"Are you a monarchist?"

I was asked this a few years back by an eminent British historian just after the Brexit vote passed.

This was at a conference dinner, after I'd presented a paper on the intersections of theatre and the imperial cultural colonialism project of the English monarchy in early modern Ireland. The whole thing was about how King Charles I (r. 1625-1649) sent his viceroy (or the person to rule in his name) to Ireland to try and get the people there to become good little English-ish people. Part of that project was trying to use the theatre to show the Irish how, through the metaphors and allegories of plays, that England was simply the most superior in every single way, so why wouldn't you WANT to be a good Protestant part of it? They built the first purpose-built structure to serve as a playhouse in all of Irish history, the Werburgh Street Theatre in Dublin. It didn't stay open for very long (just until the Irish Uprising of 1641) but even by the end of its short, less than a decade tenure, the theatre was being used to showcase an entirely different sense of national pride - a play, written by an Irishman, performed in Ireland, and allegorically celebrating Ireland.

This endeavor did not go well for England.

It didn't go well for the viceroy, Thomas Wentworth, the earl of Strafford. His head was removed from his body via axe in 1641.

It also didn't go well (along with a lot of other things) for Charles I, who also found himself a head shorter than before in 1649.

This conference that I was attending is one that attracts a lot of historians who look at how Britain has changed or was changed by interactions with the rest of the world. So naturally, there were many there who were fascinated by the British monarchy.

I'll say it - I am an American (I know, you're so shocked). As a child, I loved Princess Diana and her kindness and grace. I've been interested in the Tudors and all the stories of the kings and queens who came before and after them. At first, it was because of all the stories of the glittering balls, the finery, the drama, and the longing for that particular kind of grandness. Americans don't really have that sort of huge-scale ceremony or ritual, so it's interesting to see it works in other places. The closest we come is the presidential inauguration.

So I get it. I get being attracted to the shiny things like crows. I am one of them.

And then I studied. I read book after book after book, written by experts who had devoted years of their lives to similar study. I learned.

Monarchy is a shit system of governance. It is the unaccountable individual, ordained by a deity, making all of the decisions for an entire realm - matters of heart, ethics, conscience, economics... everything. Sure they have advisors because that huge of an undertaking cannot be managed by a singular person. I largely study English/British monarchy, but every now and then dabble in French and Spanish histories.

What we're seeing here, today, in what is left of the United States of America, does not harken back to our English ancestors. Even in the days before William the Conqueror (in the 1000s), the king was not the only power. Even if he didn't like the laws and would work to change some of them to his liking, there were still laws that even he had to follow. He had a witan, or a council (William later had a 'curia regis' which is a fancier Latin way to say the same thing), that would advise him and remind him of the laws. Yes, sometimes laws would get changed, but that meant that even the king (though he could shift things for his own personal gain) was still constrained by them (though less than the regular person). Laws held power. Eventually, laws came to be represented by the people in Parliament, which was an eventual outgrowth of the witan/curia regis.

In England, Parliament and the monarch have had an inverse relationship. When one is weak, the other is strong. This could change within a dynasty or even with a singular king's reign. The Tudors, generally, held the upper hand in their dealings with Parliament. Henry VIII could strong-arm Parliament into doing whatever the hell he wanted and Elizabeth I could achieve similar ends though less obvious means (she was a lot smarter than her dad and had to be craftier because she was a woman). Their successors, the Stuarts, had a very different relationship with Parliament. James VI/I started off... okay. James and his son Charles had this belief of the 'divine right of kings' which was a British version of absolute monarchy. It didn't really fly in England. Charles I's relationship with Parliament was an utter disaster. Parliament refused to spend money on sending troops to fight in the Thirty Years War on the Continent (even if it would have been to aid Charles' incredibly-popular-in-England queenly sister, Elizabeth, the winter queen of Bohemia). So Charles said, 'okay, you don't want to give me money? That's fine, I just won't summon you for eleven years. Y'all have fun.'

And he didn't. For eleven years, he found creative financial loopholes to keep the government afloat without calling Parliament. Then things went to hell in Scotland and he needed more than sustaining funds to keep the government running, and after an unfortunate series of events, the Wars of the Three Kingdoms broke out and Charles lost his head to extremist Parliamentary forces.

Parliament ruled then for about eleven more years without a king (sorta. Cromwell was king in all but name), and it was shit enough that members of the nobility and Parliament secretly invited their late king's son, also conveniently named Charles (he became Charles II), to return from exile to England and to rule. He did, and he's known now as the Merry Monarch.

England learned from this that (and while things MAY have changed in the centuries after) they want to have that focus of the pomp and circumstance that a ruling monarch brings. They like having that person in charge as a check on power, but they also need Parliament which represents the will of the people, to be able to have a sufficiently loud voice as well. It was Charles II's niece, Anne, who was the last British monarch to veto a bill passed by Parliament. It doesn't mean that Charles III, sitting as he does now as king, can't still veto something... but the balance of power has shifted in England to swing towards Parliament and the monarch largely sits as a figurehead and scapegoat. There is still a lot of soft power behind the scenes that we aren't privy to, but the task of setting the laws of the realm falls to the people's representatives – the House of Commons.

So no, what's happening now is not alike to British kings of old.

What is happening now is a fever dream inspired by a French king and Emperor, Louis XIV and Napoleon. Louis XIV was a king who ruled in a France that had a very weak system of representing the common people and he wasn't held to any system of laws other than his own whims. One of his most famous quotes is " L'etat, c'est moi." Or, "The state, it is me." Now, this is likely just as truthful as the "Then let them eat cake" that Marie Antoinette did not say, but just like with the later quote... there's an air of truthiness to it. It jives with what we'd imagine they'd say. Louis was an absolute monarch and his word was law.

Napoleon was a military general who crowned himself Emperor of France. Even Louis didn't have the gumption to do that.

As I posted on Bluesky, the creating of a monarch is a bit of a social construction (a fuckery, if you will). You have to declare yourself a king and then get enough people to agree with you and treat you as such. Usually, these monarchies get started with a person coming from an unassailable position of military strength. Usually, this person is also well respected by that military. Once you prove you're the strongest, you work to stay that way, and bring the rest of the people who follow you along for the ride.

A rising tide carries all ships.

It's your job to keep their faith by continued shows of strength and by making their lives better so that they want to keep you around. Before long, you and your family become myth and legend and the future generations look to keep some of that mystical bloodline around because it brought good things in the past. Tradition.

If you don't do that - you end up deposed like Matilda or Richard II, murdered in your sleep like Henry VI, defeated in battle like Richard III, or a head shorter than you were before like Charles I or France's Louis XVI.

So to answer the earlier question - no. I am not a monarchist. I study it now because history doesn't repeat, it rhymes and to be able to pick out the similar cadence, you need to know what the original was. I believe in the values of what this country aspires to be - and what we can and should be striving and fighting for every single day. All men are created equal. We should all take it upon ourselves to be as informed and aware a populace as we can be, to be better able to fulfill our own sacred ritual duty - voting and participating in the democratic process to ensure that our government is one of the people, by the people, and for the people.

May it not perish from the earth.