II. The Monarchy
Kings are not born; they are made by universal hallucination.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
A land where kings may be beloved and monarchy can teach republics how they may be free.
VILDA SAUVAGE OWENS
The monarchy is the crowning anachronism of British society. It stands virtually unchallenged at the summit of that society. In this most political of Western nations, one eternally bubbling with new ideas on the ways and means by which men can govern themselves, the thousand-year-old monarchy is admired, respected, or tolerated, but is seldom attacked. A people who on occasion can be as ruthless and cynical as any in the world preserve close to their hearts a mystic symbol that asks and gets an almost childlike loyalty from millions.
This tie between Crown and people is the basis for the monarchy's existence. Yet, like so many other things in Britain, the tie is almost indefinable. Its strength is everywhere and nowhere. History is one of its foundations, and the sense of history—a reassuring sense that worse has happened and that the nation and the people have survived—is very strong in Britain. Yet the present institution of monarchy has little in common with the monarchy of 1856 and still less with that of 1756. And the extreme popularity of the royal family has developed only in the last eighty years.
The reasons for the monarchy's popularity today are far different from those of the past. It is regrettable but true that some of the most popular monarchs earned their popularity as much by their vices as by their virtues.
By our American standards the British monarchy is very old, although it does not compare with the same institution in Iran, for instance, where kings reigned seven centuries before Christ. Certainly the age of monarchy, linking modern Britain with the forested, lusty, legendary England of the Dark Ages, contributes to its popularity. Age in an institution or a person counts in Britain.
Queen Elizabeth II is in direct descent from Egbert, King of Wessex and all England, who ascended the throne in 827. The blood of all the royal families of Europe flows in her veins. Among her ancestors are some of the great names of history: Charlemagne, William the Conqueror, Alfred the Great, Rodrigo the Cid, the Emperor Barbarossa, and St. Louis, King of France. This notable lineage is unknown to millions who adore the Queen. The visible expressions of adoration and loyalty to the royal family can be profoundly moving, but there is nothing to suggest that the crowd's memory stretches back much further than George V, the present Queen's grandfather.