King Charles needs to sign off on petulance

For 70 years the Queen not once lost her composure in public that I can recall. The King has not lasted a week. His little tantrum over a leaking fountain pen at one of his first week’s many public appearances is deeply ominous.

It is just about impossible to imagine the Queen doing that.

The morning we awoke to the news she had died, I was struck by an unexpected sense of history and many on the radio were saying the same. It felt like we were in touch with history on a scale of time we have never experienced before.

It wasn’t just the 70 years of her reign, it was the whole span of English history. The monarchy goes back more than 1000 years, it is as old as England. I’ve read plenty of English history and relish it, but that morning was the first time I’ve understood why they’ve always wished their monarch a long life.

If the death of a modern constitutional monarch felt like one of the foundations of our lives had been removed, it can be imagined what it was like when monarchs held real and absolute power. Their deaths must have sent a convulsion of uncertainty and insecurity through the population.

Even now, at this distance in time and place, we could feel that tremor, I think, as we wondered what would change.

The phrase that probably came to all our minds was, “when the Queen dies”. It has been the constant refrain of republicans and those who couldn’t make up their minds about retaining the monarchy. It was to be a question we’d consider “when the Queen dies”. I never believed it.

The Queen’s funeral would be an event of such global magnificence the monarchy would probably be given a new lease of life. And Charles, I thought, could be a better king than many expected. He’s been quite a modern thinker as well as having an appreciation of the fine traditions he inherits.

Britain’s response to the Queen’s death has exceeded my expectations. The crowds and flowers, the people waiting in line all day to walk past her coffin, bear comparison with the Diana phenomenon. Like Diana, the Queen is fast becoming even larger in public memory than she was in life.

And Charles? Until that tetchy incident with the pen he was looking like an excellent king — comfortable in the role, more relaxed than the Queen, more life in his voice. But the monarchy might not survive a king who behaves like a petulant, privileged child.

This was the picture we sometimes received from attendants when he was Prince of Wales. Australians and New Zealanders would quickly lose interest in someone like that and so might Britain.

An English friend who has recently come to live in New Zealand is much less impressed by the monarchy than I am. He would be happy to see the end of it. But he is surprised New Zealand did nothing for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee earlier this year.

Now that he mentions it, I don’t remember us making much fuss about her 50th and 60th jubilees either. We watched Britain’s parties from afar but not with much interest. We watch the pageantry and splendour of royalty’s formal ceremonies with more interest, and more sense of our heritage, I think, though we are very different people now.

The televised succession ceremonies in Canberra and Wellington this week were quite a contrast to those in London. All the medieval majesty of the proclamation from St James’s Palace, repeated in the City and all capitals of the United Kingdom, was lost in transmission to the Antipodes.

British descendants in Australia and New Zealand can’t do pageantry like the British do. It doesn’t suit our character any more. Fortunately, the indigenous cultures of both countries can do ceremonies confidently. Without their participation the official proclamations of a new head of state would have been dull indeed.

In fact, but for Ma¯ori, we might not retain a head of state that lives in London. Anyone who doubts this did not hear Sir Tipene O’Regan talking on TV3 soon after the Queen died. Eloquent as always, he recalled that when he was leading Ngai Tahu’s Treaty claims against “the Crown”, he always held the Crown to be distinguished from the state.

The Treaty was made with the Crown, not the governing state in this view, which suggests it might just be possible to devise a constitution that brings the position of head of state home while retaining the royal relationship with a formal role for it under the Treaty.

But that assumes King Charles can curb his petulance quickly.