Oath of Allegiance
May. 5th, 2023 01:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smokingbootWe're being invited to take an oath of allegiance to Charlie and his heirs. Invited! As though it's some great favour to serve him! No, mate, no, it's more than enough that I pay for you. That will quite do.
I saw an odd headline last week, something like 'Charles,; a new king for our time.' But kings have nothing to do with their era, they are almost an antonym to zeitgeist. Monarchs are a symbol of the state in its underlying, demi-mystic form, the land unchanging and eternally itself, Semper Eadem. The monarch is the constant, the forever totem, however deficient they may be as a real person. Ours supposedly embody a thread that goes back, back through time, back past Elizabeth II to Victoria, back to Elizabeth I and Henry VIII, back through Edward III all the way to William the Conqueror, and weaving through marriages to Alfred the Great, through him to Cedric the probably mythical, or Wotan the definitely mythical. A strange extraordinary line, a great story. But it's almost certainly untrue, the pedigree breached at least twice as far as DNA seems to reveal, besides, the sanctity of it all leans hard on ancient bloodshed. There's a danger in having human totems; Edward VIII could have handed this kingdom to Hitler if he hadn't taken himself off the board. Yes, his government might have stopped him, but it would have been difficult.
I reckon there's a story in there somewhere, about Wallace Simpson as a time traveller who goes back to stop Edward doing precisely this; she has an affair with him, gets him to abdicate then prepares to flee in her time machine, when a vengeful Nazi finds it and hurtles off to the future, probably landing around the early 21st century. Meanwhile, Wallace is trapped with this strange goggle-eyed demi-virgin when he's shipped off to the Bahamas to live out his days as a perennially puzzled pipe-attachment. Bottom line; Fate is meaner than Time.
Will I watch the Coronation? Don't know. If these shenanigans lighten people's hearts, OK. But while I love mythology I know it for what it is. I get the symbolism that Charles will weave around himself to create a unifying, possibly even spiritual, figure. But the brutal truth is he's just a rich and strangely privileged man. I don't hold these things against him, many on this earth would consider me a rich and strangely privileged woman, but I owe him no allegiance whatsoever. And I an not so delusional as to think that a man before whom nations insist I should curtsey is somehow my servant. The fact that some people genuinely believe this alarms me more than waving flags and having a celebratory beer on Coronation Day.
I saw an odd headline last week, something like 'Charles,; a new king for our time.' But kings have nothing to do with their era, they are almost an antonym to zeitgeist. Monarchs are a symbol of the state in its underlying, demi-mystic form, the land unchanging and eternally itself, Semper Eadem. The monarch is the constant, the forever totem, however deficient they may be as a real person. Ours supposedly embody a thread that goes back, back through time, back past Elizabeth II to Victoria, back to Elizabeth I and Henry VIII, back through Edward III all the way to William the Conqueror, and weaving through marriages to Alfred the Great, through him to Cedric the probably mythical, or Wotan the definitely mythical. A strange extraordinary line, a great story. But it's almost certainly untrue, the pedigree breached at least twice as far as DNA seems to reveal, besides, the sanctity of it all leans hard on ancient bloodshed. There's a danger in having human totems; Edward VIII could have handed this kingdom to Hitler if he hadn't taken himself off the board. Yes, his government might have stopped him, but it would have been difficult.
I reckon there's a story in there somewhere, about Wallace Simpson as a time traveller who goes back to stop Edward doing precisely this; she has an affair with him, gets him to abdicate then prepares to flee in her time machine, when a vengeful Nazi finds it and hurtles off to the future, probably landing around the early 21st century. Meanwhile, Wallace is trapped with this strange goggle-eyed demi-virgin when he's shipped off to the Bahamas to live out his days as a perennially puzzled pipe-attachment. Bottom line; Fate is meaner than Time.
Will I watch the Coronation? Don't know. If these shenanigans lighten people's hearts, OK. But while I love mythology I know it for what it is. I get the symbolism that Charles will weave around himself to create a unifying, possibly even spiritual, figure. But the brutal truth is he's just a rich and strangely privileged man. I don't hold these things against him, many on this earth would consider me a rich and strangely privileged woman, but I owe him no allegiance whatsoever. And I an not so delusional as to think that a man before whom nations insist I should curtsey is somehow my servant. The fact that some people genuinely believe this alarms me more than waving flags and having a celebratory beer on Coronation Day.
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Date: 2023-05-06 12:43 pm (UTC)