The International Appeal of the British Monarchy

The extended Royal Family on the Buckingham Palace balcony in 2012.
Image Credit: Carfax2 via Wikimedia Commons cc

     The British monarchy is the most well-known and widely-recognized monarchy in the world. No other such institution can claim to have something even close to what this monarchy has in terms of news coverage, notoriety, and international respect. Queen Elizabeth II herself has become an icon of representing the best of Britain. She and members of her family make headlines across the world, for good reasons and not-so-good reason, and it is almost assured that a large-scale event involving the monarchy will be broadcast to every corner of the globe.

     Certainly, the monarchy has been at first a recurring, and now a constant, presence of my life. From the death of Diana to the birth of Prince George and beyond, the British monarchy has always been there with its ability to be relevant to many people, no matter where they live. This includes many Americans, whose identity is partly bound up by its independence from Britain and the rejection of hereditary monarchy.

     There are several reasons for why the British monarchy still captures the attention of the world. Such typical reasons include the fascination with what members of the Royal Family are wearing at any given time, the pageantry and ceremony, the history going back over a thousand years, the constitutional and legal nature of the institution, as well as its force for uniting the people.

The Queen's longevity is another factor in the monarchy's popularity, but the King of Thailand has been monarch longer than Elizabeth II by two years.
Abuk SABUK via Wikimedia Commons cc (Mosaic by Helen Marshall)

     However, none of these reasons get to the heart of why the British monarchy has global influence and how it got this influence.

     It is not as though this monarchy is the only one left in the world, for there are still several functioning monarchies from the Netherlands to Saudi Arabia to Japan, and they have their own ceremonies, lengthy histories, and other attributes usually linked to the monarchy in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

     The natural response would be that in Britain, the monarchy is at the center of national life; that is thickly woven into British society; that ceremonial and pomp is done better in Britain than any other country, and that this monarchy still has a role – however reduced – in government.

     Indeed, this is something a bit more unique, but it only justifies the monarchy’s reach within the United Kingdom itself, and still does not explain why hundreds of millions – possibly billions – of people around the world have tuned in to watch Royal weddings and funerals, as well as being on pins and needles for Royal birth announcements, or why when people speak of the “Queen”, they likely mean the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland – Elizabeth II, making her arguably the most famous woman in the world.

     This leads me to believe that there is one catch-all reason for this phenomenon: the British Empire, which has been long gone, but whose legacy still casts a long shadow over Britain and her former colonies.

The British Empire at its height in 1921.

 

     At its height, the British Empire was the largest empire in human history, covering a quarter of the world’s land surface and containing nearly a third of its population. This meant that the British monarch, his or her family, and their actions and movements were front page news for a substantial part of the world’s population by virtue of the position of the Crown in places such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, and South Africa.

     As time went on and those countries gained self-governance within the Empire, and later outright independence, some of them decided to retain the monarchy as a system of governance. Today, Queen Elizabeth is head of state in 15 independent countries outside of Britain. The Crown in those countries has its own unique character, with Her Majesty simultaneously being Queen of Canada, Queen of Australia, Queen of Jamaica, etc, and several institutional have “Royal” in their name (i.e., Royal Canadian Navy).

The Commonwealth of Nations. All member states recognize Elizabeth II as Head of the Commonwealth, but the red countries are the members of the organization that share allegiance to Elizabeth and her heirs and successors as head of state (and are informally known as Commonwealth Realms). The blue countries are the members that either have their own indigenous monarchies, or are republics. Many of them were once independent realms, including India, Pakistan, Kenya, and South Africa.

     But what about the former colonies that either became republics or have home-grown monarchies?

     Out of the Empire came the Commonwealth of Nations, a voluntary organization which currently contains the 16 countries with the British monarch as head of state (known as Commonwealth realms), 32 republics (i.e., India, Pakistan, and South Africa), and 5 independent monarchies (i.e., Malaysia and Lesotho). Elizabeth II is recognized as “the symbol of the free association of [the] independent member nations” in her role as Head of the Commonwealth, and she and her family make regular visits to these countries.

     With the Commonwealth and the shared monarchy between 16 countries, the British Royal Family still commands attention and notoriety across a wide swath of the world. One only needs to review the recent tour of Australia and New Zealand by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince George, as well as the tour of Canada by Prince Charles and Camilla to see why the monarchy still matters in those countries alone. Therefore, it should not be surprising to see the coverage of the Royal Family on a large scale. 

     But how does one explain America and her love-affair with the British monarchy, especially given the events of 1776?

     Well it’s important to remember that the war for independence had more to do with the actions of the British Parliament rather than George III, but he nevertheless became the face of tyranny and oppression. In spite of this however, many Americans had respect and affection for the King – even if they had issues with his Parliament, which is why several Founding Fathers wanted a status within the Empire like that of Canada and other colonies in the 19th and 20th centuries, in which there was autonomy from Britain, but the British monarch remained head of state.

Britain and America.

 

     Even after independence, we have not really shed our social links and commonalities with Britain, so the monarchy still retains a special place, and this was evident when George VI and Queen Elizabeth (the Queen Mother) became the first reigning British monarchs to visit our shores and the American people turned out to warmly welcome them. The American media – which has come to shape the coverage of world events – has covered Royal events in a wall-to-wall fashion and the people have been tuning in time after time.

     The result is that the British Royal Family in some respects is now the world’s royal family, and this is a testament to the long shadow cast by Britain and the Empire on which the sun never set.