Angles 'n' Attitudes

This month's Canadian tour by Prince Charles and the former Mrs Parker-Bowles who now holds Regan's, that Shakespearean vixen's, title of Duchess of Cornwall, was more important than it seemed. It rekindled the debate about the function and future of the monarchy. Let's hear more about it at the local level.

Canada has always had a nonresident monarch, represented here by a viceroy, ever since Louis XIII of France and Samuel de Champlain. That colony was populated so sparsely, administered so corruptly and defended so ineptly that, like the house built on sand, it fell.

The francophone colonists in the St Lawrence valley retained their distinctive culture under the protection of British monarchs who had for centuries included the fleur de lys on their royal escutcheons. English and French destinies, claims and counter-claims had, after all, been intertwined since 1066.

The Quebec Act of 1774 guaranteed the survival of France's language, civil law and its dominant religion in Canada. It was one of the "intolerable acts" condemned by the 1776 Philadelphia Declaration of Independence. The republican rebels would have nothing to do with such toleration.

If the Quebecois had joined the English colonists to the south in their choice of political revolution and centralisation rather than constitutional evolution and devolution, it would have become Louisiana North. All but a vestigial French character would have disappeared. Moreover, one can see what happened to colonies like Haiti that remained under French rule in this hemisphere. British (eventually constitutional) monarchy and parliamentary government is the best thing that ever happened to Québec.

Loyalty to British institutions was also the foundation of anglophone Canada. United Empire Loyalists escaped from the violence in New England and elsewhere to settle in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and the Eastern Townships of Quebec. A generation later, Quakers and others disillusioned with the militarism of the new republic, the centralisation of power under the new 1787 Constitution and the genocide of aboriginals in the United States, moved north to Upper Canada (now Ontario) and accepted the offer of land grants under the Crown.

The confederation of British North America was accomplished in 1867. Queen Victoria (1837- 1910) had chosen Ottawa to be its capital city. In the following decade Canada expanded from sea to sea to sea. A new 'political', rather than 'ethnic' nationality was established. Its bond is the rule of law - law made by an indigenous Parliament, protected and guaranteed by an oath of allegiance by all citizens to the Crown which is beyond party strife and sectional interests.

We have come to think of the British and Canadian Crown as hereditary and as the embodiment of generally accepted 'values'. It was not always so. As recently as 1689 the Parliament at Westminster called Prince Willliam of Orange and his wife Mary to jointly replace King James II on the throne. Two reasons were cited. James was a Roman Catholic and, after the Battle of the Boyne, was "deemed to have fled" the country. It had frequently been the case that "uneasy lies the head that wears the Crown"

and the reason had often been the power of rival claimants.

Neither William nor James were paragons of virtue. James was a notable philanderer. His daughter Mary (of the later royal duet of William and Mary) was the daughter of Anne Hyde, Duchess of York, who was said to have been her husband's chief adviser in all but his infidelities.

'King Billy' whose part in Orange Order parades on the 12th of July used to be played by a man riding a white horse, carried on a long-term affair with Elizabeth Villiers, his wife's lady-in-waiting. There were also insistent rumours of his bisexuality. William and Mary had no child. They were succeeded by Mary's sister, Anne.

Although the role of the monarch is not to be a philosopherking but to protect the constitution from political manipulation, there have been, especially since the invention of printing, the rise of the theatre and other means of influencing public opinion, efforts to idealise the wearer of the Crown as the personal repository of virtues beyond reasonable expectation. It is not to be expected that any otherwise qualified candidate will embody every desirable human quality. The monarch is a guardian, not a pastor. The important thing is that a head of state understand the constitutional balance of powers and have the wisdom and honesty to be able to advise, encourage or warn elected power brokers.

A notorious case of posthumous character ameliorisation is Shakespeare's portrayal of England's 15th Century Henry V as the ideal ruler. In fact, he was a Machiavellian, cold-hearted war lord. The story of the roistering Prince Hal who at a dangerous time in England's history became the heroic king was retold on film in Laurence Olivier's 1944 Henry V. That was another time of crisis. Like the play, the film de-emphasised the insight to Henry's character given in his address to the governor of Harfleur in Act III, scene 3 or by his order to kill all who are taken prisoner at Agincourt (end of IV:6).

For the French that terrible battle poisoned international relations for centuries. Shakespeare saw it as an exploration of the tension between the real and the ideal in a ruler. Henry V was his only 'historical' play that doesn't show somebody trying to grab the throne of England.

As our constitutional monarchy has evolved, the Crown has acted only with the advice and consent of the houses of Parliament. It also assures that in legislative crises and between the time of the dissolution of a parliament and the meeting of a new one the nation is not without a government.

The Crown has an international and inter-cultural value as a link between the 53 independent members of the Commonwealth. The monarch is neither a 'foreigner' nor a partisan in any of them. The viceregal dignitary, as in Canada, should be, as was said of the recently deceased Serbian Orthodox Patriarch Pavle, "one of those people who by their very existence bring together the entire nation". No elected prime minister or president can be that.