So, there was a coronation. I did not watch, of course, because of my
feelings about monarchy, but the British people seem to want a king, so I guess they're welcome to him. I do respect it when people put a ton of effort in to doing deeply weird things, and when you think about it this coronation is one of the most deeply weird things you will see in your entire life. It is basically a church service in a highly irreligious country with a Hindu Prime Minister, which uses a few hundred words and about a hundred hymns to somehow make a very much unbeloved man the head of the whole nation. Is it bad to give such a post to a man hardly anyone likes, or is it maybe important to have some posts for which popularity is completely irrelevent?
It is nice that there are events to which people wear totally over-the-top clothes that aren't as tacky as the Met Gala.
Penny Mordaunt looks great with a sword. If you ask me the leader of the House of Commons should keep the sword rather than handing it to the king, but then nobody did ask me. And can somebody explain to me how Mordaunt got to be a name?
The first hymn included the word plenteousness; why would anyone begin a solemn occasion with a word nobody can pronounce?
O pray for the peace of Jerusalem,
They shall prosper that love thee.
Peace be within thy walls,
and plenteousness within thy palaces.
The king was welcomed by "the children of the Kingdom of God," a phrase I'm pretty sure never appeared in the coronations of the kings I studied. (That would be Henry III and Edward I, II, and III.) On the other hand the oath still has some of the good old language:
The Archbishop: Will you solemnly promise and swear to govern the peoples of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, your other realms and the territories to any of them belonging or pertaining, according to their respective laws and customs?
The King: I solemnly promise so to do.
Very important for a proper monarch to govern all his peoples according to their own customs.
The Archhbisohp:
Will you to your power cause law and justice, in mercy, to be executed in all your judgements?
The King:
I will.
And to do justice with mercy.
It took the archbishop a strangely long time to get the crown straight on Charles' head; maybe they don't actually practice that, because he can't wear the crown until the coronation?
There was some controversy about this next bit; instead of just asking the peers of the realm to swear fealty to Charles, it was mooted that they might invite the whole realm to do so. But that was too widely mocked so they settled on this:
I now invite those who wish to offer their support to do so, with a moment of private reflection, by joining in saying 'God save King Charles' at the end, or, for those with the words before them, to recite them in full.
One of the interesting thing to me about this event was how many Americans seem to have found it absolutely bewildering. This image tore around Twitter, universally accompanied by a joke about the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch. Really, people, has the orb of sovereignty become so obscure?
King and Queen of Lesotho
Wikipedia has the
complete list of guests, which makes for interesting reading. All the former British Prime Ministers still living were invited, including Liz "outlasted by a lettuce" Truss. The list of nobles includes Baron Peach; is there really a Baron Peach? On the other hand the officers of the royal household still have great titles like "portcullis pursuivant", "unicorn pursuivant", "clerk of the closet" and "Wales herald." Interesting that the Lord Mayor of Westminster is named Hamza Toauzzale. A bunch of foreign leaders came, including those from most of the African countries in the Commonwealth. But nobody from the government of Jamaica, where the royal family is very much out of famor amidst a surge in anti-colonial sentiment.
The coronation ode, by the Poet Laureate, celebrates some of the 450 ordinary heroes who were invited.
Anyone care to speculate on what this event will look like next time?
And can somebody explain to me how Mordaunt got to be a name?
ReplyDeleteThe name is clearly established to date back to the Normans, and the conquest of 1066.
As for the meaning, there appear to be two major theories.
The first is that it derives from the French mordre, through Old French and Vulgar Latin, ultimately from the Latin mordeo / mordere - "to bite", although also by extension, such other meaning as "to sting", "to nip", "to consume", "to take hold of", "to hurt", and even "to waste", among a variety of other similar usages.
Drawing from the pre-French traditions of the Normans, it may well have been a name that some Viking warrior earned through their behavior - perhaps they literally bit someone in a brawl; perhaps they were figuratively compared to a predator like a wolf latching onto their enemies; perhaps it was a poetic description of some who seized and conquered land; etc. Compare to names like Ivar The Boneless, Sigurd Snake-In-The-Eye, Halfdan Whiteshirt, etc.
The other argument is for it being derived from a place name - a branch of the Mordaunt family in the 14th century resided in Mordon (or Morden), in present day County Durham, England. It has been suggested that the name of the place may once have been Moredun, or "moor-hill" / "moor-fort".