Joe Hildebrand: With Queen’s legacy mourned, focus turns to new King
As world’s focus turns from Queen Elizabeth’s legacy to Charles III’s nascent kingship His Royal Highness must beware an age-old memo – get political at your peril, writes Joe Hildebrand.
Opinion
Don't miss out on the headlines from Opinion. Followed categories will be added to My News.
The Queen is dead. Long live the King.
This is the new world that millions of bleary-eyed Australians and billions across the globe will wake to this morning. After almost three quarters of a century of reign, Elizabeth II has finally been laid to rest and her ever-patient son Charles has finally assumed the mantle for which he has waited his whole life.
Of course Charles became King instantly upon his mother’s death and the formalities quickly followed but in the long days and longer processions of mourning that marked Elizabeth’s farewell, it has rightly been much more of a goodbye than a greeting.
As of today, however, the world’s focus will be far less on Elizabeth’s legacy and far more on Charles’s nascent kingship.
So what does that mean? The clue lies in the age-old acclamation above.
As I wrote last week, Britain’s great and fortunate accident of the past half-millennia is that against all odds three extraordinary women ascended to its throne at the foundation, apex and decline of its empire: Elizabeth I, Victoria and Elizabeth II.
But aside from these world-changing anomalies, the usual cry of succession would be: “The King is dead! Long live the King!”
To the ears of a child, which is how most of us would have first come across it in fairy tales or cheerily sanitised medieval legends, this seems anachronistically jarring. The obvious reaction is: “Hang on a minute, is the King dead or not?”
But that is entirely the point. The King, effectively, never dies.
The person wearing the crown may breathe their last but the mantle instantly transmits to their successor. People are mortal but the crown is everlasting. The King is eternally reborn, he just happens to inhabit different bodies.
In other words, the King always dies but the King always lives. The King is dead, long live the King.
This is not just an abstract spiritual conviction but also a frantically pragmatic one.
Since the time of Henry VIII the monarch has been head of the Church of England and thus is literally the hand of God. But every British subject also knows in their bones the carnage and bloodshed that accompanies dynastical uncertainty.
And so it is literally vital to immediately acclaim the authority of a new monarch — even an unpopular one — at the very instant of the old monarch’s death. The alternative is almost inevitably bloodshed and often civil war.
And so what does this have to do with King Charles III?
Well for starters, his first namesake Charles I had his head chopped off by Oliver Cromwell and his parliamentary Roundheads as they started the English Civil War which cost an estimated 100,000 British lives — a figure eerily close to the number killed in the Wars of the Roses, a succession dispute that consumed the country two centuries earlier.
More auspiciously, as the revolution proved a disaster, Charles also shares his name with Charles II, who was invited back to be a figurehead of unity on the rather sharpish proviso that he did whatever parliament told him to, which he rather sheepishly did.
The moral of the story for monarchs was abundantly clear: Get political at your peril.
Indeed, as absurd as it seems now, the British Empire was later described by some as a republican empire because the monarch’s powers were so curtailed by parliament and various other forces — including the ruthless mercantile strength of the East India Company.
This was in marked contrast to the absolutist monarchy of England’s great rival France, which ultimately resulted in a bloody revolution with no restoration and which is of course still celebrated by the French Republic to this day.
Again, the message for monarchs is clear: Do your duty, provide continuity and cut the ribbons but leave politics to the people.
The irony is that Charles III’s political temptations actually align with most of the people trying to get rid of him. He’s a big champion of action on climate change, for example, which is a cause affluent Australian republicans also embrace as an existential crusade.
Unfortunately for him, this is one he will have to leave in the desk drawer next to his Prince of Wales letterheads.
Is it true? Is he right? Will we all die by 2030?
Frankly, it doesn’t matter. A modern monarch cannot be a political player no matter how noble the cause.
As soon as Charles engages in any attempt to sway public opinion or policy making on any issue, no matter how vital or profound, he instantly both degrades the ethereal nature of his office and undermines the democratic credentials of the government he is privileged to preside over. He won’t be presiding for long if that happens.
And so despite all the ironic hopes of leftist republicans for an activist king, Charles will be left with little choice but to do what his fellow Britons were once mythically exhorted to do in the Blitz: Keep calm and carry on.
More Coverage
Maiden: Poll guru returns for yet another Voice
If you thought something sounded familiar when the ex-Labor Senator unveiled her new party, you weren’t alone, writes Samantha Maiden.
The real reason why Harry and William will reconcile
Striking similarities between Charles and his younger son at the mid-life crisis points of their lives suggest Harry will eventually mature and find happiness — and make up with William, argues Angela Mollard.