To Reunite A Fractious Britain

The much-ballyhooed ‘slimming’ of the monarchy and the coronation ceremony itself worked to good effect on Saturday: Charles, his court, Parliament, the Prime Minister, the Cabinet, the executive prelates of the Church of England, Scotland Yard, MI5, MI6, the keepers of the Crown Jewels, the musicians and choirs in the Abbey, and not least, the British Army, Navy, Marines and Royal Air Force were in lockstep, the throngs were camped out, the gilt coaches and their teams rolled both toward the Abbey, and away from it, with briskly measured gait, postillions almost unmoving. The midnight rehearsals of the last weeks and the deeply polished Household Cavalry tack only added to the intensity and dark glamor of the runup.

It paid off. In the doing, the coronation of Charles III was bright, direct, seamlessly formal and informal in turn. In its several major and minor breakings of classic form, the leading prelate, Archbishop Justin Welby, deftly quoted the now-classic Elizabeth II declaration of a lifetime of service.

All coronations are not alike. The last four British coronations occurred in the first half of the 20th century, punctuated in 1953 with Elizabeth II’s, and that celebration was arguably the most well-planned and extravagant of them all, infused as it was with Europe’s post-WWII reconstruction energy, and that extraordinary positivity of the baby boom among the former Western allies. But each of those four coronations, chiefly that of Elizabeth’s father (1937) and grandfather (1901), as well as her own, took the bones of the form set down by the monarchs in the 19th century. Which is to say, that of Victoria, in 1837. This is why it can be argued that Elizabeth’s coronation coronation had a much more direct aesthetic, religious and political connection to that of her great-grandmother than it did to this weekend’s coronation of her son.

As Victoria’s coronation occurred, the Napoleonic Wars were fading in memory and none of the royal houses of Europe had yet been de-fanged by either of the 20th-century’s empire-destroying world wars. In her turn, Elizabeth’s 1953 coronation was a public-funded event — one that had to be signed-off on and budgeted by the prime minister — but it was also very much a private, royal social event drawing upon all of Victoria’s largely German cousins and allied royal houses in France and Spain. As such, it was a grand European expression of the monarchies’ reach.

Victoria’s coronation was the last of what British historians drily call the “botched” coronations, which is to say, nobody, including the 18-year queen, much knew or regarded the stage directions of how they should be arranged or what they should do in the vast Abbey as anything but a general sort of illustration of what should happen. That is just one of the several reasons that the ceremony lasted some five hours, with two dress changes for Victoria and a break for those on stage at a side altar covered with sandwiches and wine. As British coronations go, it was as close to chaos as the principals of the day would like to have come.

Charles III’s coronation had almost nothing of that narrative, save for a few of the Crown Jewels spread out on the Abbey’s altar. It was slick, fast, rather deftly unsentimental and businesslike, and it flew by.

In his main homily Saturday, the Rt. Rev. Welby used the nouns service and servant liberally, not just as found in the liturgy. Welby made a point of building the bridge between the notion power and that of service and the intensely intimate choreography of watching Charles in full gravitas be dressed and addressed with the various objects of power, the spurs, made it 1551, the bracelets, the fantastic orb, the white kid gauntlet, the bejeweled sceptre, each accompanied by a miniature Welby homily, were brought for Charles to receive. The new king himself appeared not unmoved assuming the crown, which Welby fitted, then had to pull off and resettle to make sure it was straight. Charles had a nanosecond of meditation as, and slightly after, it happened. Welby’s well-worn, perfectly flat, trumpetlike voice practially shouted out the classic God Save The King!

William had his turn declaring his allegiance in the always surprisingly bass-inflected Windsor-male voice, reading with his eyes cast slightly to his prompter card to the right, and then, rehearsed or not, kissed his father on the cheek. Thank you, Charles mouthed. Amid the studied pomp, the new king seemed relieved at the family contact.

It’s altogether fashionable to assay against the British monarchy, that’s often done with a view to its obviously difficult colonial epochs in Africa both South and East, in India and Pakistan, and certainly in the Caribbean and the former American colonies where the legacy of slavery abounds. It speaks to Charles’ own study of history at Cambridge and in later life that he has publicly welcomed that debate, and that element, the rather more liberal opening of the royal family and its monarchy to the world, was present in the service as well. He’s a king, but he’s also the product of a robust democracy, and he seems to know that talking it out is key. If as it seems the monarchy is fighting a tactical battle for its relevance, this debate is among the very largest fronts in it.

Put another way, casting the service in the future, there’s quite a rocky road ahead for Charles, Camila, William and Kate. Charles was swiftly out of the blocks at his mother’s death and does ceremony well, and he has in the months since her death been a steady hand at the political tiller, nearly unflappable. He may well be impatient privately, but gone is the petulant public persona. He’s bearing somewhat of a Zen air these days — we have the sense of a man trying to see if a couple of efforts will result in some actual, sustainable good.

The most recent polls have Charles hovering somewhere steadily in the middle, not quite tanking but not quite arcing up either, and the surprisingly brisk coronation weekend just might supply him with a boost in the polls next week. The difficulties are clear and have been for some time: First, although the Commonwealth has certainly accrued membership since its founding, now at 56 countries, there are exits into ‘republic’ status to be negotiated, notably Belize and in the Caribbean. That won’t be an easy test, and Charles will rely on William as a close confidant and wingman for that. Second — to the extent that Britain can be said to be one country — in-country there are sorely needed social and political bridges to be built to communities in need.

Once often roundly stung in the British press for being forever the prince-in-waiting, that half-century or so in public after university was nothing. Now comes the work of stitching it all together.