Charlotte Grimshaw is an Auckland author and critic.
OPINION: In the interests of research, I sent messages to England. Had anyone else found moments in the coronation of King Charles III exquisitely funny? Word soon came from London, “Yes, we laughed and laughed.”
There followed an extensive comparing of notes. The funniest moment, it was agreed, was when the Archbishop of Canterbury was screwing the crown onto the King’s head. There was a twisting movement, a ramming down and a final stooping check of the handiwork. Poor King Charles, by this time swathed in mad finery, visibly anxious and struggling with his baubles, looked as if he might faint. You could imagine the archbishop whispering, “Stop fidgeting, man!”
The height of the crown did it for many of us. Along with the mystifying royal oven glove, it looked far too much like a tall chef’s hat. When Camilla received hers, and was forced to adjust her fringe, her crown, once screwed on, appeared to be taller than the King’s. Some of his subjects were in hysterics by this time; in fact, one laughed so hard she banged her head against the wall.
There had been puzzlement at first about the airline stewardess with the low neckline and the sword. Was she supposed to be there, in her racy outfit, among the religious men in their party hats? She turned out to be Commons Leader Penny Mordaunt, but her true value lay in her appearance from nowhere, like an incongruously sexy impostor. She really worked the role with the raised weapon.
It was a powerful display of ancient culture and heritage, the kind of spectacle the British do so brilliantly. That King Charles looked utterly miserable and worried only emphasised the magnitude of the occasion, and the awful burden he carries. The poor man brightened once the formalities were over, and even gave a bleak little smile. His look of oppression and his squirming made you realise how perfectly his mother the Queen had achieved her air of opaque inscrutability. It is clearly much harder to pull off than it appears.
Comparing notes, we discussed the protest and dissent from Londoners, and the demand for an apology from indigenous peoples for the harms of colonisation. We agreed that King Tūheitia’s meeting with King Charles made an odd juxtaposition: the indigenous demand for a Crown apology along with the embrace, from Māori, of the same concept of hereditary superiority.
The Kingitanga movement was a way to unite Māori tribes, but it risks having the same inherent flaw as the British system. If you decide that a person is superior by birth, you potentially end up with representatives who haven’t earned the role, and who are likely, based on the law of averages, to be unimpressive and unprepossessing. And why is the idea of superiority by birth not as abhorrent and unacceptable as racism?
I revere British culture (Shakespeare, etc) but the country could have done with a revolution. Having lived in London on and off since I was a child, I’ve always been aware that the British class system is genuinely nasty.
Kiwis do well as unranked outsiders, treated as hilariously provincial and insanely informal (we play the role of cheerful village idiot: our mass haka, our exuberant friendliness). But British class snobbery regards those below as inferior, marked by the wrong accent, and ranked accordingly. It’s toxic, and the royals are the embodiment of it. I always marvelled at my British mother-in-law’s ability to overlook the fact that the royals (that uneven, banal lot) would have identified her, by her accent, as vastly inferior.
I prefer the robust American attitude. Because of history, no effs given.
