...the title of which I ruthlessly pirated from this LGM post discussing the mix of assumptions, illusions, and legal fictions required to gain and maintain sovereignty.
In this case, of Great Britain
As a person I have - no, really, I'm not kidding - absolutely no opinion one way or another on monarchy as an institution in general and the British "royal" system in particular, other than it seems slightly more nonsensical than most human social gimmicks.
You're my boss because your mom and dad were my boss?
Get the fuck out.
But as We the People seem bound and determined to prove, the "Will of the People" can produce equally ridiculous results (Empty G? That you? Siddown and shaddup, girl.) so, well, okay. You be you, Brits. You want some king? Knock yourselves out.
That the current occupant of the throne of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Scotland, and (a little bit of) Ireland seems to be a doddering old goof whose beliefs include a pottage of nonsense and crunchy granola nature-fakery (along with some genuinely sensible love of nature itself...) seems unimportant to the big picture. The job is kind of central to the idea, not the person who does it.
This picture itself says it better than words...
The goofy hat and gold cocktail frock that encases the old white guy IS the king. The old white guy is just the dressmaker's dummy that holds it up.
The Brits want that? Fine. Not my circus, not my gold-encrusted monkey.
What made me think about all this mummery was turning on the television last Sunday morning (looking for the "other" British thing I think about, football - okay, "soccer", anyway...) and the first image that emerged out of the dark was this:
First, no question; the British do this whole "gorgeous, tactically useless, military spectacle" thing better than anyone. Part of it is the outfits; they've had centuries to get the dress uniforms right, and their Class A's (Number One dress? No, the Wikipedia tells me that the formal name is "Full Dress") are fucking sharp as a razor.
(Don't take this the wrong way; there's military and morale value to that "useless military spectacle". A soldier who looks and feels badass, whose unit looks badass, might well be more badass when the military chips are down.
Modern warfare often makes your own combat power invisible. In a world of artillery and tac air to be seen is to be hit and hit to be destroyed, so we do our best to disperse and hide ourselves.
So there's a value to be had in stepping out on parade, looking good and feeling strong. Illusion? Sure! But there's a sort of "dress for the job you want" to it there, too. And the British have got that shit down cold and hard. Drill Sergeant Lawes was all swoony.)
Second, and finally, though, it drives home the ironic point that kings (and presidents and caudillos and juntas and congresses and so forth) are, at bottom, what they are because they're hedged about with those marching troops.
The "importance" of those rulers, in a national and international sense, is almost entirely dependent on all those soldiers and sailors and fliers in their pretty clothes that marched down the wide mall to the pretty palace last Sunday.
Them - and their gajillion guns and tanks and trucks and hordes of ginormous battle ships and aircraft and bullets and missiles.
But in Britain? Now? Pretty soldiers and sailors and fliers on parade?
That's all this king has left.
The massive armies and fleets they symbolize? The storms of bombers? The sort of real military power that those big blocks of marching men (and now women) once meant? The temporal power that made the "King of Great Britain, Scotland, and Ireland" someone who had to be reckoned with?
Gone.
Modern Britain is a geopolitical afterthought. Not quite Andorra...yet. But no longer any sort of real global economic and political power alongside the real Greats.
And that's fine in a human sense. You can have a good and satisfying and happy life in Andorra as easily as in a Great Power. More easily, frankly, than in some - Russia or the PRC, I'm looking at you. For many of us in this Great Power? There's a cost to all those tanks and ships that might otherwise go to our lives.
Ask some poor sod in a leaky tent down by the Cut in North Portland how that works.
Watching the pretty marching, it occurred to me that habits of thought are as difficult to break as habits of body.
We think of "The King (or Queen) of England" as Somebody, a person of consequence, because there's still all that Stuff; palaces and crowns and fancy golden wagons. But mostly because of all those marching soldiers and sailors and fliers.
That's how they became kings and queens back in the day, right? Because they were the bosses of armies and fleets of the baddest motherfuckers around. Because swords (and rifles and cannon and missiles) hoicked them onto the Iron Throne and, beyond all laws and rules and customs, when push came to shove, kept them there by naked force, against all enemies foreign and domestic.
The U.S. president, the Russian premier, the Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party?
Those people still have that power.
King Charles III?
Does not.
What makes that interesting is that we just talked about a time when that job, and the person who did that job, did have that power. When all those marching guys really did symbolize a scary badass guy's imperial reach, the mailed fist at the end of a very long royal arm.
Not anymore.
So if I was British I'm not sure but that Sunday morning might have felt really odd, like I was taking part in a MMORPG, a sort of Great Power cosplay.
All those gilded coaches and gorgeous uniforms and soldiers and sailors right out of the Empire?
In the words of Bashō:
natsukusa ya
夏草や兵共がゆめの跡
tsuwamono domo ga
yume no ato.
That is to say;
Waves of summer grass:
All that remains of soldiers’
Impossible dreams.
So as not to end this silly rumination on a serious note, here's the "Wins the Internet" comment from the linked LGM post:
"*hushed Huw Edwards voice:
"And now the Rt. Hon. Capt. Penny Mordaunt RN, PC, MP, acting today in her role as Moistened Bint Peculiar, proceeds down the aisle carrying the magnificent Imperial State Scimitar which she will then lob at His Majesty in a part of the ceremony dating back to the time of King Arthur."
