Today King Charles III and Queen Camilla were crowned in Westminster Abbey.
Amidst the cost of living crisis and strikes of public servants for fairer wages, royal experts have announced that the Palace would want to organise a modest affair to avoid seeming out of touch with the people. Slightly overrunning its initial budget of 50 million pounds, the modest affair is now believed to have cost a mere 250 million pounds, which in the context of the King’s private wealth (clouded in secrecy but estimated by the Guardian to amount to almost 2 billion pounds) looks modest indeed.
The cost of course, must also be put in context of what it buys. While some may question the purpose of a ceremony which will not give the King his role nor new powers, it will certainly have included many emotional moments for fervent royalists, while performing its ritual function of delivering some degree of social cohesion as “it stirs up feelings of deference“. In fact, in order to boost the effectiveness of the exercise, TV viewers were supposed to be invited to swear their allegiance to the new monarch during the live broadcast – before a last minute change of heart from the palace, following public outrage.
If you peel back the layers of unionist enthusiasm and the flags and banners waving for the cameras, you’ll find yourself pondering the significance of this moment in today’s world, especially in Scotland. As the role of the monarchy is being questioned in many of the 15 countries around the world which still have the King of England as their head of state, discussions in the United Kingdom about Irish reunification, greater autonomy in Wales, and Scottish independence are reigniting with this occasion.
Sure, the coronation is a dazzling spectacle that mesmerises with its grandeur and ostentatious wealth, but let’s not forget the uncomfortable colonialist traits lurking beneath the surface. The diamonds and other gems adorning the king and queen consort are a stark reminder of Britain’s imperial age, and the presence of dignitaries descending from non-European native populations only serves to bring back memories of a not-too-distant past marked by slavery and exploitation.
Regarding Scotland in particular, the fact that the coronation throne is placed above the ‘Stone of Scone’ or ‘Stone of Destiny’ is a highly symbolic gesture of the asymmetry that continues to exist in the relationship between Scotland and England. Scone is the place not far from Perth where Scottish kings were traditionally crowned, standing on the red sandstone that is now normally kept in Edinburgh Castle. It was Edward I (the same one who would have had William Wallace executed in 1305) who took it to England in 1296 after he defeated the Scottish army at Dunbar. It took 700 years for the stone to be returned to Scotland, in 1996, with an agreement that it would be brought back to London for coronations.
The coronation ceremony, in addition to the proclamation ceremony, highlights the specificity of the Scottish case also and especially on a religious level, since the king is head of the Church of England, but not of the Church of Scotland.
In addition to that, support for the monarchy is significantly lower in Scotland than in England. So instead of watching the royal pageantry, tens of thousand of Scots have been heading to Glasgow today, where a large march for Independence has been organised to coincide with the coronation. Many have also signed the 2023 Declaration of Calton Hill, expressing their support for “an independent Scottish republic built on the inalienable principles of liberty, equality, diversity, and solidarity”.
With preemptive zealousness, the UK government rushed a bill through Parliament just ahead of the Coronation that gives the police new powers to stop and search peaceful protesters and introduces prison sentences of up to 12 months for any activists who block roads, airports and railways. Organisers of anti-monarchy protests have received intimidating letters and many were arrested while peaceful protesting against the monarchy and for a Republic.
Could the grandeur of the ceremonies and the enthusiastic Unionist media coverage reignite a sense of unity between Scotland and England, despite the current strain on their relationship? From where we stand, these opulent spectacles will only serve to highlight the antiquated nature of a ritual that no longer meets the needs of a modern and forward-looking country like Scotland.
In European solidarity
Europe for Scotland team
