I was reading Hansard and I looked up the entry for Feb 6 1952, the day the former monarch succeeded.
This is the statement.
And His late Majesty’s Most Honourable Privy Council, and others, having met, and having directed that Her Royal Highness the Princess Elizabeth, Duchess of Edinburgh, be proclaimed Queen on Friday at Eleven of the clock by the Style and Title of Elizabeth the Second;
Note the use of the prior titles, for probably the last time… Wonder if Charles accession announcement will also use Prince of Wales.
You’re not alone. People still carry a torch for Diana, and he got a lot of flack for his ‘whacky’ beliefs about climate change back in the day. Of course, he was right.
I actually think in recent years, with a supportive wife by his side, he has conducted himself impeccably.
The only grumblings I hear about Charles are on this message board. We’ve lived with Charles for a long time since Diana died, and we’ve got over it. Perhaps it’s time the rest of the world did too.
it is possible that some countries will decide to not have the monarch as head of state. the interesting bit is what ireland and scotland will do with independence and brexit.
what are they going to call his reign? the other monarchs easily became victorian, edwardian, georgian, elizabethan. charlean? charlen? charlesien?
Ooh, you King John apologists really burn my biscuits! Next you’ll be telling me he didn’t actually suck his thumb and have a cape-wearing snake as an advisor!
Anyway, Maud de Braose, Lady of Bramber, seemed pretty willing to point an unwavering finger at John (and paid the price for it).
watching him at buckingham, poor dude. that has to be so daunting, your mum just died and you go through crowds of people expressing condolences and support. your emotions must be so on edge.
when my mum passed and i went back to work, i dreaded and looked forward to it. i looked forward to the distraction but dreaded the thoughts of sympathy all day. i really appreciated the shoulder pat and nod. nothing being said, just pat and nod.
This is a completely different situation though. Charles has known since childhood that a) he would one day be king and that b) it would be when his Mum died. She was in poor health for much of the last year; the Royal Family does not busk the handover of power. He will have been doing a lot of preparation and rehearsal for this moment. Of course he’s sad but this was always the plan.
Yes. And he has had decades to prepare. His mother was 25*. She hadn’t expected to become Queen so suddenly. He knows it was inevitable and at 73 it’s something one would expect him to understand far more than a twenty something, even one raised in the war.
*Or to put it another way the same time period between Diana’s death and Charles’s accession.
The Georgian era was between 1714 and 1830, when the Hanoverian Georges reigned. The later Georges (V and VII) never really defined an era of their own, and I doubt Charles will get his own Neo-Carolingian era either. But who knows.
I feel that Brits who want to abolish the monarchy don’t fully understand the value they get from the personification of the whole nation, nay Commonwealth, in one non-partisan individual, especially in the exemplary fashion in which the Windsors have handled the job for the last century-plus.
There seems to be a strong human urge to have a King/Queen, despite all the historic examples of why imbuing a single person with unchecked power is a bad idea. Britain’s move to a constitutional monarchy over the last few centuries, with a virtually powerless monarch whose function is primarily symbolic, has given it, IMHO, the best of both worlds: a national symbol for the whole country who can’t start yelling, “Off with his head!”
The magic of this system is that it is based on a thousand years of history. You couldn’t create a monarch in some other country de novo. And it is also based, as I mentioned, on the monarch understanding his/her role and behaving appropriately. If King Charles (or a successor) started advocating partisan positions or engaging in scandalous behavior of some other sort, the value of the monarchy would be diminished. Fortunately, as his mother’s son, Charles knows what he has to do, and it seems William will follow suit in his turn.
But Britons who would like to get rid of the monarchy should seriously consider what they would be giving up, and the stability it gives a country. The partisanship and devisiveness the U. S. has devolved into over the past few decades sometimes leaves me wishing we could have a nice, pleasant, symbolic king or queen here.
