A Transitional Coronation

How Charles is (involuntarily?) making monarchy irrelevant

As anyone not (yet) completely switched off from the increasingly pervasive digital world will not have failed to notice, today, Saturday 6th May 2023, was the coronation of Carolus Tertius Rex Dei Gratia, or Charles III to me and you. This abbreviation "R.D.G." may be familiar to those who look closely at British coins, meaning king by God's grace. And here we come straightaway to the crux of the problem with this "popular" coronation.

Charlie wanted to appease the grumblings of a populace beset by post-lockdown malaise, ranging, to name just a few, from economic crisis after crisis (inflation, price rises, energy costs) to adverse health effects (NHS backlog, missed cancer diagnoses, mental health collapse primarily in the young) to near-total disillusionment with corrupt politicians and our current (un)elected government. So Charlie decided on a cut-down ceremony, Coronation Lite, to save money for that endangered species, the British tax payer. The fact that the ceremony still cost millions of pounds is almost irrelevant, since the exact figure is nitpicking, whereas the argument lies in the intent formulated by Charlie to sympathise with his beleaguered subjects.

So on this glorious Britannic day we were treated to several hours of televised pomp and spectacle, heritage, bringing-out-the-bunting, something that Olde Englande can still do very well. On consideration, that should be past tense: could do very well until this moment. Never mind bungled, backfiring attempts at populism, like the now infamous swearing of allegiance to Carolus Rex by us peasants, which had to be dropped. No, it is actually the lack of pomp and spectacle that I am criticising here.

If we are going to have an archaic, ancient, traditional ceremony affirming an equally archaic institution, then let us at least do it properly. The whole point of an antiquated performance such as a coronation is to legitimise an equally antiquated institution like monarchy. "Monarchy" harks back to eminently pre-modern concepts, to the darkest of Dark Age medievalism, to Alfred the Greats and Ivan the Terribles, Peppin the Shorts, and sundry Charles the Goods, Fats and of course the Father of them All, namesake but no more of the current incumbent: Carolus Magnus, Charlemagne, Karl der Große. Monarchy is rooted in medieval notions of anointed kings, high on horseback, throning it above the rest of us. And anointed Charles still is, hence the king by God's grace, that other irrelevancy reduced to a three-letter-acronym on the coinage of the realm. But I guess few people know this, and still less care about it today.

Another aspect of medieval English kingship (England and Wales, strictly speaking, since medieval Britain had kings of England and Scotland at loggerheads with one another more often than not) is the status of the king, divinely anointed perhaps, but still very much a mortal and subject to rule by consent: the notion of primus inter pares, first among equals. This is where the famous British peerage system comes in, the lords in all their variegated plumage as dukes, earls, marquesses, counts and barons. Whether you think the modern House of Lords is a superfluous dinosaur or not, or even a progress-hindering impediment, it is the lords who, theoretically at least, proclaim the monarch from among their midst, the first among their equals. This was what allowed a medieval England to already be run by a talking-shop, the original parliament (from parlement, Old French 'speaking'), and not just through the whims of an absolute monarch as developed in France, for example. Kings who overstepped their mark, who did not respect their equals in the peerage, were considered tyrants and were happily done away with, to whit: Edward II (deposed by his barons and murdered 1327), Richard II (deposed as a tyrant and likely murdered 1399), Henry VI (deposed by his competitor and murdered 1471), and although not medieval, the current Charles's first namesake Charles I (decapitated for high treason 1649).

Which leads me to observe with traditionalist disdain that the invited guests at Charlie's Coronation Lite were dominated by the mayflies of entertainment and showbiz, rather than the ermine and purple of the Lords. The preponderance of irrelevant show business figures at the coronation stood out like a sore thumb. Katy Perry, Ant and Dec, and Floella Benjamin are probably nice people and harmless enough in their own right, but do they really warrant proclaiming king? If a camel is famously a horse designed by a committee, then this was a coronation designed by a Social Justice Warrior smugly ticking all available inclusivity boxes. The whole spectacle smacked of a joint exercise between the HR diversity reps of a local council and the choreography lead at Eurodisney; frankly, the 2012 London Olympics "Cool Britannia" marketing was a better show.

If the reign of a British monarch is by assent of the peers, before that of "the people", then this oh-so-obvious right-on pastiche demonstrates a very curious peerage: a collection of so-called public figures one may primarily categorise as entertainers. Back in the Middle Ages we had an appropriate label for entertainers to the nobility: court jesters. The phrase "Clown World" supposedly denotes a right-wing persuasion, but clown world strikes me as a perfectly apt description of the kind of institution Charles appears to envisage for his monarchy. Charles's coronation was attended primarily by modern-day court jesters, here today, gone tomorrow. The spectacle we witnessed today was neither the inauguration of a Scandinavian-style Cycling Monarchy nor a proper traditional British royal coronation. Like a trans person, the ceremony was neither one or the other, neither fish nor flesh. And transitional the reign will be in more ways than one, my personal prediction giving Charles around 5 years before he either croaks it or abdicates.

The irrelevancy of this half-hearted, transitional coronation could be felt in the lack of engagement by the Good People of Britain. The spectators' area in Hyde Park had been erected to cater for thousands, but only a few hundred bothered. My town in Wales saw the supermarket packed with people doing their weekend shop instead of clustering round the TV as they did when Charlie's mum was crowned in 1953. It makes me wonder if the people are beginning to turn their back on the monarchy, not because they have become ardent Republicans overnight, but because Charles's brand of transitional royalty is not the genuine thing. Whereas in the past political or even royal opponents were done away with by decapitating them, these days it is sufficient to deplatform them.