The Century of the Common Monarch

By Malcolm Muggeridge

For a British perspective on the monarchy today, TIME asked the views of one of that institution's most seasoned, if skeptical observers, whose notable career as a journalist, author and television pundit has been punctuated by stints in government service and as editor of Punch.

In the somewhat seedy bar of the Exiled Monarchs' Club--always assuming that such a club exists, in Lisbon, say, or Monaco, or even Florida--they must surely be raising a glass this week to drink the health of Prince Charles and his bride, Lady Diana, and marveling how, alone of the larger monarchies, the British model should have survived and be in so flourishing a condition as to be able to mount a royal wedding with all the panache of olden times. It often seems as though our British monarchy, along with our secret intelligence service, represents the only appurtenance of national greatness still extant. And even the intelligence network, it must be admitted, has of late been showing unmistakable signs of decomposition as the moles and countermoles surface and then disappear.

Up to the outbreak of the 1914-18 war, Europe was largely ruled by hereditary monarchie. German kings and princelings providing, as it were, the stud farm that kept the breed going. The ruling monarchs were often kinsmen, brothers and sisters, aunts, uncles and cousins, whose family relationships were a factor in international diplomacy. In those days, Prince Charles might well have found himself leading to the altar, instead of his charming English bride, some outlandish princess whose charms were more dynastic than bodily, and whose English was rudimentary.

By the end of the 1939-45 war, this royal scenario seemed at last to have wound itself up; the kings, if not the captains, had departed, and their courts dispersed, with an occasional sometime highness or excellency making his way to Hollywood in the hope that expertise in matters like ceremonial and uniforms might secure him a job in the studios.

As for the members of the surviving dynasties--the Dutch and the Belgians, the Swedes and the Danes--they managed to find a modus vivendi largely by effacing themselves: riding bicycles, using public transport, marrying commoners and generally behaving like senior civil servants rather than anointed kings and queens.

The British monarchy took a different course. Instead of effacement, what befell it was exposure; just as the new Communist states called themselves people's democracies, it became a people's monarchy, with full media support and cooperation. Earlier monarchs, like Louis XIV of France, saw themselves as God's viceroys on earth, deducing therefrom the doctrine of the divine right of kings, and claiming not just to represent, but to be the state--"L'etat c'st moi!" Today no such claim is feasible; authority cannot be derived from a God who is supposed to have died. So an abstraction, the people, had to serve instead, providing the basis for an ersatz religion, and an even more preposterous claim than Louis XIV's--this time to be the people:

Le peuple c 'est moi! Thus the 20th century, for Americans the century of the common man, became for the British the century of the common monarch, whose position depended, not on divine right or any other sanctions but on personal charisma.

In this connection, it is significant that televising the coronation of our present Queen in 1953 marked the beginning, not just of her reign but of the reign of television. Now she may rest assured that the nuptials of her son and heir will be seen all over the world, attracting more viewers than even Muhammad Ali at the top of his form in the ring.

Despite this universality of interest, it is true, of course, that in terms of power the British monarchy has shrunk drastically from its high point in 1876, when Queen Victoria was proclaimed Empress of India, delivering herself of the opinion that this represented the brightest jewel in her crown. At that time she ruled over something like a quarter of the world; today the realm of her great-great-granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II, is reduced to one of the two British Isles and a troubled and troublesome corner of the other, along with some vague and dwindling responsibilities in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, formerly known as British dominions. As for the great British Empire on which the sun never set, it has continued to have some sort of ghostly reincarnation in a ramshackle British Commonwealth on which the sun never rises. Lady Diana as Princess of Wales will find, despite the royal yacht Britannia and the miscellaneous collection of potentates who attend her wedding, that she is marrying into what has now become a home-based dynasty, even though spirited renderings of Land of Hope and Glory continue to be heard, with its special plea that God who has made us mighty will make us mightier yet, and set our bounds wider still and wider. Meanwhile, year by year in the Honors Lists, new knights, commanders, officers and members of a nonexistent British Empire continue to be announced.

Aristocrats and landed gentry, the monarchy's infrastructure, have, rather surprisingly, managed to relate themselves to the new people's establishment and thus find a role for themselves in it. Their stately homes attract an endless procession of visitors, who, at so much a head, spend an hour or so staring at their pictures, admiring their grounds and, if possible, peeping into their living rooms at the crockery and books made notable by having been held in noble hands.

Then there is the House of Lords, which by all the laws of the game should have been abolished long since, but, like the Abbe Sieyes in the French Revolution, has managed to survive, though stripped of most of its powers, in part by receiving a steady inflow of life peers and peeresses. Happily, superannuated trade union bosses, co-op managers and the like, when they find their way into the upper house, look and speak more like lords than most lords do. Also, attendance has been greatly enhanced by the introduction of a per diem, tax-free expense allowance, payable to all lords who turn up, irrespective of whether they have spoken or merely dozed in one of the bars.

If noble lords can be worked into the structure of a people's monarchy, where is its laureate to be found? The official poet laureate, Sir John Betjeman, does his best, but cannot easily switch from his accustomed gentle irony to the suitably adulatory celebration of a royal love match. Here, however, fate has been kind; Lady Diana's step-grandmother Barbara Cartland has written some 300 successful novels in which the hero and heroine, after some troubled times, marry and live happily ever after. Now 80 and buoyed up by honey and vitamin pills, this estimable lady still turns out several thousand words a day, and altogether seems to be perfectly cast as laureate extraordinary in the century of the common monarch.

In these troubled and changing times, only fortunetellers, Marxists and Jehovah's Witnesses will venture to prognosticate whether Prince Charles and Lady Diana will actually one day mount the throne as King and Queen of England. In the course of 50 years of knockabout journalism, I have seen too many upheavals of one sort and another to feel any certainty about anything or anyone in the decades ahead. Popularity, however seemingly strong and widespread, can evaporate in an afternoon, and institutions that have lasted for centuries disappear overnight. So I can but conclude by simply saying, "God bless the Prince and Princess of Wales." --By Malcolm Muggeridge

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