On the Demise of the British Crown
Some thoughts on constitutional monarchy, at the end of one reign and the beginning of another.
2022 has already been quite a rough year for the various countries in Europe. Now, atop everything else, the British (along with their kindred in the various commonwealth realms) must mourn the loss of Queen Elizabeth II, the woman whose immaculate fulfilment of the role of constitutional monarch helped Britain weather the events of the last 70 years in better shape than it otherwise might have.
So when my British friends mourn for the death of their Queen, I will be sad along with them.
For an admirer of the American Revolution, I have a surprisingly high regard for the British system of constitutional monarchy. Indeed, I think that one of the Revolution’s handful of faults came when American propagandists like Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine exaggerated the role of George III in the colonies’ oppression, viz. a viz Lord North and the other men in Parliament who really held most of the power by the late 18th century.
The upside, at the time, was that doing so gave their enemy a human face, which is a basic task of propaganda regardless of whether the cause in question is good or bad. The downside was that it left every succeeding generation of Americans with an imaginary sense of the superiority of republicanism over constitutional monarchy, and with an inclination to see tyranny mainly in the rule of one, rather than in the rule of a few. (Ironically, it is oligarchy – the force that we were actually fighting in the Revolution – which has also caused our country the most trouble after its independence, especially since the mid-20th century).
The fact is that all of the great American patriots of the colonial and revolutionary eras grew up as loyal subjects of the Crown who believed that their uniquely British style of constitutional monarchy was the best and most enlightened form of government in the world. When they turned against it, it was only after a long power struggle between the colonial legislatures and the British Parliament had convinced the colonists that they were no longer regarded as full participants in the great national project of orderly self-government under a limited monarchy – a project which, ever since 1689, they had seen as their own.
What we got, in the end, was a classic fox-and-grapes type situation – once the Patriots had given up hope of reconciliation with Britain, they began heavily criticizing the British system’s faults (both real and imagined) and they plunged enthusiastically into the project of creating something different.
I am not, of course, suggesting that America can or should go back. As a man of the Right, I believe that each of the world’s nations is best off under a government that respects its own traditions as shaped by its own history. Republicanism is the United States’ natural and traditional form of government, just as constitutional monarchy is Britain’s. But I still have a lot of respect for members of the British Royal Family who take their duty to their country seriously, with the late Queen Elizabeth, and her son, now King Charles III, ranking highly among them.
During a period of 70 years – far longer than most present-day Britons have even been alive – Elizabeth lived perhaps the most heavily publicized life of any human being to date, and she did it with complete stoicism, decorum, and impartiality. (As is well-known to tabloid readers, hardly any of her family members even came close).
Even in a mostly-ceremonial head of state, those qualities can do a lot for the spiritual health of a nation. (Witness, for instance, the extreme emotions which Americans of all factions project onto their presidents; British people rarely project similar emotions onto their prime ministers, because nobody expects the prime minister to be the loftiest and most dignified person in the realm).
For the most part, the duties of modern royals consist of being shuttled around England and the Commonwealth, smiling and waving, and saying (as the late Prince Philip memorably put it) “I declare this thing open, whatever it is.” Yet at the same time, nobody knows how much political power Elizabeth II really wielded, because nobody knows what went on in her weekly private audiences with every prime minister from Winston Churchill to Elizabeth Truss.
Obviously, the Queen would never have tried to push a PM in a direction that he or she really didn’t want to go. But at the same time, it would be naïve to suppose that her counsel wasn’t taken quite seriously, especially near the end of her reign, when her PMs, in comparison to herself, were all young and inexperienced in statecraft.
It is easy for someone with conservative leanings to point out plenty of ways in which Elizabeth’s reign was a disaster for Britain, Canada, Australia, and the other Realms. The ongoing decline of the West doesn’t really have much to do with Elizabeth, but still, despite what the obituaries are saying, it is hard to imagine future historians counting either the late Queen or her son (who, it must be remembered, is inheriting a very messy situation) among the “greats.” Even so, they played the hands they were dealt about as well as could be expected.
And yes, I’m saying that I have a high regard for Charles as well. Even though the tabloids dragged him through the mud over his adulterous affairs in the 1980s and 1990s, and even though adultery is sinful and unbecoming of princes.
One must consider Charles’ background. The people in charge of bringing up the young prince – especially Lord Mountbatten – taught him that he would be happiest if he sowed his wild oats while he was young and spirited, and then (publicly) settled down with a pure and inexperienced wife, chosen for her acceptability to his family.
This was utterly typical behavior for young noblemen for as long as there have been young noblemen, but it wasn’t what Diana (and her fanbase) were expecting, hyped up as they were on modern ideals of a fairytale marriage based on mutual and totally sincere love and devotion. And so their marriage failed messily, both Charles and Diana cheated on each other, and Charles ended up with Camilla again.
Still, I think that Charles himself is less to blame than the people who led him into the ditch. He seems to have been a good-hearted young man, and if he had been instructed either to simply marry the woman he loved without worrying about the politics of it (i.e. what William eventually did) or to remain strictly chaste until his family had found the best match, I think it would have all turned out fine.
As it is, Charles’ relationship with Camilla since their belated marriage in 2005 has been quite solid. And it’s also worth noting that Charles, square that he is, has never stooped to the level of publicly complaining about all of this.
Charles’ political/philosophic views are also quite interesting and nuanced, and since they don’t really fit anywhere on the left/right spectrum, I think he will transition into the role of constitutional monarch rather well.
Charles is a traditionalist, or in other words, a conservative in a more subtle and full-spectrum way that the grandees of the Tory party. The new King is an admirer of traditional art and architecture and a defender of fox hunting, along with herbal medicine, conservationism, walkable towns, and smallholder artisanship/handicraft as an alternative to the ethos of economies of scale and growth for its own sake – an ethos which, however much wealthier it may have made people back in the day, is also largely responsible for the economic fragility and abject foreign dependency that is biting Britain so painfully at the moment.
While Charles has annoyed some conservatives with his positive attitude toward Islam, it’s also apparent, when you look at all the data, that he has a great deal of respect for the more traditional and demanding forms of Christianity, as well as for Tibetan Buddhism (it is worth remembering that, as Prince of Wales, he repeatedly angered the Chinese Communists with his public support of the Dalai Lama). Charles, then, seems to admire a wide variety of religious traditions, so long as they call people to live a life of discipline, and to participate in a cosmic order that is larger than themselves and their private desires.
For these reasons, I think that Charles III will be well-suited for his own small role in leading Britain during the troublesome decade or two in which he sits on the throne.
Still, the problems facing the United Kingdom – like those facing Europe as a whole – are rather large, and most of Europe’s leadership seems to have no sense of its own vulnerability. Perhaps you recall how confidently every European head of government except Viktor Orbán signed on to “economic warfare” against Russia this spring, as if Russia, which supplies most of Europe’s natural gas, was in no position to retaliate? (The Russians, for what it’s worth, have a proverb for this: it is called “trying to frighten a hedgehog by showing it your naked bottom.”)
Six months later, the situation looks very different. Winter is coming. And with heating and electric bills running three to four times higher than usual, large swatches of Europe’s economy are unlikely to survive in their current form.
Even as their economies buckle under resource shortages, the social structures of Britain and its neighbors are buckling under the pressure of a rising generation that has little use for religion, is easily drawn to destructive and intolerant political causes, lacks traditional ideas about work and thrift, rarely marries, does little procreating, makes no commitments which it won’t walk away from as soon as the going gets tough, and thinks that at every turn, the world owes it pity and emotional support. (Just recall Harry and Meghan’s decision to start dragging their family under the bus the moment Meghan realized that being royalty wasn’t quite as perfect a thing as she had expected).
No King can have an easy time of reigning over such a rickety house, least of all a King so limited and circumscribed as Charles III. If a truly strong and effective British leadership will eventually emerge, it will obviously have to emerge elsewhere. Even so, I wish Charles all the best as he begins his reign. And, God willing, he will at the very least have a happier reign than Britain’s first king of that name!
A very insightful essay! I particularly appreciated -- because it was a new idea for me -- that the Founding Fathers' clever focus on a monarch as our oppressor, rather than on a government, useful as it was at the time, has distorted Americans' understanding of the potential contribution of a constitutional monarchy to peaceful democratic social evolution.
It was the great sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset who noted that of the dozen European countries which were democracies at the time of his writing, in the late 1950's, ten were constitutional monarchies.
Some people in countries which have thrown off their monarchies have taken note of what they may have lost, and even hope for their return. An especially poignant case is Ethiopia, which should be leding Africa into modernity, but which is now consumed in a terrible civil war. [https://ethiopanorama.com/?p=154733]
And it's worth nothing that Winston Churchill wanted to preserve the German monarchy after WWI, putting the Kaiser's nephew on the throne. What might we have avoided had his will prevailed!
When the quasi-fascist Spanish dictator Franco died, the Spanish monarchy was restored, along with democracy. And not long after, when ultra-right Guardia Civil officers tried to make a coup, the Spanish king Juan Carlos went on to television and condemned it. And that was the end of that. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Spanish_coup_d'etat_attempt]
What a shame that the French, Russian and Chinese monarchs were too stupid to see which way the wind was blowing, and adapt accordingly!
And as for us Americans ... the time may come when we wish we had our own, home-grown, Elizabeth.