by K.H.
illustrated by Charlie To
The recent death of the last monarch of the UK, Queen Elizabeth II, and the rise of a new one – King Charles III – has brought an end to the era of untouchable monarchy, rekindling discussion about the role of the monarchy in British society. Specifically, we must question the cultural personality cult of the monarchy. Its institutional dominance over much of the British press, and its prioritisation by our public institutions such as the BBC in the face of serious crises (such as the war in Ukraine or the cost of living crisis) raise legitimate questions about the future role of a constitutional monarchy for our nation.
If you were not in the UK or one of the Commonwealth states when Queen Elizabeth II died, you may not have noticed the mass hysteria that broke out in the immediate aftermath of her death. Utterings that the Queen was dead, or was going to die shortly, had been spread around very quickly when Buckingham Palace had announced the Queen was under ‘medical supervision’ in the early afternoon of the 8th of September. When the official announcement came in the early evening, major British journalists, much of the public, and almost anyone with a political career swiftly issued their condolences to the royal family via their preferred social media network (mostly Twitter). The news switched immediately to near 24/7 coverage of the Queen’s life and ‘achievements’, at the expense of informing the public of several major news developments being covered globally. In the days that followed, insidious policing of speech took place around the topic of the monarchy, with protesters being arrested or harassed by police for holding up signs or heckling. In one particularly extraordinary instance, a man was approached and effectively threatened by police in Parliament Square for holding up a blank sign.
Liz Truss, the new Prime Minister who had been appointed just days earlier, gave a very brief speech announcing the period of national mourning, with few further details at the time. Despite planning for this event since as early as the 1960s, which is officially titled ‘Operation London Bridge’, it seemed that nobody really knew what ‘national mourning’ meant. Elizabeth II had ruled for so long and become so ingrained into our culture, that there were few people in the room who had overseen the last transition.
Even republicans (democratic, rather than American) will admit that the Queen’s death was a historic moment. Elizabeth was monarch for nearly the entire post-war period (70 years and 241 days to be exact), witnessing many drastic global changes during her tenure – decolonisation, the rise of the internet, the end of the Cold War, and the passing of a major pandemic to name just a few. As a national institution, something resilient in the face of global technological, political and social revolution, we can and should respect its astonishing longevity.
However, despite our admiration, we should also look to reject the exceptionalist myths that the monarchy perpetuates. Britain’s press-and-public obsession with the dramas of the monarchy, and the internationalised nature of this drama, sustains a brand which is fed back to us through cultural tropes. When people think of Belgium and Sweden and Norway, they rarely – if ever – discuss their monarchs, focusing instead on their high quality of life and moderate political cultures. Yet when I speak to people new to the UK, I am invariably asked about the monarchy. Even now, on my exchange year in France, I was confronted with several other students awkwardly attempting to give me their sincere condolences for the Queen’s death. Emmanuel Macron perhaps demonstrated it best when he said that she was considered ‘The Queen’ by much of the world.
How did this totemic image of the monarchy come about? Undoubtedly, the monarch’s rule over the remains of the empire gave her a sizable population base to work with. While not all states in the Commonwealth accept the monarch, her name-recognition nevertheless persists. Given that the role of the Queen was largely symbolic, allowing our political traditions to be defined by a debate with little actual consequence but large cultural significance is a foolish trap to have fallen into. We have romanticised not only support for the monarchy, but our opposition to it too. Like Mark Fisher noted in his seminal work Capitalist Realism, we now cannot imagine a Britain without the monarchy.
This romanticisation of the British monarchy has taken deep root internationally. At the same time as being a usually progressive state – fighting for gender equality, international stability and human rights – Britain simultaneously maintains an elitist system of wealth, symbolic power, and tradition. We’ve become a land defined by a monarchical brand, not a modern nation state composed of equal citizens determining our fate. This myth and brand of the monarchy is woven throughout international fantasies of our political systems, throughout our tourist attractions and our school lessons. It has thus proven an excellent feat of global marketing, crudely manufactured in the furnaces of the British and international press.
As we look to the political and social future of the UK, we must realise that the past 50 years have been dominated by a widely-accepted form of cultish nationalism that has invaded our political and social ideals. The present crises we find ourselves in have been shaped by this exceptionalist mindset – consider the Brexit fallout, the ongoing financial crisis, and the dominance of the Conservative party by a far-right faction as examples of how the monarchy has been appropriated as a brand to parade our special nature as a nation. The Queen’s death potentially marks a turning of the tides; while the majority of Britons still favour the monarchy under Charles, the makeup that hid the cultural and social flaws of the monarchy has undoubtedly been running. For those of us sympathetic to the republican cause, we must realise that the problem with the monarchy is no longer just political, but more a deeply entrenched cultural problem. How can we plug the hole that the monarchy will leave behind?
