Let's say for a second the King (or Crown, it makes no odds) owns your swans, but you'd rather he not own them. What'd be your recourse?

Presumably the King (or Crown, it makes no odds) once owned all the swans in Ireland too. Then one day didn't. Now those swans are free swans living in an actual, honest to God, Republic. Technically the ones in the North are still his but their ownership status is disputed. The swans that fly back and forth I'm not sure what to do about, post Brexit arrangements being shoddy at best.

All this talk of ownership seems to confuse power with right, right with tradition, tradition with law, law with power.

And power grows from the barrel of a gun.