Centuries ago, the throne had to be won on battlefields or by weaving palace intrigues. Those who conquered crowns with wars or conspiracies deserved them more than those who inherited them. The fact that “deserving” did not have to do with exalting actions but with conspiracies and betrayals, as was the case in most cases, does not imply that it was worth less than being crowned just for being the next in the line of succession.
On the contrary. Conspiring or fighting implies having done something to become king; while most cases, from the Glorious Revolution onwards, they became kings without having done anything.
What did Charles Philips Arthur George do to become King Charles III? Absolutely nothing. The crown came to his head in the hands of the Archbishop of Canterbury for being the eldest son of Elizabeth Alexandra Mery and Philip Mountbatten, of House Windsor, and having outlived his mother.
Behind the ceremonial and the splendor, what there is is a man without merits to reach that privileged position. Like his ancestors, Charles became King of Great Britain because his predecessor died. Merit does not exist in the monarchy. Common sense says so.
Even the cholulismo dazzled by royalty are clear that the only thing the new King of the British did to be anointed in Westminster Abbey was to be alive when his mother died, just as she was crowned at the age of 26 by the death of his father, George VI, on whom had fallen the crown that his brother, Edward VIII, threw to marry the commoner, foreigner and divorcee with whom he had fallen madly in love.
Since the transformative period of the 17th century that began with the fall of Charles I and led to the Glorious Revolution, Cromwell’s protectorate through (but especially from the 20th century), whoever is next in line has only to survive to the ancestor to reach the throne.
From the Enlightenment and the Atlantic revolutions, common sense becomes the protagonist and reveals that the “divine origin of power” that justified monarchies for millennia is nothing more than a hoax. However, one of the most modern, developed and rational societies always catches the world’s attention with the imposing ceremonies of its royalty.
As it happened with Isabel’s funerals, the world followed every moment of the coronation. Weddings, enthronements and deaths in British royalty always command world attention, because the English know how to turn such events into monumental spectacles that symbolize greatness.
As befits, the new monarch will have no impact on the local or international political scene. Those who occupy the position of prime minister influence infinitely more than those who occupy the throne. However, the entrance of the new inhabitants of Buckingham’s apartments are followed by oceans of people around the world, while very few appear at the austere ceremony that receives each new inhabitant of 10 Downing Street.
The paradox is explained in something that makes the “british brand” (British brand): maintaining the sensation in the nation that integrates English, Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish, as well as in the Commonwealth countries, that the State and society British harmonize present and past, achieving an order that allows them to move towards the future wrapped in tradition, so as not to lose identity and unity.
Another objective is to generate conviction that this order remains unalterable in a world in dizzying transformation. Finally, by the way, there is the objective of sustaining a hierarchical society over time. Just like Carlos, his grandfather and his mother had done no merit to reach the privileged position they did. But both George VI and his daughter Elizabeth knew, over the course of their reigns, earning their due. The stuttering king, contributing gestures and attitudes to maintain unity and high spirits, during the hard times of World War II.
George VI had the chance to emigrate with his family to a safer place, but he chose to stay in London under the hail of bombs being dropped by the Luftwaffe. That is why he ended up deserving the position that is reached without deserving it.
Her premature death made the eldest daughter Queen Elizabeth II. Difficult times also fell on him: the Cold War and cultural revolutions such as those that gave rise to pop art and psychedelic culture, creative and expressive instruments of youth determined to make a complete break with a past riddled with injustices, prejudices and anachronistic customs.
The greatest merit of Elizabeth II was to be discreet, which is not little in the world of this time. Being discreet allowed her to symbolize something that the British need like on air: what remains unchanged in a world thrown into dizzying changes and transformations. Faced with the vertigo of this time, the British know that in the enclosures of Buckingham Palace and Balmoral Castle is what remains still and immutable.
The question is whether Carlos III will know, like his grandfather and his mother, to earn with his reign the merit that he did not have when he was crowned. It remains to be seen what its contribution will be to the unity and courage of the inhabitants of Great Britain, in a Europe that is sinking into a war that could turn into a nuclear conflagration, and also what will be its contribution to the survival of the United Kingdom, whose welds creak by the independence of Scotland and the one that begins to insinuate itself in Wales, while in the remains of what was the Victorian empire, more and more voices are being heard demanding to abandon the Commonwealth.
We will have to see if the man who has been crowned for no other reason than not having died before his mother, already sitting on the throne of his ancestors, manages to deserve that privilege that is increasingly questioned by common sense. The British will have him less patience because, before being the protagonist of the sumptuous coronation scene, he was the unpleasant character of a romantic soap opera with an unhappy ending. As Prince of Wales, Charles was the unfaithful and distant husband who emotionally abused the princess everyone had fallen in love with and considered sweet and good: Lady Di.
That prince is now the king and has made Camila Parker Bowles queen, “the other” in the soap opera reality of the sad and lonely princess that the British cried so much when she died in a tunnel in Paris
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