When six springs ago Her Britannic Majesty graced the White House with a state visit, your humble columnist, then working in the West Wing, opted to take his youngest child to the arrival ceremony. I told her she’d get to see a real queen.
So on that sunny May morning we appeared on the South Lawn with my daughter attired in Peter Pan collar, proper white stockings and beribboned straw hat — looking for all the world as though she’d stepped out of an old BBC newsreel of the queen on a visit to some quaint little Yorkshire village.
Alas, the entire thing left her completely unmoved. To this child of the age, a dowdy but dignified queen in the flesh couldn’t compete with all the fictional images of royals she had derived from Anne Hathaway and Walt Disney.
Nor are the children alone on this score. Amid our abundance, the accoutrements of monarchy no longer inspire quite the way they once did. So the gilded carriage that once symbolized the height of fashion and authority as it clattered through the streets of London now carries about the whiff of Gilbert and Sullivan.
These disloyal thoughts return amid news the queen has started to devolve responsibility for the throne to her eldest son, Prince Charles, in what is being called a “gentle succession.” Certainly it is an improvement over transitions in earlier centuries, when an inconvenient king or queen first had to be dispatched before a successor could wield the royal sceptre.
But the larger question it provokes is this: Can a king survive an age lacking majesty?
When I posed this question to a British friend, he responded like Lord Grantham of “Downton Abbey” explaining to his Fenian son-in-law why we don’t go around blowing up castles. The gist of his answer is that, under Queen Elizabeth, the monarchy has opened up enough to satisfy the demands of a public that wants to humanize its leaders while preserving the unique role the monarch plays in British constitutional life.
Under Elizabeth, the monarchy has indeed been all that. What’s not clear is whether Charles can pull off the same. That’s partly owing to his disposition, but it is equally owing to the pressures and impulses of the very different age monarchs now inhabit.
In his day, Shakespeare spoke of awe and majesty “wherein doth sit the fear and dread of kings.” And there’s the rub: majesty.
These days the king no longer inspires fear and dread. And while royals have always had their indiscretions, they had them before a day when cellphone snaps of a naked Prince Harry at a Las Vegas billiards party go viral and everyone gets a peek at the crown jewels.
It’s not just Britain. A century ago the Japanese thought their emperor divine. And though people in some non-Western nations have good reason to fear the consequences of displeasing their monarchs, as a rule the march of modernity has not been kind to the claims emperors, sultans and kings — not to mention their subjects — once took for granted.
So what’s a royal to do? In Britain, part of the answer has been to build good will with good works. And it’s largely worked. Not only have such works helped make Queen Elizabeth a beloved figure, they’ve surely undercut any republican hopes to deprive her of her functions as head of state.
Which has been her great contribution. Too often these functions are dismissed as “ceremonial.” It is true the powers Elizabeth possesses are more formal than actual. But indirect authority carries its own power.
Whether it is opening parliament, traveling as head of state or meeting with the prime minister, the British monarch serves as a living link to the nation’s history — and a national symbol that transcends partisan politics, in much the way the flag serves for Americans.
My suspicion is that only after the crown has been abolished shall we learn just how vital this role has been — and how much wisdom and effort it requires. For restraint and reserve are under-appreciated virtues in our young century.
As for the Prince of Wales, his campaigns on topics from global warming to alternative medicine suggest the reign of Charles III will see a monarch determined to be much more engaged on the issues of the day.
The irony is that in her reserve, her studied neutrality and her appreciation of the dangers of indulging too much of the demand for familiarity, Queen Elizabeth may have shown herself more of a modern monarch than the son who will succeed her.