It’s a delicate balancing act: Jettison the right amount, and rise to the occasion; cut too deeply, and lose whatever power the ceremony has. But coronations, like monarchies, have had to evolve for a very long time indeed.
By the 18th century, Britain was a constitutional monarchy in which the balance of power had shifted from the Crown to Parliament. In the turmoil of the first Industrial Revolution, and as European monarchies — including the opulent French court at Versailles — were overthrown in waves of political revolution, ceremonies like coronations became an integral part of the national self-image of a country that could incorporate change without rupture, one which had opted for evolution over revolution.
George IV’s coronation in 1821, after Britain’s victory in the Napoleonic wars, was one of the most lavish in British history — an attempt, in part, to outshine Napoleon and celebrate British supremacy, but also symptomatic of the scandalous overspending that made him deeply unpopular. In 1831 his successor, William IV, perhaps sensing the mood, wanted to skip a coronation entirely. He eventually caved to pressure from advisers and agreed to a simpler ceremony with no banquet and a smaller procession. It was still too much for some.
The coronation of William’s niece Victoria in 1838, in the wake of a trans-Atlantic financial crisis, was restrained to the point of being disparagingly nicknamed the “penny crowning.” But it went big in one notable way: Around 400,000 Britons are estimated to have turned out to watch Victoria’s procession; there was also a huge fair in Hyde Park and a fireworks display.
A ceremony that had always been the preserve of nobility started to become more public. By the 20th century, the guest list would make room for members of the middle and, later, working classes. For Edward VII’s coronation, in 1902, workers were given a public holiday to celebrate the event — they still are, this year on May 8.
Elizabeth II’s coronation, in 1953, after years of postwar rationing and austerity and with Britain’s empire already in decline, tried to project a country that was still a global power by inviting representatives of British colonies and dominions. But by the Platinum Jubilee last summer, she was feted not as the head of a global power, but as a symbol of a nostalgic, postwar Britishness that was invoked with a fleet of vintage Mini Coopers and an afternoon tea spread made entirely of felt. It was a lighthearted gloss that, for some, only highlighted the gap between the imperial fiction and the lived reality of modern Britain.
If Saturday’s coronation succeeds, for the 9 percent of Britons who, according to a YouGov poll, care about it “a great deal,” it will be another neat stitch of the thread that ties our present to our past. For the 64 percent who, according to the same survey, don’t care very much or at all, May 8 is at best a very expensive day off.
For Charles III, Saturday is the first big test of whether he can helm a modern, pared-down monarchy that is relevant — or at least not objectionable — to the majority of Britons. St. Edward’s Crown weighs almost five pounds. That’s a lot of weight on one man’s shoulders.
Hannah Rose Woods is a cultural historian and the author of “Rule, Nostalgia: A Backwards History of Britain.”
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