The line of people stretches more than 5 miles long. They will wait up to 35 hours, in the rain, to get a glimpse through a narrow 2ft window of the dead queen in a closed casket. The men will bow, the women will curtsy, and they will move on to keep the line moving. They won’t see her embalmed face, just the draped coffin with flowers piled on it. A million people want to see the corpse in the coffin. Only 350,000 will be allowed. This is why the streets have been lined since last night.
I ask myself: are these the people who gave us the magna carta and the British constitution which inspired the bill of rights and the American constitution? How do they reconcile the medieval hereditary birthright of primogeniture with their meritocratic system of self-governance? When Elizabeth was crowned queen, in the 50s, around a third of people in Britain believed she was directly appointed by God. The Protestant God, that is. Do they still believe that royals are appointed by God?
All week the Western world has been watching the comings and goings of the 96-year-old body. Most recently it arrived to Westminster Hall for the final three days of public viewing. This was proceeded by the procession that took the body to Edinburgh for an earlier public viewing. The cortege carrying the royal embalmed body arrived at the palace of Holyroodhouse in the Scottish capital of Edinburgh last Sunday after traveling the 100-mile journey from Balmoral Castle, the royal estate where the queen died. The convoy carrying the body had slowly snaked through the hills and forests of the Scottish highlands. The route took the body through villages and towns which were lined by her majesty’s “subjects.”
The world then watched the body get on a plane to London.
The London crowds lining up to sleep in the street overnight in order to have a 10 second viewing of the dead bring to mind pharaonic funereal traditions. I feel as if I’m living in prehistoric times. The multitudes have been in line since dawn and will wait till 5pm tomorrow. This is because, as a 50sth year old woman waiting in line explained, when interviewed, the queen has been the mainstay in their lives. The age old justification for the primacy of the past over the present is this: stability. In honor of the validity of the past, two million people are expected to attend the royal funeral in London.
Does the past justify its own permanence? Does the ancient regime justify our devolution back to the Dark Ages? Is this what Justice Alito meant when he reasoned that abortion isn’t legal because it hadn’t been in Puritan times?
Look at these photos: Because royals don’t deign to be buried underground, the golden coffin is lined in lead in order to keep the body from liquefying too fast. The queen’s coffin weighs 710 pounds. The pallbearers practiced for months walking in step while lifting so much weight. I feel sympathy for them. They are meant to be honored to lift this weight all over the country at the forefront of this over-the-top pageantry. I can’t help but think that millions of people die in wars precisely because they have been successfully brainwashed to this extent.
The multiple daily costume changes undertaken by the new King Charles bring to mind the overrated King Tut show I went to see some years ago. Tutankhamen, dead c. 1323BC and discovered by a British lord in 1922, struck me as all pomp and no substance, a waste of resources. The pharaohs’ worship of themselves was meant to teach us, the people, that it is our ancestors who give us our value. Can any idea be less democratic? Isn't this why we waged the American revolution? So why is American TV bombarding us with blanket coverage of the royal funeral? What was the point of the American revolution?
The British Crown represents the continuity of antiquated arbitrary rights won by violent means long ago: the right of rule, the right of conquest, the right of succession, the right of precedence, the right of one family to rule over those they conquered for as long as they convince others of that right. The right to rule by self decree and to enforce mono-civilization.
The British Crown replaced the Roman Church that replaced the Roman Empire. The British Royals took on the rituals of the Christian Church which had taken on the rituals of Ancient Rome. This is what the wars of Europe were fought over: (Catholic or Protestant, Roman or Orthodox) control of the church. The Church controlled the faith of millions.
The old costumes and pageantry that we are watching on TV, dating from thousands of years ago, are being used to convince us, the public, that select first-born members of a select family maintain the right to rule, or at least to matter more than everyone else, in Europe in the year 2022. Last month we watched the prime minister get kicked out of office a day after he received a vote of no confidence. The royals don’t get voted out of office for they represent the glory of European Kingdoms of the 15th century.
The British Crown knows that it is an anachronism. King Charles, the first monarch to have a university degree, knows that his perks are a historic scam. Like any PR machine, the crown produces seductive spectacle and mind-blowing pomp to assure its absurd perpetuation.
We are all, as news consumers, asked to carry around this dead weight of inherited insanity and pass it forward to future generation. It is heavy and ludicrous. We don’t protest the obsolete hierarchy it alludes to because nostalgia is a powerful emotional motivator, driven by the mass delusion of centrally engineered cultural misinformation.
Nostalgia is not a positive feeling. As a Greek, I should know. My national identity has been stuck between 535 BC and 323 BC.
Yes, the danger of willingly submitting to an institution which reinforces social class stratification. Broadcast on US television because US elites love royalty and its function; to justify their own unwarranted imperialism and plutocratic entitlement. Thanks for such a reasoned expose of that toxic dynamic.