“King Charles III” does not roll off the tongue. Almost eight months after he became monarch, and on the eve of his coronation, it still seems difficult to utter this title in full acceptance and seriousness. But of course, it is very serious. It is bank holiday, Westminster Abbey, 1,000-years-of-history, many-millions-of-taxpayers’-money serious. Although we are reminded that this is a less lavish coronation than Elizabeth II’s, it occurs amid dire economic circumstances, of which ordinary people are bearing the brunt. They may be feeling compelled to ask: “Is it worth it?”
Admittedly, the queen was a tough act to follow. There she was, a constant powdery fixture, waving and smiling when appropriate, addressing the nation from one mansion or another when required, brightly adorned in colourful, near-fluorescent hues as if to prevent us from forgetting her existence. Her head was on the money in crowned profile. We were aware of her every time we used a cash machine, this white-haired great-grandmother dutifully serving in luxury at the expense of the very note you have just extracted from said cash machine, not to mention the financial legacies of empire and colonialism. The morality of the arrangement was always dubious, but the staid undeniability of tea and the queen as two tenets of Britishness endured – sweet, mild, harmless, even while associated with some of the unresolved crimes of history.
Then there is the fact that King Charles III is taking up the reins in a markedly different state of affairs from the one that faced his mother. Whereas Elizabeth II was crowned at 25 in a cloud of feminine innocence and patriotic postwar pain, Charles is being crowned at 74 with a chequered past and ungainly family dramas – a marriage ending in tragedy, the scorning of Diana, adultery’s sleazy shadow, a brother recently embroiled in a major sexual abuse scandal, and a mutinous, bean-spilling son. In the climate of our age, where the personal is public, the royal family have to work ever harder to appear unobjectionable, and the tone of their cheerleader media coverage has shifted to accommodate this: they are distant, untouchable yet familiar, presented to us on first-name terms as people we might aspire to or even resemble – a human family, containing relatable, ordinary dysfunction.
This doesn’t quite wash, though, against the pomp and ritual of the monarchic tradition. The theatre of the accession council at St James’s Palace last September, its near religious tincture, seemed juxtaposed in the modern context, as if we were watching a series of roles being played by actors who didn’t fit, who were not supposed to be thus flawed or tainted or real. The coronation ceremony will almost certainly bear a similar paradoxical aura, of objectionableness existing alongside purported sanctity, while Charles’s estimated wealth sits at £1.8bn when doctors, nurses and teachers are struggling to pay domestic bills. There is something deeply entrenched in the British psyche (reticence? fear? complacency? apathy?) that allows this scenario to recur, and the occasional dissenter is met with a heavy hand by law enforcement, as witnessed in September’s treatment of anti-monarchist hecklers among the crowds.
Now that the queen has gone, though, it could be argued that a link to the past is broken, making way for the emergence of a new skin, a new self, even something that could be termed “the Great British Nervous Breakdown”. Psychologically speaking, breakdown is brought about by resistance to necessary, organic or inevitable change. Despite Team Charles’s gestures towards a more modern, pared-down monarchy that brings “the marginal to the centre ground”, as he stated in his accession council speech, these careful, passing pledges may not be enough to make his reign a success, or to affirm its desirability. Republics are rising, Barbados most recently, with others likely to follow. In the tumbling of statues and the cooling receptions to international royal tours that have been seen of late, it is becoming increasingly incumbent on the figures of empire to relinquish their jewels and look out at the real, damaged world in which they have luxuriated.
One way the monarchy might occupy a more easily digestible space in this time of seismic change and social unease would be to make wholesale admissions of harm to former colonies and appropriate reparations. Whether it is capable of doing so is a question of psychology, of its ability to wear the new skin. With the current focus on the future of the crown, now seems like a logical moment to pose this question.
Diana Evans is the author of A House for Alice and Ordinary People
