘Britishness’ of the James Bond franchise. The character is an iconic figure who transmits many of the purported strengths associated with the United Kingdom”. My question is, are there any other media franchises – film, tv or whatever – with such strong links to a given state? I can’t think of any other franchise anywhere else in the world which gets such treatment, or which is such a large part of a country’s cultural identity. I’d be interested to see if there were any which come close.