A Loyal Address

The Crown, The Queen and how duty beats following your heart every time

It’s a truly romantic story of how a king laid aside his crown for his bride. The woman was not allowed to become a princess. So the handsome prince gave up everything, stepping down from his throne, laying aside his crown to be a commoner. It’s practically the perfect illustration of Christ laying down his life for the Church, his bride. So why isn’t it?

The abdication of Edward VIII may have looked impossibly romantic at the time. The king of the most powerful empire in the world – give or take – was stepping down from the throne to marry Wallace Simpson. There was no widespread affection for this prevented princess. An American divorcee, it was clear the relationship with King Edward began while she was still married to her second husband. It was a scandal.

Moreover, King Edward’s life in royal exile was not spent in continued, dignified, self-abasing service. During the war, he did not really ‘do his bit’. Quite the reverse. Recent historical evidence has shown that the former king would have been prepared to reign on the throne again as a puppet Nazi. He even suggested Hitler bomb the United Kingdom even more heavily in order to bring the nation to its knees. Seriously. The former king was a traitor.

Plenty of books have been written about Edward VIII but in the popular imagination, his portrayal in The Crownas the playboy prince will take some shifting. (In our house, The Crown is pronounced “The Crine”. Try it.)

Edward VIII – or David, as he was familiarly known – is prone to complaining and self-pity. But he’s also rather stylish, camp and catty. That plays well in the jewel encrusted world of pomp, pageantry and privilege. After all, who has more of a right to be a snob than a king?

He nicknamed Queen Elizabeth II ‘Shirley Temple’, for being curly-haired, dumpy and precocious. He referred to Elizabeth’s mother, the Queen mother as ‘Cookie’ The Queen Mother is dubbed Cookie because “she’s fat, common, and looks like a cook”.

We are not invited to feel sympathy for the Queen, especially in the Series 3 and 4, where she is portrayed by Olivia Colman. In these series, she exhibits a worrying, almost sociopathic lack of empathy to the point where the Queen thinks there might be something wrong with her. This is, of course, speculation and inference. It’s no surprise these episodes are written by the same man who wrote The Queen, a movie about the apparent lack of emotion showed by Her Majesty after the death of Princess Diana.

#TotesEmosheNot

But of course, emoting in public is not something the Queen, and many people in their 90s, have any interest in doing. Far from being admirable, it is unseemly. This is the generation that put aside their feelings in order to defend Britain from the Luftwaffe, storm the beaches of Normandy and liberate concentration camps. And once it was done, they did not revel in it. They went back to their lives.

For that generation, ‘following your heart’ normally ended in tears, or worse. But for a younger  generation writing about the Royal Family, The Crown is a story of frustrated feelings and denied desires. The boring head girl Queen Elizabeth does her boring duty while Uncle David makes barbed remarks from his palace in France. She troops the colour while her naughty sister Margaret, evilly forbidden from marrying her first love, swans around following her heart and looking for trouble, which ends in more tears. All the while complaining that she’s prevented from being trusted to do anything, despite doing little to earn that trust.

And So It Continues

The theme of love sacrificed for duty is played out all over again in the story of Prince Charles, portrayed as a tragic figure, forbidden from ‘following his heart’ which wanted to marry Camilla, in order to marry Diana, who went on to burn it all down because no-one cared about her feelings. I’m sure future series will focus on Prince Andrew’s feelings, and attempts to satisfy his own desires. So, erm, how is the Queen the bad guy here?

The fact is, she has more respect and glory now than at any time in my life, and probably in hers. Not only does no-one have a bad word to say about her. Moreover, most people are effusive in their praise of her. It is her sense of duty that is so admired.

The Loyal Address

The respect for the Queen was palpable at the General Synod just passed, when Archbishop Justin gave a loyal address in praise of the Supreme Governor of the Church of England. As one would expect, when the floor was open, eventually a republican stood up and said that he could not reconcil the concept of monarchy with his Christian Socialism – but even he had to admit the virtues of Queen Elizabeth II.

In the November Synod, Prince Edward stood in for his mother and reading a speech to the Synod which I sensed would have received a standing ovation had one or two at the front stood. (I was at the back, and had I been sitting at the front, I would have stood and believe others would have done so).

Critics of the Queen might say that it’s okay for her, since she ‘got to be Queen’. She gets all the money and the power. But this is clearly something she would have avoided, since she knew from the beginning that all the power brings all the responsibility. The Queen’s unswerving sense of duty has been the only constant in recent royal history.

And although she has power, she has refrained from using it – in stark contrast from rulers around the world and throughout history who have used whatever power they have been given to gain more power and satisfying their own desires, and follow their own agendas.

Our Queen has not done that, because she knows something that many other leaders do not. She knows where her power comes from: the throne of Jesus Christ, the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords. Unlike her Uncle David, she didn’t surrender her throne for her own desires, but placed her crown at the feet of one greater, doing his bidding and building his kingdom, the one that will last for ever.

God Save the Queen.

I recommend watching the Archbishop Justin’s speech here, which has a great joke at the end that shows the humility of the Queen, and her sense of humour. And if you’d like to see a short speech I gave about Church membership, PCCs, the Acts of the Apostles and cricket, click here.