Hello from Philadelphia where the excited natives are counting down the days until Charles III’s coronation. Anticipation fills the air and there is royal swag everywhere: the shops are overflowing with coronation-themed trinkets. There isn’t a single American in this city that isn’t tingling with excitement about Britain’s new king and his glorious crown.
I’m joking, of course: from what I can see from my little perch, the US is mostly ignoring the pageantry taking place across the Atlantic. It wasn’t like this for Queen Elizabeth II: her coronation reportedly “created a television broadcasting battleground” in the US and 85 million Americans watched recordings of the highlights. Queen Victoria’s coronation was also a transatlantic crowd-pleaser: according to a dispatch in The United States Magazine and Democratic Review, a prominent political magazine from the time, the US was infected by “Victoria Fever” and “Queen-mania” back in 1838. A writer, going by the initials ADF, spent a day in Philadelphia – the “birthplace of America” – and declared the city so smitten with the new Queen that it should be renamed “Victoria-delphia”. Everywhere you went, ADF said, there was Victoria-related merch. There were hairbrushes with her picture on, Victoria-themed soap and gloves – even Victoria riding whips. I have thoroughly examined every grocery store in my corner of Philadelphia and I can assure you that there isn’t a single Charles-themed riding whip to be found. There isn’t even a can of beans with his face on.
