Crown Dependencies (with Will Sebag-Montefiore)
Crown Dependencies (with Will Sebag-Montefiore)
Britain can't quit the monarchy. We can't quit our guns.
Tomorrow, for the first time since 1953, there will be a coronation in Great Britain. A new monarch—a king this time—will be crowned. Or, as Private Eye magazine puts it, in its Onion-like special cover, “MAN IN HAT SITS ON CHAIR.” If royal pomp is your bag, it should be quite a show—assuming the racist jackals in the press focus on the presence of Charles III and not the absence of his way cooler American daughter-in-law.
From my vantage point across the pond, the whole spectacle seems ridiculous, in the literal sense of the word—which is to say, worthy of ridicule. Why does one of the world’s leading democratic governments, in the Year of Our Lord Twenty-twenty-three, allow an unelected failson to call himself, with a straight face, king? Why does the medieval charade of royalty endure? We have AI now, mates, we don’t need hereditary monarchs!
Don’t let the crowned jewels and the bombast fool you. Charles is the ultimate nepo baby, scion of one of the wealthiest families in Europe. His fortune was amassed through generations of pillage; there’s a reason they aren’t trotting out the Koh-i-Noor diamond tomorrow. His mother cavorted with Robert Maxwell; his brother, with Jeffrey Epstein; his great-uncle, with Hitler. The Bailiwick of Jersey—a Crown Dependency ruled as a monarchy—remains shady, if not outright malevolent. And “Londongrad” is the veritable money laundering capital of the world, a hub of all sorts of enterprising criminal activity.
Even so, the new guy is pretty milquetoast, seems to me. Consider: William the Conqueror invaded across the English Channel, personally slew the sitting king Harold Godwinson at Hastings, took the throne, and implemented the first modern survey of land and land ownership, the Domesday Book. Henry VIII, who established the Divine Right of Kings, wanted to get divorced so badly, he ghosted the RCC and established the Church of England. Charles, by contrast, requires two servants to get him dressed in the morning.
Even so, if the worst we can say about our friends across the Atlantic is that they can’t quit the monarchy, where is the harm? Let the head of the former House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha have his moment in the sun. Let the country, which has been reeling since BREXIT, enjoy a weekend of prideful unity. It’s not like Americans don’t do things every single day that the British regard with head-scratching bewilderment.
On today’s PREVAIL podcast, I asked my guest, the British actor and (very funny) comedian Will Sebag-Montefiore, about my country’s quirks, and how the U.S. is perceived overseas.
“So I was recently in the States,” he says, “and I was absolutely flabbergasted—and I don’t use that word lightly—by the news that I watched. Because you hear a lot about Fox News and stuff, right, especially with the cases that are happening now. . . I cannot believe that you turn on the TV, on a channel that has ‘news’ in the title, and there’s people just shouting their opinions at you.” Despite attempts by Rupert Murdoch to infest the British airwaves with similar fare, this sort of noxious rage media has not taken root in the U.K. Not yet, anyway.
“We definitely look at the U.S. like we’re a lot better than you. And I think that’s because of a deep-seated English arrogance, but also because we don’t have guns,” Sebag-Montefiore says. “So I think we look at you like, ‘I cannot believe that you still have guns.’”
He continues: “I guess your country was. . . built on freedom. And freedom, I think, means, a) murdering an indigenous population and taking over, but b) means, you have the right to do whatever you want, right? And the guns were an inherent part of that.”
It’s tempting to snicker at Charles and this preposterous coronation ceremony. But what’s more harmful to a society in the 21st century, kings or guns? People in glass houses shouldn’t fire AR-15s.
LISTEN TO THE PODCAST
S5 E11: Succession: The King & Comedy (with Will Sebag-Montefiore)
Greg Olear hits some of the week’s prevailing news topics: the debt ceiling, Tucker Carlson’s racist text, the Paul Stanley thing, and graft on the Supreme Court. Then he welcomes the British actor and comedian Will Sebag-Montefiore for a discussion on the state of British politics, the coronation, doing comedy in 2023, method acting, and “Succession.” Plus: a congratulatory message from the Bank of the Badda Bing.
Follow Will:
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https://www.tiktok.com/@wsebag
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Photo credit: Monarchy-related items I found in my office.
Keep in mind that when William the Conqueror landed on the south coast, Harold was way up north England repelling a Viking invasion, and then a 3 day forced March to Hastings before the battle. The troops and Harold were wiped out before the battle, bad timing as they say. Interesting footnote that Harold would have crushed William if not for the exhaustion of his troops, and the English language would still mainly be bastard GERMAN.
One of my relatives did a family genealogy and concluded that my family are direct descendants of William the C. Ha! People - it seems - still wish to come from noble linages, with few wishing to make conversation about the many peasants making up the majority of their ancestors.
In the future, will the descendants of Smith, Wesson, and Colt, along with Kalashnikov have bragging rights? (They already may, for all I know.) Absurdities upon absurdities abound for the status conscious. We are all from Africa, with humankind arising approximately 300,000 years ago. Will humans survive for another 300,000 years? Would love to travel back and forth in time. . .
What a wonderful, thoughtful writer Greg is. Thank you for sharing your insights.