With exceptions such as George VI, reigns are born at the funeral of other reigns. the of Carlos III was born at his mother’s funeralwho set the bar very high. That is why the monarchical journey begins in the shadow of a doubt. Will the new king live up to the legacy of Isabel II? Will he be able to do what the monarch of a democracy should do? Has he stopped having the insufferable and aristocratic whims that his servants complained about?
The answer is doubt. In fact, there are not a few British who expected, without much expectation, that Carlos would step aside so that the succession passes directly to those who arouse more confidence than him and his wife. Camila Parker Bowles as king and as queen consort: prince william and the splendid Kate Middleton.
The European parliamentary monarchies have had kings who, in general, knew how to do what Elizabeth II did with excellence. What? Any. And the deceased queen did very well. Doing anything in the terms that a parliamentary monarchy implies is not easy. In democracies, kings should not rule but only (and nothing less than) represent a State and symbolize a nation. To fulfill this role soberly, they must not do anything that could interfere or disturb government action and institutional life.
royals
Representing a State requires the person to stop representing himself. It’s what he wanted so hard to explain to her. Churchill to Princess Margaret when, according to versions that resounded in Windsor Palace, she defended herself from the challenge she received for having ignored the speech that those responsible for ceremonial and protocol had written for her to read at an ambassadorial reception. “I just wanted to be myself”, they say Elizabeth II’s sister murmured, to which the Tory prime minister replied with a relentless question: “and who told you that your role is to be yourself?”.
In those terms, doing nothing is not easy. Doing it well requires monarchs to be discreet, austere and predictable, or at least appear to be, in addition to having a personal image that radiates decency and human quality that awakens in society the desire to feel reflected in those traits.
Reigning meant ruling, that is, governing the subjects, in 99.9 percent of the history of monarchies, which until the Glorious Revolution that brought down James II in the seventeenth century and the Atlantic revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, they were one hundred percent of the history of governments.
The emergence of English parliamentarism that germinated alongside the empiricism of Locke, Bacon, Berkeley and Hume, to which were added the revolutions incubated alongside the Enlightenment rationalism in France and in the Americas, they transferred power to plebeian governments. Halfway through the 20th century, the royalty of the Old Continent were limited to the protocol functions of heads of state.
Representing the State as a symbol of the nation is the function of European monarchs. But the times impose different challenges, even in that symbolic role. A George VI he had to face the Second World War on a throne that he did not want and had to occupy when his brother, Edward VIIIleft him to marry wallis simpsonthe American commoner who had been divorced twice.
revolutions
King George won his place in history with a feat: fighting a stutter that he had to overcome in order to give the speeches his nation needed to hear. under Hitler’s bombs. While he won the full respect of the British nation by refusing the offer of evacuation with his family to some safe country, choosing to remain on the islands and face the danger faced by the rest of the inhabitants of the United Kingdom. To this he added the impulse that he gave to the creation of the public health system as soon as the war ended with the allied victory.
To your daughter Elizabeth Alexandra Mary She had to face, from a very young age, a challenge that did not require heroism but a special temperance: to be the immutable symbol of a nation of nations; that which must remain unchanged in a time of profound transformations and vertiginous changes.
the of Isabel II It was a time of cultural revolutions, and the English, Welsh and Scots need one thing to remain the same in the midst of all that changes: identity as a state of nations, symbolized by the person on the throne.
The Cold War modified the European chessboard, espionage created literary currents and cinematographic characters such as agent 007, while the arms race cast a shadow over the future. At the same time, there was an authentic cultural revolution.
Great Britain was the epicenter of that wave that swept away traditions and customs. The Beatles and other exponents of the psychedelic culture that gave rise to rock, beat music and pop art, changed the idea of freedom and aesthetics, unleashing a hurricane of unprejudiced creativity that razed victorian morality by proclaiming free love.
Not only the young people of the French May wanted to bring “imagination to power”. Young British people also questioned the system. In this scenario, it was not easy to keep a woman on her feet and accepted by society. anachronistic institution, devoid of logic and essentially inegalitarian. At the same time, technological and scientific evolution entered a spiral of vertiginous acceleration, redesigning societies and modifying the conception of the world.
breakups
To the decades of revolutionary effervescence was added, in the twilight of Elizabeth II’s life, another earthquake of great magnitude that impacted the political, social and economic life of the United Kingdom, Brexitin addition to one of the greatest communication revolutions in history: the emergence of social networks, horizontal communication that freed the masses from the monopolistic gravitation of the ruling powers, while producing self-absorbed villages that divided citizens with cultural iron curtainsideological and generational.
In societies that, like the British, have a strong attachment to traditions and customs, crown utility it is to represent what remains unchanged over time, preserving a permanent idea of a nation. It was not easy to represent what remains unchanged, in an era of cultural, scientific and technological revolutions demolishing beliefs, customs and traditions.
The daughter of Jorge VI and great-great-granddaughter of Victoria, she was a good queen because she fulfilled the role that her moment in history demanded of her. With her on her throne, in a world where everything changes and everything dissolves into the “liquid modernity” that she described Zygmunt Baumannthe British They looked towards Buckingham and found what goes on, taking refuge in the calm of the still in the midst of the storm of movement in constant acceleration. That is why since the queen’s death was announced, a disturbing question has been running through the British Isles: will the new king live up to his mother?
The doubt arises not only from his time of whims and insecurities, but above all from his leading role in the episode that most darkened the image of the queen. The failure of her marriage made visible the sadness of a woman who became the protagonist of a kind of soap opera that the British consumed raptly.
reigns. Diana Spencer She was the sad princess who wandered alone in the palaces, mistreated by her husband’s lack of love and by the indifference of a cold and distant mother-in-law.
The death of Lady Di It caused a storm of tears that brought to the brink of shipwreck the image of the queen who had neglected the sad princess and, after the traumatic divorce, had taken away the noble title that corresponded to her as the mother of a crown prince. Interestingly, she was rescued from that drift by the least thought of her character. A young Scottish Labor Party member who had become Prime Minister knew how to give him the advice that he did not find in any relative, so that he can show traits of warmth in the personality that Diana’s sadness and her tragic end in Paris exhibited like an iceberg empty of affection and compassion.
Anthony Blair it was the centre-left prime minister who gave him the advice he couldn’t find in his own family. And saved from shipwreck, the queen herself devoted herself to the reconstruction of her public image.She was able to do it, thus avoiding the collapse of the image suffered by other monarchs. And it was very little that the then Prince of Wales contributed to that salvage of the idyllic appearance that the royal family postcard. As king, will he be able to sustain a prestige to which he contributed little as the first in line to the throne?
Juan Carlos of Bourbon had made a crucial contribution to the democratization Spain and the legitimation of the crown born of a dictatorship. But when what he had to do was not to disturb the established democracy, he began to fail in an indecent and clumsy way. He accumulated scandals, frivolities and reprehensible attitudes, until a photo showing the hunting of an elephant ended up destroying his prestige and opened wounds in the Spanish crown that festered murky deals.
To his son Philip VIcrowned at the funeral of the good image that the king had had pushed to be emeritus by his own damage, it is up to him to restore the acceptance of an anachronistic institution of dubious usefulness.
Of Charles Philip Arthur George, the brand new Charles IIIdrifts as pathetic as those of Juan Carlos I are not expected.
Much less ridiculous and despicable extravagances like those of the Thai monarch Maha Vajiralongkorn, Rama X, who destroyed in record time the legacy of his father, the highly respected King Bhumibol Adulyadej. But neither is the new king expected to have the virtues of his grandfather or his mother. At best, the only thing you can be sure of is that the reign of Carlos III will be shorter than that of Elizabeth II.
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