Royal Ritual, Archetypes, and Sovereignty
I’m neither a monarchist, nor a particular royal watcher. Of course, as a Canadian I know that Queen Elizabeth II is technically ‘our’ queen, too. ‘God Save the Queen’ was on regular rotation as one of the three anthems we sang to ritually start the day in elementary school, along with ‘O Canada’ and ‘The Maple Leaf Forever’—which, as I recall, also contained a line about god saving the queen.
As a kid born on the Prairies, who’d never actually seen a live maple tree, the Queen probably made more sense to me as a symbol, than the leaf. At least a Queen showed up as a mythical and universal figure in all the fantasy stories I read. A leaf of a tree that doesn’t grow where I live was, by contrast, mere Laurentian presumption.
Like many women my age, I remember exactly where I was when I watched the apparent fairy tale wedding of a certain Princess Diana on TV, and where I was when I heard the news of her tragic death on the radio. There were odd ways in which her high profile dramas mirrored those of a mere commoner like me. I remember that her death felt personal—as though I had survived to come of age, when she hadn’t. I wasn’t quite sure how that came to be.
But pretty much since the cradle, I’ve been taught the equality of all persons in the eyes of love and justice, the separation of church and state, of moral value from political systems. I’d call someone ‘your Majesty’ if I had to, I suppose, but I’d be doing the inner eye roll while I said it.
I’ve never known quite how to slot the concept of kings and queens, princesses and duchesses into that world view—no matter how much I admire the gown they’re wearing. I don’t even follow the gossip for entertainment. With the women, in particular, it always just strikes me as the legacy media up to its usual depressing racquet: tear down a potentially powerful sister poised to leverage her privilege to do some good in the world, so that you have something to sell. (And sometimes, the sister is complicit). Boring, silly human tricks.
Yet ritual always fascinates me. As spectacle and entertainment; and also as one of the ways the people come together as a collective, and generate a shared story. Especially if there is community music, and costumes. From a performer’s perspective, I can’t resist.
So I found myself drawn this past weekend to some of the rituals centred on an Archetypal figure of our times. First the Service of Thanksgiving at St. Paul’s, then to the various balcony scenarios with the royal family, and finally, to the evening concert held outside Buckingham palace.
Sure, I’m forced by my inner scholar to take any utterings from the King James Bible with a grain of salt—especially if they are the words of Mr. St. Paul—and the sight and sound of Boris Johnson, his hair in its usual state of disarray, quoting scripture at me is LOL comedic level stuff. But it’s not so much the details of the ritual that matter to me; it’s the form that gets my attention.
There is a clear beginning, and an end. There is intention, gratitude, and pledging of service. There are the words of the people, and the figureheads chosen to guide them. There is costume (those fascinator hats! the Bishops’ regalia! those poor little boys in the lace choir collars!), procession, human voices in song, coronets from the famous balcony, representatives from around the globe, all contained in one of western culture’s most stunning architectural achievements.
Even the words of the pledge of the Commonwealth held some power to move me: if only all the elites gathered in that place would take them seriously, and with humility.
And at the centre of it all, The Queen. A modern symbolic head of state for many countries, a holdover from our bloody and contentious past; a mysterious Archetype upon which we might project our need for a moral centre, the hungry ghosts of unmet parenting, our rage against unjust systems and colonization, our hopes for goodness in the world, our desire to contribute honourably.
A real human being who likes horses and corgies, a WW2 veteran who was thrust into a magnitude of service she couldn’t have anticipated through the unlikely event of an uncle abdicating, and who appears—whatever other opinions one holds—to have taken that service seriously.
I was intrigued by the final balcony appearance of the royals, which until the last minute, the media had been uncertain would include the Queen. As the band struck up the national anthem and thousands of people raised their voices, as the royal family members facing the crowd sang along (a phenomenon I have always found rather odd) I noticed the reaction of one little girl.
Princess Charlotte-- only a few years younger than I was when I first watched her late grandmother’s wedding procession—was the only member of the family to turn and look at the Queen while she was singing. If I was imagining a story, it was that she was making a visceral connection between the song she no doubt sings every day in school, the adulation of the crowd, and the real person she knows as her great-grandma. It appeared, for a moment, that she was singing ‘to’ the Queen, not ‘about’ her.
In that unscripted human moment of a highly scripted weekend, I felt like I caught a glimpse of the future behind the curtain—of the inevitable and not-distant departure of this particular queen, and alongside, the fading of our archaic human capacity for projecting leadership on those who are, after all, only human beings.
We can debate the relative value of various political structures: constitutional monarchy, republic, monarchy, non-hierarchical collective, communist dictat, plutocracy, anarchy.
We can also debate the solutions for supporting human life to thrive in a changing planetary environment, a predicament that the Windsors and others alluded to multiple times in this past weekend’s footage.
But it’s hard for me to imagine that the challenges of the 21st century and beyond can be met by focusing on the sovereignty of another: by continuing to thrust both our collective ills and our collective goodness onto other human beings that we perceive to be either inherently better, or more unfairly privileged, than us.
If you admire the Queen’s 70 years of service, then by all means leverage that inspiration to be of service in your own sphere of influence.
If you blame the Queen, the House of Windsor, her ancestors and European relatives for all the troubles of the modern world, then by all means work to right the wrongs of history, and re-align the collective into somewhere you’d prefer to live.
But I can’t see any of us doing any of that, without mindfully encountering the archetypes of leadership that visit on each of us--without activating the potency of our inner sovereignty.
We can no longer look to the strong human being outside ourselves as a hero, arch-villain, moral centre, scapegoat to blame, or beacon to follow when we are lost.
The time for that is passing, and past. The utility of it—if there ever was such a thing—is fading, fast.
My perusal of the ritual footage on youtube ended with a concert outside Buckingham palace, kicked off by a former rebel rock group called Queen, now invited to headline a royal performance, perhaps (more than a little) tongue-in-cheek.
The people in attendance, chosen by lottery and joined by a possy of dukes & duchesses, princes & princesses, ill-coiffed prime ministers & visiting dignitaries sitting in the box, looked to be all enthusiastically singing along .
From ‘God Save the Queen’ to ‘We Are The Champions. . . of the world.’
g-d save the human beings of the 21st century. May we each know and act from our own sovereignty, may we champion kindness in our small spheres, may we generate a collective song of harmony, in the true spirit of ‘common wealth’—that is, the common good of all beings.
Curiousity. Communication. Creativity. Community. Current. Contribution. Join our little gang of Rabl Rousers. Let’s harmonize, together.