The momentous task for King Charles III
by Melanie Phillips:
With the Queen’s death, might a Britain of priceless value also be passing?
At every stage of her final journey, vast crowds have lined the route to stand in silence as her hearse has slowly passed by.
Now her casket — draped with the royal standard and bearing the crown and a simple wreath of white flowers — rests on a catafalque under the soaring Norman arches of Westminster Hall as the public, in lines snaking for many miles through London’s streets, file silently past, some bowing their heads, many in tears.
The new King Charles III, who has been visiting every constituent nation of the United Kingdom, has touched many with his visible grief, his expressions of love for his mother and his pledge to emulate her example of selfless public service.
The word that springs to mind from these affecting scenes is devotion: the late Queen’s devotion to the people, and their devotion to her.
Devotion, of course, has a religious significance. In largely secular, godless Britain there is a strong element of the sacred in this relationship between the people and the Crown.
The monarch in Britain is consecrated to a higher king. At the coronation — which will take place next year — Charles will be anointed. The oath that he takes is not to the people but to God.
That’s why his duty to serve the people is unbreakable. And that’s why the monarch is a unifying force, and melds the people into a united nation. The royal family helps forge the country into a kind of national family.
Citizens of republics often find it hard to appreciate the benefits of a constitutional monarchy. By enshrining the identity of the nation above and beyond temporal politics, the constitutional monarch acts as a focus for unity often denied to countries that have instead elected presidents as their head of state.
Read also: Don’t just do something, stand there! Can the King we now have dissociate himself from the opinions of the Prince he was? by Tom Forrester-Paton, Harrumpf.com
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