Let’s drink one shot, let’s drink two,
To the health of lovers
To the health of the King of France,
And fuck the King of England
Who declared war on us!
It is enough to remember this classic of the traditional song to understand why the coronation of Charles III, Saturday in London, will be greeted only by general indifference both in France and in Quebec. Sung by the folklorist Raoul Roy in the 1970s as by the Bodh’aktan group more recently, this song to be turned celebrating the capture of the English frigate Kent in 1800 by the great French privateer Surcouf resounds more often in Quebec than in France. Perhaps because, unlike France, As of August 31 acts with us like a balm on the still vivacious wounds of a conquered people. Symbols so anchored in the heart of the nation that even the efforts of the best deconstructors can do nothing.
If Buckingham Palace is to be believed, the coronation which will take place on Saturday at Westminster Abbey will stand out from the splendor of yesteryear. As if he wanted to apologize for being king, Charles III seems to want to impose on these festivities the morose tone that has always been his. Four times fewer guests than for his mother’s coronation; Camilla’s crown fished out of her great-grandmother’s wardrobe; invitation cards on recycled paper; olive oil instead of the traditional ambergris from whale intestine. Decidedly, Charles III seems to have no other dream than to drown in the surrounding landscape. And the height: eating quiche without bacon on a coronation day is not exactly what one can call a feast!
Despite his airs of saint-nitouche, this new king should not however slow down the slow drift of the monarchy towards the stardom. A drift certainly too slow for Prince Harry, who did not hesitate to trade Buckingham for a palace in Los Angeles. When we prefer Tom Cruise and Winnie the Pooh to the bridesmaids who had carried the train of Elizabeth, there is little doubt.
But haven’t the monarchy and the entertainment world always gone hand in hand? As Professor Marc Chevrier wrote, quoting the great English political scientist Walter Bagehot, “the monarchy serves to restrain the people’s appetites for sovereignty, to dazzle them with the spectacle of an ancient world where the right to govern seemed to fall from the sky , by the anointing of time which crowned an elected official in whom the people recognized themselves as a father or a mother”.
Nothing could be more normal than Justin Trudeau, who participates as much in this monarchical heritage as in the star system, either of the party and that he misses the congress of his party for the occasion. Polls on the monarchy may be at half mast in Canada, but the fact remains that there are few countries where the monarchical spirit is still as deeply rooted in political mores. Apart from a few Caribbean islands, Canada remains the only major country in the Americas that is not a republic. The main nations of the continent, from Brazil to Mexico, via Peru, Haiti and small Suriname, have all won, often in a hard struggle, their independence from the former colonial powers and chosen the republic. Without forgetting the United States, where Joe Biden will comply with tradition by not attending the coronation of the king.
With the exception of the Quebec independence movement, the revolt of Louis Riel in Manitoba and the episode of 1837-1838, Canada has never shown such a thirst for popular sovereignty. One of the “founding fathers” of Canada in 1867, George-Étienne Cartier, did not hesitate to call the people a “crowd” and a “rabble,” Marc Chevrier reminds us. Unlike Spain, the Netherlands or Sweden, Canada will push the colonial spirit to the point of being satisfied with being only the branch of a foreign monarch who is also a religious leader. No longer colonized, you die!
There is no trace in Canada and in its Constitution of what Lincoln called “the government of the people, by the people, for the people”. Our disdain for referendums, which moreover only have a consultative status, our veneration for judges appointed by the authorities and not elected, our confinement in the “province”, of which former Prime Minister Bernard Landry liked to recall that the Latin name (province) meant “territory of the vanquished”, all of this stems from this heritage.
Strangely, in recent years, we have never talked so much about decolonial or postcolonial currents in universities as in leftist organizations. And yet, what are our “decolonials” doing if not conforming to the monarchical spirit? Far from valuing the sovereignty of the people, the power of monarchs has always relied on provincial lords and local baronies. In the same way, our decolonial ones do not cease fragmenting the nation in communities in order to consolidate the tribes, the races, the ethnos groups and the chapels. Multiculturalism, which has become Canada’s official ideology, is moreover a legacy of the empire which, as a citizen, has always preferred racial, ethnic or sexual belonging.
In the meantime, on Saturday, it will not be forbidden to sing As of August 31. We comfort each other as we can…