05 May 2023

"God save us all"

A Canadian offers a bemused view of the upcoming coronation from the standpoint of a colonial:
In a time of post-post-colonialism, of anti-racist iconoclasm, a time in which the very notion of gender as a legitimate distinction is contested, and Christianity has been reduced to a scandal management system with costumes, a 74-year-old British gentleman will ride a fancy carriage to an old church where a few other elderly British gentlemen in gilded dresses will declare him emperor, patriarch and head of state because God says so.

You might think you live in a time of truth and reconciliation, or perhaps even, if you’re feeling optimistic, progress. But this week if you’re British or a member of the 56 sovereign states that still, somehow, find themselves in the Commonwealth, you’re waking up in a country where a priest is going to smear oil – vegan oil from Jerusalem – on a rather pinkish, rather broad forehead to signify one man’s status as the Lord’s anointed...

This week, on his fancy carriage ride, Charles will be surrounded by many preposterous objects. He’ll be holding the world’s largest diamond on the end of a stick. He’ll be wearing a hat with a ruby that Henry V wore into battle. He’ll be sitting on a chair over the Stone of Destiny, a stone English kings stole from the Scots over 700 years ago...

As someone who has spent several weeks for the purpose of this piece looking at everything you can put Charles’s face on – tea towels, biscuit tins, trays, Christmas tree ornaments, mugs – I have learned that his face steers naturally towards caricature. It takes real skill and care not to make him look like a cartoon, even in photographs...

See, I knew what the Queen’s face meant, what it stood for. There she was, my whole life, looming in the darkened hockey rinks on the Canadian prairies, waving from the tops of airplane staircases, or smiling somewhere in the Caribbean like a tourist on the most exclusive package tour available.

The Queen was why I, a Canadian, had to learn which fork went with which course. What if I were invited to dine at Buckingham Palace and embarrassed myself by using the fish fork instead of the venison spoon? What would she think of my parents?..

My Canadian mother grew up in Lower Coverdale, New Brunswick, and that year, my grandmother drove her the seven miles to nearby Moncton to see the film of Elizabeth’s coronation. It was the only film she saw her entire childhood, the only film she saw before going to university. That’s how much the royal family mattered.

There were reasons for that significance. My original Canadian ancestors were press-ganged into the Royal Navy out of Wales for the war of 1812, and a little over a hundred years later, my great uncle Driver Leaman died in France fighting for the British empire. He received a letter on Buckingham Palace stationery – I have it framed on my wall – signed by “Mary R and the Women of the Empire”.

When Driver died, a local newspaper reported a letter he wrote to his mother: “After he was discharged from the hospital in July 1915 he was considered unfit for service and could have come home. But he wrote her and told her that his place was there. HE SAID HE WAS NOT ONLY FIGHTING FOR HIS KING AND COUNTRY, BUT FOR HIS HOME AND MOTHER.” That’s who I come from: cannon fodder for the British empire, a lot of men who died for a lot of British kings...

“Canada is the only country in the world that knows how to live without an identity,” Marshall McLuhan said in 1963. We have returned to that condition. The Canadian government plans to bring in a million immigrants next year. “You guys want to be here. We must be worth something,” that policy says. “Maybe you can tell us what we’re all doing here.”

Every time a Canadian sees Charles on the currency, they’ll know: our country makes no sense, and we have no plan to change it. Canada is a colony in search of a metropolis. We have become a colony of the absurd. There could be no more appropriate head of state to represent that absurdity than Charles...

Charles’s face means being stuck between traditional iconography and celebrity culture. It means living with a past that, while fraught with violence and idiocy, nonetheless upheld values that some cannot bring themselves to abandon and a future that, while much freer and more sensible, can also be cruel and vacuous.

I fear the reason we don’t like Charles, the reason we don’t want to celebrate him, is that he represents ourselves at this moment in history all too well. He is our king; that’s the most absurd fact of all. The face that represents us does represent us. His absurdity is ours.
I really shouldn't excerpt so much, but there's lots more at The Guardian.

10 comments:

  1. Hear, hear!!
    bobbie

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  2. I think the Canadian doth protest too much. If you don't like King Charles III then I suggest that you ignore him. But if you're going to write about him then please get your facts right.

    Charles isn't "...head of state because God says so...". He's UK head of state because of the Succession to the Crown Act 2013 and other legislation. He became King the moment his mother died and this was confirmed at the Accession Council on 10 September 2022. Canada and other countries have their own arrangements for selecting their heads of state but I don't believe that any involve divine intervention.

    Charles may be Head of the Commonwealth but many of the "... 56 sovereign states that still, somehow, find themselves in the Commonwealth..." are republics or monarchies in their own right. Also they don't "find themselves in the Commonwealth", they all join or leave by choice. Several were never part of the British empire.

    Charles will not be "surrounded by many preposterous objects...on his fancy carriage ride". The crowns, orb, sceptres, armills, ring, spurs etc. are all at Westminster Abbey waiting for him and most will stay there before being returned to the Tower of London.

    However I'm relieved that the Canadian learned the correct use of cutlery on account of British royalty. General Wolfe didn't die in vain!

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    1. "God is, of course, directly referenced on every coin of the realm where the abbreviations D.G. Rex and F.D. (sometimes extended to Fid Def) signify that the king (Rex) rules by the grace of God (Dei Gratia) and is Defender of the Faith (Fide Defensor)...

      My American interrogator will be even more bemused by the overtly religious atmosphere of the coronation at which Charles will be formally invested with regal authority. It is a service of Christian worship, traditionally framed in the context of a celebration of Holy Communion and directly modeled on the crowning of Israelite kings as described in the Hebrew Bible, in which the new monarch is anointed with holy oil, consecrated and set apart in the manner of a priestly ordination...

      https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/tradition/a43699541/king-charles-coronation-religious-ceremony-god-save-the-king-excerpt/

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    2. I'm as atheist as you can get but somebody is confusing historical precedent with belief in a magic man in the sky. Charles might be a true believer in Christ and all his little helpers, but his behaviour would suggest otherwise or at some point I guess he would have apologised for committing adultery, which he has not.

      Your team can turn up at the ice hockey todo and decide they're going to field mortars, but it'll be frowned upon because the established rules and traditions limit your weaponry in the Canadian National Sport. You don't easily buck tradition.

      I don't particularly think Canada should have a British Royal head of state, but don't mock the ENGLISH traditions we follow in the UK, mock your own idiot population for putting up with it. I don't think WE should have a Royal head of state, but I'm happy for the tame Royals to rock on acting weird to bring in the tourist dollar, and give us an elected head of state. But that's OUR
      burden to sort out and Canada isn't where we'll turn for help.

      Don't make fun of historical traditions, just because it's pink men with weird faces, unless it's open season on tradition everywhere. Calgary Stampede could bear a look.

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  3. Becoming King is an anticlimax after Diana.
    xoxoxoBruce

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  4. Maybe America should invade so we can free them from this tyranny.

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  5. Let's face it, the only reason he is king (and the royals are "royal") is because he's a member of the " 'lucky' sperm club" ("lucky" in quotes because it's questionable to/by many just how "lucky" it is to be in the position). Otherwise a royal is no better/smarter/stronger/.../anything than anyone else. In fact, many of them over the centuries have shown that they are worse than everyone else in so many ways.

    The whole thing is preposterous in this day and age. Sure, keep the royals to keep the tourism and tabloid industries in business but otherwise...

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  6. I see a certain contradiction between not caring and writing a long article explaining why you don't care.

    Also, most of this show is just British tradition. Other Kings are sworn in in front of Parliament, just like presidents. Interestingly, they get the exact same cheap criticism.

    And finally, if you compare this show to the show Americans put up every four years when a president gets sworn in, even when he got re-elected, there's really not much difference. Except that Americans can't blame the religious elements on almost a millennium of tradition and their head of state also being head of a church.

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  7. Not caring is personal, writing an article is business.
    xoxoxoBruce

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  8. Everything said about Canada in this article (not having an identity, a colony in search of a metropolis, a country not making sense) can also be said about my nation of Australia

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