The coronation of King Charles III is happening at this moment. To see it live, click on the screenshot below. The link also gives a list of sites where you can watch it streaming online. He’s got his orb, his ring (one ring to rule them all), his scepter, and his glove, and very soon he’ll get the Big Crown, full of diamonds and jewels.
He was crowned at about 6:03 a.m. Chicago time. As soon as the Archbishop of Canterbury put the five-pound apparatus on Charles’s head (it took a bit of wiggling), he shouted, “God save the King!”
The moment:
Thank you, but it’s the visual equivalent of too many sweet candies.
You don’t have to watch, you know.
I tried finding a pub without it on at lunch time. Gave up at the 4th pub ; just got my messages and went home.
Round here, you do have to watch it if you want to go out of the house. Haven’t even turned the radio on today – plenty of podcasts instead.
Well, it was very interesting to see Muslim, Jewish, Sikh and Hindu dignitaries brought into the service in a prominent place; as well as to see a Hindu Prime Minister recite from the Bible. But I also wished Christopher Hitchens was still alive, if only to supplant one of the BBC’s narrators and spice up the commentary.
I liked seeing the Orthodox representative; I find the hats particularly attractive.
GCM
You need a matching beard! Interesting to discuss the biology of all this – male ostentation in a lek…..
It was pretty impressive the way Penny Mordaunt handled the big sword, although I’m seeing suggestions that she should have been ruled offside when handing it over
It’s funny how she can handle a big sword, and yet lost the conservative leadership contest to a little prick.
According to reports from a different direction, Mordaunt is an amateur astronomer.
There – don’t let it be said that I never say something nice about Conservatives. Just about their politics.
Glad to see the kid picking his nose while the silly hat goes on the mad man.
Plenty of mad hats on silly people there. I am at Addenbrooke’s hospital with Jez’s sis & ma visiting his poor pa…
I wasn’t going to watch because, usually the pageantry stuff is uninteresting me. then I changed my mind because I’ve never seen a coronation of my head of state before and I will almost certainly only see a maximum of one more.
Unfortunately, I thought it was going to be on Monday when the public holiday is, so I missed it.
There will be plenty of reiterations in the news.
or wait for William’s ! 😉
I wouldn’t make it any better than even money that there’ll be more than one more after this. My guess is that the monarchy is moribund.
What to replace it with? The thing about states is that they are almost always better just left as they are. Moribundity is a feature, not a bug. Muddling through and all that. You Americans were incredibly lucky that you pulled off your root and branch re-org without descending into violence and chaos once the British went home.
From a selfish perspective, if the British abolish the monarchy, it throws us into turmoil. The Constitution says the Queen/King is Canada’s head of state and all the power of the Canadian state flows from that crown of St. Edward that the archbishop wedged onto Charles Windsor’s head. Every police and public health inspector’s badge has that crown on it. Amending the Constitution just to remove the royal references would be nearly impossible given the certain picayune squabbling over what to write in instead. And much of our Constitution is unwritten but powerful conventions drawn from British tradition. If that gets flushed away, a zealous Prime Minister will have no check on his authority at all, save eventually the ballot box.
This applies to New Zealand as well. The Governor General signs off most of our laws as the now Kings representative. The monarchy HAS provided stability. Reforms have also been made with the enactment of the Constitution Act and the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, jurisprudence in regards to the Treaty of Waitangi. IIRC before our switch to MMP from ‘first past the post’ voting system. Also I think these reforms were made to strengthen our independence whilst still within the Commonwealth.
Jeez, hold a periodic lottery and let the winner serve as the head of state for a term of years. You could hardly do worse than the gang of inbred clowns the Brits have right now.
The notion that there is some special hereditary royal bloodline is rank superstition on par with religion. Hell, it’s part and parcel of religion, as Charles’s being elevated to the head of the C of E today demonstrates.
The argument I hear for keeping the monarchy is the same as the “little people” argument one hears from accommodationists in favor of religion: it helps keep the commoners in line.
Well, yes it does. That’s part of its express purpose. When the policeman stops you for riding your bicycle through a red light, the reason you stop is because he has a badge. If you escalate or flee, he can subdue you, but not you him. If you say, “I refuse to identify myself because I reject the authority of the Crown which is a colonial institution”, the cop just sighs and puts the cuffs on you.
Anyway, we get the monarchy for free, The guy on the throne in London has nothing to do with it and there is no state religion here. (This aspect of it seems to exercise Americans more than it does people in countries that actually have the monarchy.). We pay the salaries of the Governor-General and her staff, whom we’d still have to pay if the G-G was chosen by lottery, or on the personal whim of the Prime Minister, which is how she actually is appointed.. But a G-G without the King wouldn’t have the authority of the state behind her because she wouldn’t be the King’s representative. She is not herself our head of state. She merely represents the King in Canada. When she gives royal assent to legislation or grants the PM’s request to prorogue or dissolve Parliament (none of which she can refuse to do), she acts in the name of the King. Yes, it’s a social construct writ large but so is the obligation of the Executive to obey the Supreme Court of the United States.
There is nothing inherently wrong with republicanism and much to recommend it when the monarch is strong and given to tyranny, like making you pay for defending you from Indian raids on the frontier. You made 2 attempts to impose it here, long before there was a Canada. If the British Army hadn’t prevailed, our peasant farmers would probably have gone along and we probably wouldn’t buck you now.
The main worry for the present is having to re-open the Constitution to redefine the very nature of the Canadian polity. There are dozens of well-oiled interest groups including 10 provinces and 632 First Nations eager to get it “right” this time. King Charles’s twit-ness just doesn’t figure in that….unless the British turf him themselves. Then we’re in deep doo-doo.
I’m a Brit, but one who couldn’t give a toss about the monarchy, so I genuinely have no dog in this fight. I can certainly see both sides of the argument, and while I don’t always agree with Leslie, I think he’s right on this.
Ken makes excellent points. Yes they’re an anachronism; they’re a gang of inbred clowns and the notion of a royal bloodline is bloody ridiculous (don’t even get me started on the divine right of kings). In this sense they have no place in a modern society.
However, the stuff about keeping commoners in line is, I think, a very American perspective. British people don’t see it like that at all. Very few born after WW2 (i.e. under 80 yrs old) view the royals with any reverence or even much respect, and virtually no one thinks of themselves as subordinate to them. The last soul considering themselves a supplicant likely died before Napoleon entered Russia. Instead, they are just there, and everything they do, save the monarch’s constitutional role, can be ignored (and usually is).
All that’s neither here nor there though, as what’s important is that the system works. The royals have little in common with most of us, but neither do our politicians. The difference is that, unlike our MPs, the royals are not in it for themselves. They are taught from a young age about the primacy of public service, the constitution(s), and their responsibility to maintain strict political neutrality.
As heads of state they act conservatively, but that is what’s required. We need a safe pair of hands; one that’s impartial, free from party political influence, and not having to worry about being elected for the next term of office. We’ve already elected the liars and hypocrites in parliament, so the last thing we need is another politician inserting their own agenda.
It would take a brave person to want to get rid of this machinery in a hurry. Doing so could easily introduce political and civil stability in nation states hosting some of the world’s major economies (which happen to be situated in locations of great geopolitical importance). Could we be confident that they would arrive at something at least as stable and sensible? And do so in good time, before things went wonky? I wouldn’t bet on it.
I sort of like looking at it just to annoy myself. Then I read this and feel better because it’s irreverent and cheeky and something I relate to somehow. https://www.foxsports.com.au/football/shove-it-up-your-ae-celtic-football-fans-savage-king-charles-takedown/news-story/55b564ece64713d5b9db43224f258693
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Authors:
John Adams
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Franklin
Roger Sherman
Robert Livingston
1776
“I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.” ”
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
1963
References:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Declaration_of_Independence
https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm#
Oi, it’s a sceptre. I mean do there exist any scepters over the pond? And if not, can you use the word?
As Fowler pointed out in 1926, “the American usage is more consistent”, but “we prefer in England to break with our illogicalities slowly”.
Give someone a sceptre & they are a sceptre receptor!
Spell it how you like – it’s still a dandified version of the mace (rock on a stick) that Narmer was using to brain his enemies in Egypt’s Zeroth dynasty, 5000 years ago.
I watched – coronations aren’t that common after all – but in the middle of all the religious mumbo-jumbo I wondered what would happen if there was an openly atheist as monarch!
British military was as impressive as always!
Most of the army was there!
Watch out for the French. Now’s the time to invade!
The troops did arrive at Waterloo 😉
Including the Princess Royal on horse as Gold Stick. ( Sorry, not sure what that means but at 73 she looked magnificent. )
I can’t imagine it would work since the king/queen is head of the church too I think. Plus divine right if kings – Shakespeare told us that bad shit happens when you mess that up. 😄
Heavy is the head that wears the crown. Looked that way, too, when the Arch of Cant popped that monstrosity on Chuck’s noggin.
He’s had all these years to exercise his neck muscles.
Does he use a dummy crown weighted with lead, I wonder?
Oy! I sure hope that tRUMP didn’t see that. I think that I recall Nixon having the idea to dress the military staff at the White House like the palace guards after making a trip to the UK.
Chrissake, Jim, it was bad enough when Trump wanted a full-scale military parade, with tanks and rockets, around the White House the way the Russians have on Red Square to celebrate Victory Day.
I think instead if a sword, they should give Charles a rifle and he should randomly shoot a non royal and declare himself boss if the commonwealth.
Nick Cohen writes from London: “I don’t care enough about the monarchy to want to abolish it.” The institution’s most avid fans seem to be in North America, both here and north of us. Many years ago, on a visit to Salt Spring Island in British Columbia, I noticed that everyone was breathlessly following something or other on the TV. It turned out to be a royal visit to somewhere in Canada.
Visit Quebec and see how it plays there and you might change your mind about how all Canadians view the monarchy.
The Gulf Islands, like nearby Victoria, have a big population of Canadian (and some British) pensioners. Additionally, the old settlers of Salt Spring were Scottish, so there may be a sort of muscle memory of the Stewart kings.
Which is just possibly why the rest of Canada are pro!
I don’t think we are. We were pretty much divided in half since we were surveyed last and that was under QE2. I suspect it’s even lower now.
God Save the King! Oh, [looks around] errr, Long Live The King!
Happy day for those of us who understand that hereditary constitutional monarchy is totally indefensible, and yet it works. Nothing those who choose to elect the likes of Trump or Biden can wipe the smile off my face today. And the cranks who complain about the cost of a coronation during a “cost of living crisis”? The royal family gives hundreds of millions a year to the government, far more than they get back as the Sovereign Grant. Not to mention the £2.5billion they bring in per year from foreign tourism. We cannot afford to go without them! Oh, yes, this coronation cost the same as ONE F-35 jet fighter, which is a sobering thought, not about the cost of a once in a lifetime event, but about the profits made by Lockheed Martin.
I am in favor of keeping the monarchy, both as a tourist attraction and weird tradition, but might I point out that the UK chose to elect the likes of Boris Johnson?
But the general public don’t elect the UK Prime Minister. Their parties do or their own MPs do. Boris Johnson only won a vote as a Member of Parliament for his constituency.
For the Cons, their last election was among the 100-odd thousand Conservative Party members to narrow the ballot from 4 to 2 candidates, who then went to a vote of the Conservative MPs. So that’s about 1 in 600 of the population.
Which is exactly why we shouldn’t be trusted to elect a head of state!
If you stole the money from the peasants, or took it out of the colonies, long enough ago, I suppose there comes a time when you convince yourself it’s rightfully yours.
Europe has real “old money.” On this side of the pond “old money” means your great-grandfather was one of the robber barons from the Gilded Age — one of Mrs. Astor’s famous (though never clearly identified) “Four Hundred,” as chronicled in the novels of Edith Wharton.
When in a news item, the Archbishop of Canterbury proclaimed “may the king live forever” it made me laugh and then I thought, what did he think just happened to his mother…
On the coronation of H.M King Charles III : defender of peoples’ right to hold all faiths and beliefs.
If you watch the coronation service, just after the bit where King Charles is given a Bible there are oaths made.
Archbishop Justin Welby declares that the Church of England is committed to fostering an environment in which all faiths and beliefs can live freely. Shortly after that King Charles declares himself to be a faithful protestant. Then 5 minutes later prays to God that he will be a blessing to all thy children of every faith and belief …. and hopes his subjects will live in gentleness and peace. Next P.M. Rishi Sunak who is Hindu reads Colossians chapter 1 – thus demonstrating religious tolerance ( BBC iplayer video :No commentary- the coronation -sequence from 54 minutes to 1:01 minutes ) T.M. King Charles III & Queen Consort Camilla leave in the Gold State Coach, on the front of which are figurines of Triton which is a Greek god of the sea, the son of god Poseidon and goddess Amphitrite. Triton lived with his parents in a golden palace on the bottom of the sea. Later he is often depicted as having a conch shell he would blow like a trumpet.
In a similar way to which Acts 10 and John 3v16 were able to update Christianity to make it open to whoever believes rather than only the lost sheep of Israel of Matthew 10v5-26, so too has the Church of England made heaven open to all faiths and beliefs — without batting an eyelid. CoE ReWrit of John 3v16,” Whoever believes whatever will have a happily ever after.” It is funny that St Peter wasn’t troubled by the conflict between John 3v16 and Matthew 10v5-26. After the failure of a holy spirit to remind Peter ( John 14v26 ) Satan might have been expected to jumped in and sneer, “What part of WHOEVER don’t you understand ?”