Strikes. The cost of living. The NHS crisis (if it still makes sense to distinguish the crisis from the institution at this point). It’s fair to say that few people looking ahead to 2023 see very much for Britain to look forward to.
But there is one bright spot on the national calendar: the King’s coronation. Especially now that His Majesty has publicly rejected calls from various quarters to pare the occasion down.
“Fans of The Crown may recall the young Prince Philip urging Elizabeth to abandon the pomp and splendour of her own coronation”
The reflex for a humbler, more self-consciously ‘modern’ ceremony is, to some extent, understandable, as Harry and Meghan – who wish above all for a private life – continue to wage their very public campaign against the monarchy from California. It is also perennial: fans of The Crown may recall the young Prince Philip urging Elizabeth to abandon the pomp and splendour of her own coronation, lest the Windsors end up sharing the unhappy fate of the Greek royals.
It was also suggested that the undoubted decadence of the traditional event, full of robes and presentations of gold and the like, would be inappropriate while the country is in the grips of the cost-of-living crisis – and that the King’s failure to pare it down somehow undermines “his concern for poverty, inequality, struggles of workers, etc”.
But this, along with the usual handwringing about whether or not the monarchy is sufficiently relevant to modern Britain, misses the point of the institution entirely. Gutting the pomp and ceremony would strike directly at one of the major instrumental cases for the Crown and it would have been a dereliction of duty for His Majesty to do it.
Why? Because the monarchy has evolved into one of the United Kingdom’s only repositories for national ritual. There are scant occasions when the British state puts on its very best face – the Trooping of the Colour and the State Opening of Parliament, for example – that do not have the sovereign at the heart of them.
