For over a millennium, the investiture of our monarchs has been attended by a cadre of nobles who, without their wives, currently number 808. The temptation to swap out the congregation for an audience of celebrities, global elites and ‘cultural ambassadors’ must be enormous. This will be the first test of a continuity which the King will swear to protect. If the monarchy can’t hold the line against the hustlers it attracts it will inevitably be co-opted into branding, thence politics, thence obscurity.
The King and his nobles exist in a legal ecosystem almost entirely outside the political sphere. Noble dynasties are created (and, occasionally, dismantled), at Windsor Castle – whose old walls have stood for longer than those of our parliament. Nevertheless, those who rise through the ranks of the state machinery are sworn into office by taking an oath to preserve the sovereign. This displaces the centre of British public life from politics and orders the governing hierarchy towards the centre of the nation rather than any ideological trend.
Perhaps it oughtn’t to work, yet the enlightened world yearns against its delusions for the authenticity which our system produces. The fountain and source of all dignities, honours, patents and patronages flows not from the marginal consensus of the ballot, but the mythos of our past – its hereditary nature placing it above any need to seek approval.
Naturally, some seek destruction of that which makes the highest ranks unattainable purely on terms of fashionable virtues. Though the ordeal of the British anti-monarchist is roughly that of an atheist who wanders into a friendly evangelical church, wander in they do. As elected members of parliament renewed their vows to serve King Charles, the House of Commons had to forbid this lunatic fringe from crossing their fingers behind their backs. Might the monarchy yet be betrayed with a politician’s kiss?
The college Trotskyist Tony Blair fought a clever, indirect offensive, against the crown. Whipping up the sanctimonious egalitarianism of those beneath the social mean, his movement found the support to banish lower nobles who sat in parliament by birthright. Shakespearian names were whisked from the corridors of power. On parliament’s river terrace, a new level of conversation shrieks the victory of modern standards. The full effect of the Blairite purge, however, was to challenge the crown to exist in a vacuum.
Should King Charles indicate his un-seated barons are sidelined for their political irrelevance, he will bring his approval of the radical Blairite trend to those functions that the crown retains outside parliament. The ‘slimmed down monarchy’ that is rumoured, alas, will be a political monarchy – settling the moot question about who holds the veto on state power. Royal letters patent being only be as good as the (often loathed), government of the day, the Crown will become little more than a compliant government PR machine.
Theoretically, the King could forestall embarrassment by writing us (perhaps I should have been clearer about my own stake in this earlier), out of law. But there’s a problem with that too: the UK and most of the Commonwealth still point to Magna Carta as a foundational part of their constitution. By what authority does Magna Carta exist, then, if not the contract between a hereditary monarch and hereditary barons?
Anti-monarchist fringes cling to such technicalities just as sedevacantalists emerge among unbelievers, arguing that the system is only as good as the performance of its rites. Nobody listens to them, of course – and neither will I – but if King Charles himself should seem sympathetic to the modern version of meritocracy and credentialism, a jolt will go up and down the line. Village fetes will no longer be opened by some red-faced ‘squire, but by some petty oligarch on the town planning committee instead. Eventually, some seedy democratic leader will gamble his slim majority by asking parliament whether the country really needs to support its king when it struggles with its own gas bills?
Then the population will be divided into Parliamentary and Royalist factions. Please, God, save the King from being seduced by commercial and cultural pragmatism. His subjects have been so well led for so long that we may be unable to confront it ourselves.
“Slimmed down” = “political”: an excellent point.
08/03/2009 ·” A dire climate-change warning will be issued by the Prince of Wales when he tells the world we have ‘less than 100 months to act’ before the damage caused by global warming becomes irreversible”.
I’m still waiting…
Some of the damage caused by global warming is already irreversible. Tony Juniper, Chairman of Natural England, has stated that the King has considerable personal knowledge of these environmental issues. Opinions like recollections may vary, but whereas Josef Stalin was never prisoner of the Soviet Politburo Charles Windsor is now prisoner of the “Global Growth” Cabinet.
He’s a moron who gets angry at a pen. What is so culturally important about that? He’s an imbecile, with a low IQ, whose granddaddy a long long long time ago came to power by consolidating factions and raping and pillaging communities into submission.
So how is that worth celebrating? Alfred was a gangster, and nothing more. What is so great about a gangster who pillages, rapes, and destroys communities? Charles just represents a long line of losers and thugs.
I’m not a fan of the woke, but lets be honest with ourselves. We don’t need him or his family. He brings no value to our lives.
@ Ted, let me be honest about your stupid abuse.
It is true that the occupants of monarchy like the papacy and elected presidencies have had more than a few rum characters. The point of the monarchy in Britain is its symbolism and support for national existence and continuity. The glib comment on Alfred the Great shows ignorance of his achievements; and I would certainly defend Victoria and Albert, George VI and his recently deceased daughter as bringing value to our lives in many ways, but the wall of facts cannot make much impression on a head as thick as Ted. George V did not rape or pillage anyone.
Now for The King. Far from being an imbecile, a creature with an IQ below 50, he has a degree in anthropology, has been a brilliant horseman and cellist, has made positive hands-on contributions to youth education, and warned about climate change before it became fashionable. I suggest you read all his books, anthologies of his speeches and observations, and then at least one biography. The pen incident has been misrepresented and blown up by his long-time obsessive “critics”, like the “Daily Mail”. People who have met Charles find him affable and an erudite good listener, with a pleasant sense of humour.
The so-called “Daily Mail” today (28 October) has returned to its obsessive page after page detailed defamation of the King as an intellectually stunted, environmental hypocrite, “associate” of criminals, and gives maximum publicity to the attacks from Meghan, etc. Who needs a Republican movement when you have this “right-wing” tabloid for Middle England’s Middle Class?
If republicans want to win people over, they must understand that cobbling together as many adolescent sneers and insults as they can muster will get them nowhere.
Some of the vilest abuse of the Royal Family has come from “The Independent” (!).
As for Charles III on global warming, his apocalyptic warnings boosted some remedial action. Anyway, he now has to shut up, although I expect he will drop a few hints to Prince William who nearly got his tongue burned when he alluded to the extraordinary population/youth explosion in sub-Saharan Africa, given the unmentioned fact of “black male” low-IQ and promiscuity.
Such views as these must reach the eyes and ears of HM The King asap.
He expressed the opinion as Prince of Wales that he was reluctant to reign over a divided kingdom (hence his concern for Wales and Scotland, and ethnic community amity), and also that he loved Britain so much that he wanted it to become great again.
The Coronation needs pageantry rather than pomp. It needs a focus on the national tradition from Anglo-Saxon Christianity onwards. The Commonwealth regimes and republics should be detached from his now purely symbolic “headship” and remain as an international gathering with the UK as a friendly participant rather than chief donor of funds and chief recipient of emigrants. The King understands the problems of urban population density not only overseas but in England.
The guests should include the “Crowned Heads of Europe” as well as the Governor Generals of the old Dominions, the Lords Lieutenant, the Lords Spiritual, at the very least, as it is a Christian ceremony and anointing. The “Daily Mail”, “The Guardian” and (regrettably) Spiked Online will be watching for the slightest pitfall.
Perhaps in another universe Charles Arthur George could be the Patriot King of Mike Bartlett’s play/movie “King Charles III” or Bernard Shaw’s “King Magnus”, and upset the media apple cart, in the interest of his subjects suffering from political misrule and cultural ruin.
In this world, patriots have the right not only to express their views but to petition the Monarch.
This is a good post.
The only thing that holds people together is the traditions and culture that have been put in place, handed down from one generation to the next, and done so to preserve a degree of order, and that order creates stability which leads to a better chance of procreation and survival (and human progress). If you suddenly remove that order, if you refuse to pass it down, if it becomes corrupted too quickly, then the only thing that can emerge is chaos. And borne out of that chaos will be a tyrant in one form or the other.
American culture, for example, could never survive with a king. It’s rooted in a totally different set of precepts, but that doesn’t mean its neither better nor worse. If we were to “swap” constitutions there would be immediate chaos on both sides of the atlantic. The British could not survive without the King, at least not without a civil war, because your tradition is intertwined, alamgamated, into the past. The mechanism to achieve liberty is not rooted in one particular form of government, but from the manner in which that government legislates, and the impositions the government imposes on the people. A benevelont, well-educated King can produce great outcomes, as can a decentralized republic, its just historically centralizing power ends up with abuse of that power — hence the need for the parliament and the wishes of certain framers to create republics. But anyways….I digress. Good post. The destruction of culture will not lead to favorable outcomes. You must protect it at all costs.