Hegel’s Queen #225 (P)

Why are the British so much in love with their royals?

Dear friends of Daily Philosophy,

Not even within the pages of our little newsletter can one escape the events that move the world — but we can try, in the old tradition of philosophical practice, to see them from a different, and perhaps more interesting angle.

One thing that a foreigner like me wonders about when watching the tumult around the passing of the Queen is why on Earth she was (and still is) so popular. The British have, in recent times, made a point of dismantling much of their colonial heritage, toppling the statues of the old, white, powerful men who built the Empire. The royals have, in the meantime, continued to disgrace themselves: from Charles’ “tampongate” scandal and his ruinous marriage that destroyed his wife (Princess Diana having been second in perceived charm only to Princess Leia), to accusations of racism from within their own ranks, to the multiple scandals around Andrew. And still the British public loves them.

How can we make sense of that? And can philosophy be of any help understanding the magnetic attraction of the United Kingdom’s monarchy?

Wax portrait of Queen Elizabeth II. Photo by Mathew Browne on Unsplash

Monarchy as a brand

In a fascinating and ground-breaking paper, Balmer, Greyser and Urde analyse the phenomenon of monarchy as a brand [1]. They distinguish three types of monarchies:

• Divine: Here the monarch is seen as legitimised by God or the Church, which is symbolised by the cross at the apex of their crown.

• Dynastic: By the 15th century, the authors say, the worldly power of the monarch had become more important than their spiritual role. Over the following centuries, parliaments emerged to represent the subjects.

• Symbolic: Finally, in the 20th century, most monarchies gave up their powers and restricted themselves to a symbolic role that was clearly defined by the state’s constitution:

“These constitutions are democratic and recognise the sovereignty of the people. As such, the monarch reigns but does not rule.” (p.143)

But although this progression has been almost universal, there are still clearly perceived differences in both the attitudes the monarchs themselves and in how their subjects view them.

Dutch King Willem-Alexander, for example, is at the same time a full-time monarch and a passenger plane pilot who flew for years for KLM. Princess Auguste of Bavaria is a biologist with the Behavioural Ecology Research Group at the University of Oxford, studying the language of birds. And Queen Juliana of the Netherlands used to bike around the country and shop herself in supermarkets. Balmer et al:

In England, the Scandinavian and Dutch monarchies are sometimes described as bicycle monarchies, meaning it is possible to see a monarch on a bicycle as well as in a Rolls Royce... (p.144, quoting Tarras-Wahlberg)

Balmer et al describe the corporate brand of royalty as being charcterised by “5 R’s”: Royal, Regal, Relevant, Responsive and Respected. Regal here means “acting in a royal manner,” and the other R’s should be largely self-explanatory.

Monarchies differ also in how much they try to adapt to the world around them:

‘For Sweden — With the times.’ To me it means being a monarch in a modern society — that is, to adapt the role by meeting the demands of a changing world. Not being ahead of the times, not being behind the times. But rather being in our time. It’s about sensing feelings and what is right at the time — what the Swedish people wish and expect from a modern monarch. (King Carl XVI Gustaf, quoted in Balmer et al, 148)

Seeing these criteria for a successful royal brand, one cannot shake the feeling that the British royals seem to not even make an effort to get any of this right. With the exception of some ecologically-minded statements from (then) Prince Charles (which have had no consequences in actual legislation or the attitude of the British establishment towards nature), there is little to be seen of the royals as a group being relevant, responsive and respected; the exception being only the Queen herself with the unusual levels of love and devotion she evoked in people. Everyone else in the royal household either fled it as soon as they could, or is perceived as weak, senile, out of touch, a joking figure, or a crook.

But still the people love them. When the Swedish kings and queens die, almost nobody notices. Denmark’s Margrethe II, 82, “immensely popular” (The Guardian), just celebrated her 50th year on the throne. She’s now the longest-serving living monarch in the world, and I just heard of her existence for the first time today. The British Queen’s death, in contrast, sparks a week of worldwide mourning, and every child who’s ever watched Peppa Pig knows her.

So what is the secret of the British monarchy’s success?

Hegel on the monarch’s role

For Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), the ideal government for a state is not, as we would today think, a democracy, but a constitutional monarchy. In Hegel's Justification of Hereditary Monarchy,[2] Mark Tunick explains why this is so: