Their motto says it all, in pre-Windows pre-Dynasty Norman French: Honi soit qui mal y pense — or, in modern colloquialisms: Don’t f**k with us — or we will fight with you. It’s true that the late queen played it nice: Since the glorious revolution of 1688—which, lest you forget, was followed by an English revolution, a vicious civil war (one in 10 Britons died) and an unsuccessful attempt to restore an absolute monarchy—The British sovereigns have been left with largely negative potential. Required to recognize the legitimacy of governments elected by increasingly broad franchises, they are also required to sign into law whatever statutes are put before them. Walter Bagehot, the eminent constitutional theorist of the late 19th century, put it this way, that the monarch has “the right to consult, the right to encourage, the right to warn”. What she or he does not have is the ability to say what the law of the land is – let alone the ability to enforce it. Thus, after the disastrous interwar period—with its great social upheaval and the abdication of a monarch who favored brute sensibility over constitutional niceties—the House of Windsor was in dire straits. The Queen’s father, George VI (in the English aristocracy, the “stand-in” rather than the heir), fought a good if silent war, leaving the stage clear for his daughter to ascend the throne. everything the second half of the 20th century had to offer in terms of dangerous political events. Indeed, it was the third of the late Queen’s prime ministers, Harold Macmillan, who, when asked by his then home secretary, Rab Butler, what posed the greatest threat to a politician’s career, received the terse reply: “Facts, dear boy. Events.” It was the Queen’s political genius to rise above the facts which have been brought down to sublunar politicians—whatever government was in power, true blue or potentially red, she had previously been careful not to express a spark of party feeling. Peter Hennessy, the most refined constitutional theorist, proposes the “good chaps” theory of British governance, which is: In the absence of any written constitution, what prevents the de facto British electoral dictatorship from being populist and run amok is the “good chaps » who hold the highest state offices. “Their motto says it all…Honi soit qui mal y pense — or, in modern colloquialism: Don’t fight with us — or we’ll fight with you. “ Thus, if the British prime minister is primus inter pares (first among equals), their monarch is the Supreme Good Capital. The Queen had an hour each week with 15 holders of the highest office in the land, starting with Winston Churchill. On Monday of this week, hours away from her death, she accepted the resignation of a prime minister and appointed the next one. If, by some strange gesture, he told Boris Johnson what a disappointment he had been – and vowed to Liz Truss, his successor, not to screw things up in a similar way – we will never know. Johnson conspicuously failed to be a good buffoon (including on one occasion when he struck the sovereign, which is lèse-majesté in its purest form), and that was his downfall. but whether the British political class can continue to be good chumps (and chumps) now that the Queen is dead remains worryingly contentious. The younger ones, confused by the mystique of the queen, would do well to reflect not only on the constitutional niceties, but also on the eroticism of her power. When I was a boy in the 1960s, there was a published survey showing that the vast majority of British men had had sex dreams about the monarch. She was a flamboyant – no doubt about it, and she carried that ‘halo effect’ into everything else she did. Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip, Prince Charles, Diana Princess of Wales and Prince William stand on the balcony of Buckingham Palace.
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When Diana Spencer shocked the establishment by speaking out about the infidelity of the then Prince of Wales, it was the Queen who received public sympathy. No one questioned the parentage of a sovereign who managed to raise a child who thought it was fine to marry a publicly recognized 20-year-old “virgin” while maintaining a long-term relationship with a married woman – any more than anyone has questioned the parentage of a sovereign whose second son, Andrew, has been accused of having non-consensual sex with a young woman offered to him by notorious serial sex offenders Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Even Harry and Meghan’s shenanigans and Oprah podcasts failed to crack the Queen herself. This just goes to show you what a good kid the British public thought Elizabeth was. As to whether this aura of irreverent propriety will carry over to her first-born son, King Charles III, the jury may well be out – but the soundings suggest that British body politicking is in a particularly calm mood. The Andrew/Epstein snafu has – in my view – kept the establishment below the waterline: If the Queen’s main political strategy was to stand out from (rather than surf) the zeitgeist, her greatest social skill was to persuade British that the Windsors were somewhat of a strange analogue of the typical lower-upper-middle-class British family. Love of dogs and horses, breakfast cereals served in Tupperware containers, determined philistinism (the Queen Mother failed to recognize TS Eliot when he was actually in the room with her reading The Waste Land aloud) and – despite the rumors of Phil the Greek — the historical monogamy. These were weapons she wielded skillfully throughout her 70-year reign. But her 73-year-old successor is neither so easy on the eye — nor so flawless. Infamously caught by phone hackers telling his then-mistress, Camilla Parker-Bowles, that he wished he was her tampon, the new king suffers from a kind of positive ability: There’s not just this whimsical sexual passion (which, personally, I find rather endearing), he has also spoken very loudly and probably very often on all sorts of controversial topics – from the looming environmental crisis, to the conflict between Christianity and Islam. (A particularly important and sensitive issue given that the monarch heads the Anglican church in England, and we also have a significant Muslim minority.) “The Windsors now have to deal with a burgeoning Black and South Asian British community who, for the most part, have little time for their ‘inclusive’ attitude.” Prince Charles (as he was) moved decisively to banish his brother, the Duke of York, as soon as the full compass of the charges against him became clear. He also spoke of his desire to see the British monarchy slimmed down – with the supernumerary princes and princesses no longer on the public payroll. That’s insightful — but is it insightful enough? He ascends the throne at a time of maximum political and social rift in Britain, and while he may say some of the right things, his personal lifestyle (which includes having his toothpaste squeezed onto his brush by one of his many valets), speaks of a man who embodies Oscar Wilde’s dictum that England is “the home of the hypocrite.” As I said at the beginning: Americans who wish to do their Ruritanian kicks with all the performative pomp and circumstance that will unfold over the next week or three, as one monarch is buried and another is saluted, would do well to consider this: We live here, and that is a vital part of our government. While any number of polls might suggest that the British monarchy is held in high esteem among its subjects, the constitutional arrangement they enshrine has never been more threatened – by the aftershocks of Brexit and resurgent Irish nationalism, and by the Scots’ desire for schism, as Well . And of course, as a quintessentially post-imperial dynasty, the Queen set a great personal record in running the Commonwealth—that re-emergence of empire that allowed her to pretend to global dominance. The Windsors now have to deal with a burgeoning British Black and South Asian community who, for the most part, have little time for their ‘inclusiveness’. The Queen and Prince Philip on the Walkabout.
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King Charles III’s mother had nominal determinism on her side: In England, the myth of Queen Elizabeth the First remains a powerful element of our perennial perception of ourselves as a merry kingdom where, despite hereditary monarchs and landed gentry , our social relations remain organic and equal. Charles, by contrast, follows two namesakes widely regarded as representing the zenith of monarchical fraud. The Dining Room—from whose window Charles I stepped on the scaffold—is still in Whitehall. Charles II managed to die in harness — but his successor James II of England was driven into exile. It is perhaps these tragic ancestors that the new king should consider, despite his intelligent, charismatic and irreplaceable mother.
