Following the death of Elizabeth II, power is performing its truths, transforming princes into kings and dukes and children into princes. But as the British state becomes less legitimate, these processes are losing their potency. The late Queen is revered across the world but the monarchy itself has lost its magic. Charles is King, but the monarchy will not be what it was.
Monarchy was never above politics. It rested on it and on the Conservative party in particular. This was the party of the monarchy, the union, the constitution, the established churches and the empire. In 1936, it disposed of a king emperor who offended its bourgeois sensibilities, thus redirecting the royal line of succession down to King Charles III. It was a Conservative government of the 1950s that redefined the monarchy as a national rather than imperial one. A then-imperialist Enoch Powell, in his tilting at the royal titles bill, was appalled, but to no effect. In time, he would become an ardent nationalist, dismissive of empire as a passing phase and the Commonwealth as a racial danger to the nation.
