gracchusdixit

The death of the longest reigning monarch in British history, Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor, has been remarked upon so often and so expansively, that to add even a word may seem superfluous.  Her elaborate funeral was watched by who-knows-how-many millions and, if you will pardon a tasteless expression, has been analyzed to death.   It is perfectly reasonable to ask:  what more can be said?

One answer is that the passing of this surpassingly ordinary woman, who was thrust onto the public stage by a perverse accident of history, cries out for more serious judgment than the simpering platitudes of so-called “journalists” who make a living by gushing over every trivial detail of the comings and goings of the British royal family.  The death of Elizabeth Windsor is more consequential than all that.  In fact, her death is more consequential than her life.  The passing of Elizabeth II signifies more than the passing of a particular person, it marks the final milestone of an entire age.

On her 21st birthday, in 1947, then Princess Elizabeth visited South Africa with her sister Margaret and their parents.  As the heir to the throne, the princess was called upon to make a radio address to the British Commonwealth and what remained of Britain’s dwindling Empire.  Toward the end, she declared:  “My whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family, to which we all belong.”  

These bravura words have been quoted so often that they might well serve as the late queen’s epitaph. I have little doubt that they were sincerely meant and even nobly intended—just as I have no doubt that Elizabeth Windsor was a decent person who tried, throughout her long life, to do “the right thing,” at least as defined by the standards of the time and world in which she was brought up.  

The important questions, however, do not concern Elizabeth herself.  They concern that time and that world, challenging the political institutions she embodied, the social system she symbolized, and the enormous injustices produced by both.  Elizabeth Windsor’s responsibility for those injustices is more substantial than is commonly realized, not because she deliberately chose to do wrong but, rather, because she dedicated her life to a political institution—the monarchy—that could not help but do wrong.

Unlike most of the other democratic countries of the world, the United Kingdom has no written constitution.  Rather, its governing principles are a congeries of traditions, customs, and practices cobbled together over time, venerable, to be sure (which in Britain is no small thing) but not binding in any sense that the rest of the world would call “constitutional”. 

That is where the monarchy comes in.  

The Victorian political journalist Walter Bagehot famously described Britain’s unwritten constitution as having two parts, one “dignified,” the other “efficient”.  The “efficient part,” he declared, is Parliament, where all real political power resides.  The “dignified” part is the monarchy, the role of which is to provide enough mystical pomp and circumstance to hold an otherwise fractious nation together.  If one is prepared to accept this thesis, the United Kingdom, without a written constitution to go by, is left to depend entirely on the political equivalent of magic, with the monarchy being the magician.  

The problem with magic is that it can quickly turn into voodoo, with consequences more malevolent than benign.  Which is precisely the problem now confronting the British monarchy.  When all the pomp and circumstance come to an end, when all the made-up “ancient” ceremonies and rituals are stripped away, what is left is an institution that cannot be justified on rational, democratic, or moral grounds.  The British monarchy is the apex of a social and economic pyramid that is both anachronistic and fundamentally unjust.  

Before he became King Charles III, Charles Phillip Arthur George Windsor was not only Prince of Wales but Duke of Cornwall, a gift from his mother the Queen that gave him an annual income of more than £20 million.  Whatever you may think of the way Charles has spent this largesse, he did nothing whatsoever to earn it.

The revenues of the Duchy of Cornwall are nothing more or less than the product of a thousand-year-old theft, which began with the invasion of Britain by William, Duke of Normandy, a hooligan descended from Scandinavian Vikings whose stock in trade was rapine and rampage.  That a crime is a thousand years old does not make it any less a crime.   By what moral standard should a violent act of medieval conquest be accepted as the governing principle of a modern nation?

As with Charles, so with much of the British aristocracy, whose wealth and privileges go back centuries but are completely without justification in the modern age.  Consider the example—take a deep breath and try not to laugh—of Richard Walter John Montagu Douglas Scott, who is simultaneously the 10th Duke of Buccleuch and the 12th Duke of Queensbury.  

This “double Duke” is a rarified decoction, with a pedigree that goes back to William the Conqueror, an education at Eton College and Christ Church, Oxford, and a hereditary seat in the House of Lords, not to mention that he is a first cousin of the late queen.  “Richard Scott” owns more than 200,000 Scottish acres and five “country houses,” which you or I would probably call “palaces,” has a net worth of more than £200 million, and enjoys an annual income even greater than the bounty provided to King Charles by the Duchy of Cornwall.  For all this, the “double Duke” does little more than sit on the boards of the various charities he patronizes and a commercial company the sole purpose of which is to manage the fortune he inherited.

Don’t get me wrong.  I am not suggesting that the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensbury is a wicked person any more than Elizabeth II was anything but a decent person.  On the contrary, they both seem to be, or to have been, entirely decent people.  Personal decency, alas, does not justify the fundamentally unjust system such people exemplify and, however unintentionally, help to perpetuate.

A few days ago, we were presented with a starkly different example of not only personal but public decency from the last remaining European queen.  After 50 years on the throne, Margrethe II of Denmark decided to do away with the princely titles accorded to those of her grandchildren who are not in direct line of succession, on the grounds that they should be free to get on with their lives without the expectation of royal privilege.  

There was, as you might imagine, a howl of protest from the parents of those grandchildren—who, I might add, have chosen to live their privileged lives in Paris rather than Copenhagen.  Confronted with their outcry, the monarch of Europe’s most egalitarian nation apologized for hurting the feelings of her second son and his family but held firm:

My decision has been a long time coming. With my 50 years on the throne, it is natural both to look back and to look ahead. It is my duty and my desire as Queen to ensure that the monarchy always shapes itself in keeping with the times. Sometimes, this means that difficult decisions must be made, and it will always be difficult to find the right moment.

If the British monarchy hopes to survive, if Britain itself wishes to shed the burden of an unjust and anachronistic past, both might heed the wise advice of a humble Scandinavian monarch by shaping a future “in keeping with the times”.