Ceci n'est pas une couronne
Without metaphors it is impossible to express a single thought. All effort to rise above images is doomed to fail.
— Johan Huizinga, “The Waning of the Middle Ages”
As I scroll through twitter and am inundated with images of King Charles III’s coronation, I can’t help but feel weird about them; the silks, the gold, the jewels—its iconography amalgamates into a dark irony, like a parody of itself, made further sour by the increasing desperation of the UK’s people with the cost of living crisis.
Viewing this through the lenses of modern sensibilities leaves an uncanny feeling. It feels…wrong.
It got me thinking about images and ceremonies, and how their meanings and connotations change along with the social conscience. I’m going to use this short post to jot down some of my thinking.
Right to Rule
As Johan Huizinga says in The Waning of the Middle Ages, “Symbolism expresses a mysterious connection between two ideas, allegory gives a visible form to the conception of such a connection.” (186)
For Huizinga, symbolism is a fundamental function of human cognition. To forge a path to understanding, we must form connections between ideas. Symbolism “is a very profound function of the mind, allegory is a superficial one. It aids symbolic thought to express itself” (186). In this sense, allegory is the representation of symbolism, the connection of ideas made tangible.
Let’s walk through an example to try and see what Huizinga means. What do you think of when you picture a crown?
One could argue that it is impossible to divorce the image of a crown from its connotations—royalty. Without these laden ideas, one could not conceptualize a crown, because a crown itself was brought into being to act as an allegory. Without its foundational symbolism, a crown is not a crown. A crown will always entail a “chosen one”; even Jesus’ crown of thorns serves as an allegory for his divine lineage.
But what happens when ideas change? Do their allegories change?
I believe the coronation is an apt example of what happens when allegories stay the same, but their symbolism—the connection of ideas that the allegory is made to express—shifts.
Throughout history, monarchies have prevailed only by constantly reifying their sovereignty. Every royal appearance, every sovereign act, is predicated by the necessity to affirm the omniscience and omnipotence of the monarchy. Executions were carried out in public squares, each emboldening the power of the state, a warning to all those who would question its authority; displays of wealth are shown off to prove the divine heraldry of the monarchy. The sovereign proves it is ordained by God, proves its reign is indisputable through allegories of power—power over life, and death.
In this way, the image of the crown becomes a metaphor for the divine right to rule, proof that the monarchy and its institutions exist because God willed it to be so, proves that it is just.
But what happens when the body politic no longer fears God? There is no longer faith to transcend the images of monarchy, to connect them with ideas of godhood, to form the symbolism.
When spectacles such as the coronation are stripped of their ability to inspire mass reverence, they become nothing but meaningless, benign gestures towards dead ideas. They are reduced to empty tradition, monarchs reduced to what they always were—just some people. This event, and the public reaction to it, more than ever reveals itself to be the last throes of a dying empire; it has lost its metaphor, its purpose, and it begs the question: should the country be spending millions on a purposeless occasion when its people—those the crown serves—are suffering?