To force the royal family to give up its castles and paintings and retire to a small Elizabethan manor house, clutching a Rubens or two, obviously changes nothing, unless one is willing similarly to reduce the circumstances of the land-owning gentry and all the minor people underneath this top layer who support the status quo. No one has suggested that. If it is the whole class of scroungers you want, then take all their houses. It is the only way. This is meritocratic and reasonable, and compatible with an aristocratic principle, because aristocracy and meritocracy are not opposites, but cousins.
Meritocracy becomes a problem of aristocracy as soon as wealth becomes inheritance.
Of course some will inherit more than others, and of course all family beneficiaries are undeserving, because you cannot deserve what you did not earn. Of course, lineage is idiotic, but not so meaningless that one should just sweep it away. It is foolish, perhaps, that we admire a tree simply for having stood for 500 years. But longevity awes us simply by being itself, which is why we can admire ugly old things just for being old. This is the advantage that aristocratic heroes have over meritocratic heroes.