In late April, Charles Moore wrote an article declaring that the coronation was not the correct moment to consider the future of the monarchy. He’s right, of course. The best moment to consider the future of the monarchy was the morning of the 30 January, 1648. While royalists fondly remember Charles I wearing two shirts to his execution so he wouldn’t shiver on the scaffold, republicans feel for the laundrywoman who was now going to have to wash blood out of two sets of garments.
1789 would have been another good time to talk about the future of the monarchy. As would 1688. Or 1938. In fact, the best moment to talk about the future of the monarchy is always a point in the distant past where you abolished it. The second-best time is today.
My American father took great pleasure in pointing out to me and my brother when we were children that he was a citizen of his country, whereas we – with dual citizenship and UK passports – were subjects. While his country considered it a self-evident truth that all people were created equal, we were growing up in the flat expanse of the Dengie Hundred, Essex, where the inhabitants flinched from the slate-grey skies and felt in their damp bones that a very select group of people were born with the innate capacity for being head of state – and that you should bow when you met them.
It’s long been easy to feel superior to the royals: from teaching their children to flick Hitler salutes to participating in It’s A Royal Knockout they seem like a uniquely ridiculous and broken set of people. There have been moments when my viewpoint seemed fairly widespread. In 2010, Charles and Camilla had their car attacked on Oxford Street by scruffy students. It was upsetting to contemplate layabouts, dependent on their parents and the taxpayer for handouts, having their car attacked by young people.
But there’s a weird spasm of centrist thought that would have us suppose the royal family is a bulwark against fascism – despite knowing full well the monarchy’s an insult to all liberal and Enlightenment principles. And despite the Queen Mother sending Lord Halifax a copy of Mein Kampf with a letter that talked of Hitler’s “obvious sincerity”, while the Duke of Windsor (formerly Edward VIII) was threatened with a court-martial by Churchill because of his and his wife’s friendships with prominent Nazis. Prince Philip, whose sisters married members of the SS and SA), gave an interview saying: “I can understand people latching on to something or somebody who appeared to be appealing to their patriotism and trying to get things going. You can understand how attractive it was.”
Yes, the royals are ridiculous, and it would be easy to put together a list of terrible coronations. At William the Conqueror’s coronation, the Normans outside Westminster Abbey heard the shouts of acclamation for the new king, thought a fight had broken out, and promptly set fire to large swathes of London. At George III’s coronation the diamonds kept falling out of his crown. At Victoria’s ceremony they’d made her ring too small and one elderly peer caught his foot on his robe and rolled down the steps of the Abbey. But it would be beneath me to mention those things. There is, of course, nothing wrong with revelling in ridiculous ceremonies featuring vulgar displays driven by the insecurity of the participants, after which many involved will be revealed as having unpleasant right-wing connections. As I shall prove by letting nothing dim my celebration of Eurovision.
Yes, the royals are ridiculous, and it would be easy to put together a list of terrible coronations
Besides, to think that because a ceremony is palpably bizarre, or unsound, it should lose its power is just wrong. It’s the turgid literalism of the clam-faced atheist who claims to be baffled by people going to church and simultaneously believing in the Big Bang.
In his spectacularly-titled Sex Secrets of the Black Magicians Exposed, Lionel Snell posits four ways of thinking about the world: scientific (logical and material), religious (rule-based and traditional), artistic (personal and emotive) and magical (based on feelings and observations).
Say, for instance, you are crippled with grief at a bereavement. The scientific response is to realise that there’s a chemical imbalance in your brain and to seek to correct that through drugs or other means. The religious response is to believe that your missing loved one has life eternal at the right hand of God. The artistic response is to create something to process your grief. And the magical response is to note robins were the dead person’s favourite bird and there have been robins outside your window a lot since they died. All of these approaches can bring comfort, we are all capable of them, and the four are not mutually exclusive.
The coronation is clearly a religious act. Logically, there’s no reason for Charles to be king over everyone else (scientific). We haven’t observed a pattern of his doing kingish things, apart from quite often being in the company of the lady who used to be queen (magical). We certainly don’t innately feel like he should be king (artistic). It is, however, the rule that he should be. Just as it’s the rule that we will get some votes from Cyprus too late in the day at Eurovision.
To dismiss the monarchy because it’s an infantilising institution that has no place in the modern day, and insults all of us with its continued existence is to misunderstand the appeal of the coronation. Many of us atheists can happily go to church, and see the value in ancient architecture, communal singing, weak lemon squash, and having time to reflect. A church is, quite literally, a sanctuary.
By the time you read this, I will have donned a paper crown, gone to the street party and eaten coronation quiche, despite knowing the spinach is going to leak green water into the filling as it cooks and leave the whole thing barely edible.
But I will not kneel and I’d rather eat soggy quiche than make an oath of allegiance.
Nathaniel Tapley is a comedy writer and performer on the TV shows you hate
