Until her death last week, Queen Elizabeth II had been the only Queen of England in my lifetime, and I'm getting on in years.
She died at 96, so one can hardly curse the fates about her demise. She was entitled to Rest.
Near the end, she was unable to leave Scotland and go to London to play her part in the transition from one Prime Minister to the next. the two PMs, outgoing and incoming, had to come to her. This was a big clue to the extent of her frailty. Still, the end came as a shock when it came.
I am an anarchist, but I salute her. She carried herself with grace through difficult times, in impossible situations, and as the Mum of an impossible family, a characterization by which I mean emphatically to include the new King.
The new King did not HAVE to call himself Charles III. Tradition allows for the adoption of a different "regnal" name. But Prince Charles went with remaining Charles even as he becomes King, and now the third King of that name.
This is odd. After all, the earlier two Charles' were both Stuarts, and both were Absolutists. One of them had head severed from body because of his absolutism, and the other one (who had his moment of triumph when the regicides couldn't run things on their own, and the Stuarts were restored) soon over-reached on his own behalf and set in motion the events that would lead to another revolution, and the end of that dynasty. Charles II is the foppish fellow pictured above.
With THAT history, it is little wonder that no one else has called himself Charles, that the world has had to wait until well into the 21st century for the Charles III.
Strange family, these Mountbattens. (Should we call them that now?)
Mountbattens? Certainly not. I seem to recall that Her late majesty but a stop to such nonsense by formally pronouncing the family name as Windsor. Nothing wrong with having German ancestors, of course, but our present king also has Scottish, Anglo-Saxon, French, Dutch and Hungarian ancestry, to name a few. But, most importantly, for the past 300 years they have been avowedly British.
ReplyDeleteAnd for a little more than 300 years, no one has reigned with the old Stuart name Charles. Heck, the new King could have taken the name Henry IX, harkening back to the Tudors. That would have been kind of neat.
DeleteInsofar as his is, and will be, a titular monarchy, it matters little what family name he goes by. He may mean something nostalgic to the people of England but ruling authority is minimal. The previous comment makes a good point, I think. Charles has had his own rocky road to traverse. It would be a resounding departure if he, as reigning monarch, actually did something useful for his country. But, what would that be? Haven't the foggiest...
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