This weekend, someone has been asked to reign long over us, because they – that’s the royal “we”, not a pronoun indicating gender-neutrality – have the right blood. An archbishop, using an anointing spoon, allegedly drizzled them with holy oil, custom-blessed in Jerusalem, made to a secret, ancient (but this time, vegan) recipe. “Allegedly”, because the actual anointing – unlike, say, the moment the first human stepped onto the Moon – was too magical for muggles to watch on telly, so we just had to take it on trust.
It must have seemed less strange at the last coronation. While the royal “we” was unique in 1953, it was quite common to refer to yourself as “one”. In the post-war United Kingdom, one was not an individual in the modern sense. If one were male, one would be called up, which might mean a couple of years fighting communist rebels in the Malaysian jungles, one’s choice in the matter was non-existent. Only one in 400 marriages broke up; a divorced mother, of whatever class, was dubious. If one’s husband got physically violent, one just got on with it.
