The Man Who Is King

What for a King will Charles III make?

The new king of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, as the leader of the union, has to respect the role of the government and find new ways to promote his causes - King Charles III is well known and greatly renowned for his environmentalist views and his expertise in urban planning - without getting involved into politics.  He also has to pacify the nationalists stirrings of the Scots and the Welsh as those two peoples seek independence for their homelands, even as he promises a sense of stability and continuity.  His mother did all of that very well; Charles has yet to prove he can do that.  

Charles needs to reassure the British people that he can serve as a symbol of unity and a common identity at a time when Britons feel less sure of themselves than they did even in the lowest ebbs of Queen Elizabeth II's reign.  The British economy is foundering, Prime Minister Liz Truss is distrusted by half the electorate, and the populace is still trying to figure out what it means to be British in a period after Brexit and during growing discontent with the whole idea of a monarchy - not just in Britain itself but in that free association of mostly ex-British colonies with their onetime mother country known as the Commonwealth, which Charles now heads. Meant to promote peace and freedom among its members and maintain strong ties with Great Britain, the Commonwealth shows some signs of fracture, most notably with many countries wanting to sever their direct ties to the Crown.  Barbados became a republic and ended the role of the British monarch as its head of state, and other countries like Jamaica and Australia are looking into the idea.  (Canada will likely remain a realm of the Crown, which makes sense - the only model Canadians have for a republic is us.)  Not to put too fine a point on it, but Charles has to make Britain feel whole again.   

As king, Charles III is going to have to do more to keep the monarchy together than just cut ribbons and open Parliament.  He does have the skills to serve the United Kingdom the way his mother did - he has strong ties to Scotland, he respects the traditions of the state, and he is probably more knowledgeable about how society works than any monarch who preceded him except for Elizabeth II herself.  At the least, no one should expect the 73-year-old Charles to command the same reverence that his mother did; Elizabeth was an ideal matriarch who connected with her subjects with aplomb and was well-liked.  At the most, Charles' age will allow the royal family to take a breather and take stock of itself as it prepares for the immediate and extended future.  For a constitutional monarch's assumption of the throne at an advanced age after a predecessor's long reign produces the same conditions the Vatican seeks in choosing a pope - the pope essentially being a priest-king - who is old and is not likely to last too long after a predecessor's very long pontificate.   He is to be a caretaker leader who keeps his realm going long enough before a younger successor can rejuvenate it with vigor.  The best example of this is the accession of King George V in 1910 following the sedate period of the nineteen zeroes - known as the Edwardian era in honor of George's father, King Edward VII, who reigned from 1901 to 1910.  Edward had been a caretaker king after his mother Victoria's long reign.

Britons may already be looking past the new Carolean age and to the Gulielean era - that of the future king, Prince William.

This 1998 painting of members of the British royal family surrounding the Queen Mother - with William strategically positioned to loom large over other family members, especially his father - pretty much sums things up. 

The Return of the House of Windsor

Just so you know, CNN finally aired the last two episodes of "The Windsors," the miniseries covering the lives of the British royal family in the last one hundred years or so, featuring Queen Elizabeth II (below), this past Labor Day weekend, six months late and having been interminably postponed due to COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter. If you missed it, at least the series is now available on On Demand in its entirety. 

And the final two episodes of the second season of "Race For the White House" are airing later this month.  After that, a slew of new CNN documentaries, about John Lewis and First Ladies, are set to air.

Please note that any of these broadcasts may be delayed yet again if more serious news breaks at the most inconvenient times.  Because while things seem to have settled down (and thanks to COVID-19, how could things ever settle down completely before the pandemic ends?), any one of these planned broadcasts could be pre-empted at any moment due to the instability of the times.  Don't forget the ongoing hurricane threat, either.  Heck, CNN once pre-empted a documentary about the Eagles (which I still haven't seen) to cover a blizzard  I happened to be living through that night.  I wanted to see a CNN documentary to take my mind off the weather!

Oh yeah, "The Windsors."  Well, the fifth episode was heartbreaking, as it covered the dissolution of Charles and Diana's marriage and how the pres turned against Diana in the months and weeks leading up to her fatal car crash, a crash the paparazzi might have caused.  The sixth and final episode was more heartening, showing what fine young men William and Harry turned out to be.  When this queen leaves the scene, it will be interesting to see how the monarchy evolves in the brief period that will be known as the Carolean era (which I assume is what the reign of the future King Charles III will be called), as well as how it evolves when William is on the throne.  The failure to account for King Edward VII, the first monarch of the current royal family, was perplexing - the producers apparently decided that the story began when Edward's son, George V, changed the family name to Windsor from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha - because Edward had a number of character traits that emerged in his descendants.  But overall, it's a good documentary.  Again, the entire six-part series is on On Demand, so watch it.  I highly recommend it.

Wedding Bell Blues

What is it about a royal wedding that turns normally intelligent people into complete idiots?

I recently read that Americans - especially American women - are more interested in tomorrow's wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton in the United Kingdom than are the Brits themselves. The reason given for all this attention is that women in America love a real-life fairy tale - William's bride will go into Westminster Abbey as Kate Middleton, commoner, and come out as Princess Catherine of Wales - and Americans, of course, love a good fairy tale. But don't you think we've had enough of fairy tales in this country? Like, the one that hard work will get you somewhere? That anyone can become rich, which is a reason that middle-class voters are coaxed into supporting top-rate tax reductions?

Americans have opted for a fantasy version of life for decades. How do you think auto suburbia was created? Every house a manor in a park, every commoner a lord of a manor. We fought a revolution to break away from the British, and to get away royalty worship and unfair taxation. It seems we can't really get away from either.

Another possibility is our terminal Anglophilia. After all, we couldn't be bothered to pay attention to the wedding of the Crown Princess of Sweden, could we? We think classiness is represented by everything associated with the British aristocracy - family crests, stone mansions, gourmet tea. We're a nation of Hyacinth Buckets (Bou-quets!), all trying to keep up appearances and live a lifestyle of taste and sophistication. Except that we live in crappily built tract houses that are badly furnished and poorly kept, and we spend little time trying to make ourselves cultured intellectually. In North Caldwell, New Jersey (where "The Sopranos" was set), there are numerous streets named for English towns and counties, including one for Lord Byron - although the residents of Byron Road likely know nothing about Romantic poetry - and a nearby street is named Sheffield Road. How classy is that - naming a street after a rundown steel town!?

I only know one Englishman in New Jersey, and he lives in a modest neighborhood in nearby West Orange. He does not live in the town's famous Victorian-era gated community of Llewellyn Park. (That's actually a Welsh name, but never mind.)

Yeah, I'm an Anglophile, but I'm a populist Anglophile. I'm not only into British rock and roll, but I also happen to like fish and chips, not to mention sausage and mashed potatoes. I like Michael Caine because he's so working-class. And I appreciate the fact that British populism and socialism have wrought a lot of goodies back in the mother country, like national health insurance. I can't be bothered with royalty all that much.

Today I'm posting a picture of the soon-to-be-Princess Catherine on my sister blog, dedicated to beautiful women - because, admit it, she is one - but that's my only concession to the wedding phenomenon I call Royalmania. It's harmless, I guess, so let's let all these hopelessly romantic American women - the same ones who ruined popular music by buying all those Michael Bolton CDs in the nineties - have their fun, and after the wedding, let's move on.

Sausage roll and Tizer, mate? :-)