The coronation of Charles III and his wife Camilla, king and queen of the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth realms, occurred on May 6th at Westminster Abbey. About 100 heads of state worldwide traveled to London for the occasion. It was estimated that as many as a billion people all over the globe watched this historic moment. Why do so many care about this anachronism known as royalty?
I got a glimpse while living and working in Eastern Europe. I met an American professor who had been teaching in Sweden. He told me about one of his classes at an elite high school where he was advising the students that they had to be prepared for the future but that they could not know with certainty what profession they would eventually take on in life. A number of the students started to chuckle, and he asked them what was so funny. One of the girls volunteered that there was one who was absolutely positive about what her future career would be. The professor asked how that could be — and she said, “Because I am Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden.”
In the decade and a half I lived in Europe, I had the privilege of meeting Princess Victoria as well as her father and mother, King Carl Gustaf, and Queen Silvia. I also was in the general vicinity of Prince (and now King) Charles when he visited Latvia. To Americans, royalty seems like a ridiculous appendage from the past, but I believe that there is something we can learn from the heritage of royal hierarchy.
What makes the European royalty so special is that they are real people who are sitting high but do not look down on others as much as they seek to better the lives of their countrymen in the best way they can. Princess Victoria, for example, has worked very hard. She was raised from birth to take the position of representing her country to the world. She has had the best education possible, studying in Sweden, France, and Yale University in the United States. She learned business as an intern in agriculture and forestry and also did basic soldier training at the Swedish Armed Forces International Centre. She speaks Swedish, English, French, and German. Yet, she also has dyslexia, as do her father and brother. She suffers from prosopagnosia, which makes it difficult for her to recognize familiar faces. And for a short time, she also suffered from anorexia. She used these handicaps to champion causes for others.
These royals know that they are a living heritage that symbolizes their country, and thus they have to represent the best of their culture and all that their country stands for. Of course, there are media hounds like Prince Harry and his spouse Meghan Markle, the Duke, and Duchess of Sussex, who believe that being royal is a ‘brand.’ These two are good examples of a royal pain in the wazoo.
What Europe has is heritage; what we have is privilege — and it almost all comes from money. Do riches make someone better than one who, from birth, knows they must be an example to their fellow citizens and represent these people to the rest of the world? Or is our own American aristocracy in government, the Rockefellers, the Kennedys, the Bushes, etc., represent their country, or do they represent their privilege as being part of the mega-rich elite? Honestly, would you or I have been able to be intoxicated and drive a car off a narrow bridge and cause the drowning death of a 28-year-old passenger who was trapped inside, and not report it for hours and only receive a two-month suspended jail sentence? The person who did all this and committed this ‘not-a-crime’ in 1969 was Senator Ted Kennedy, brother to President John F. Kennedy. The death of Mary Jo Kopechne probably was what kept him from becoming president, but it did not hinder him from serving in the US Senate for 47 years.
So, do not mock those who proclaim, “Long live the king and queen.” Long live the heritage they represent at its best. In the United States, we have played “Hail to the Chief” since the days of George Washington. What our leaders are to remember is that our country was founded on the principle that “all men were created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.” If only those leading us in our country could remember and represent that great truth.
