NOW YOU KNOW Royalty
NOW YOU KNOW Royalty
Doug Lennox
Copyright © Dundurn Press Limited, 2009
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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Lennox, Doug
Now you know royalty / by Doug Lennox.
ISBN 978-1-55488-415-5
1. Kings and rulers--Miscellanea. I. Title.
D107.L45 2009 305.5’22 C2009-900498-4
1 2 3 4 5 13 12 11 10 09
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contents
Monarchy and the Military
Pomp and Pageantry
Royal Residences
Crown and Culture
Canada’s Royal Ties
The Crown and the Commonwealth and the Commonwealth
A World of Royalty
Kings, Queens, and Dynasties
Question and Feature List
The essence of monarchy is that the state is embodied in a living person and that the monarch’s subjects are “people” rather than “the people.” This common humanity, celebrated over generations, perhaps accounts for the fascination of most individuals with royal lives and practices. They recognize instinctively that their lives are intimately connected with the lives of the royals. As has been noted, royal activities are frequently ordinary activities carried out in extraordinary circumstances.
From the philosophical underpinnings of the very nature of society, through leadership in times of crisis and adversity, to the great pageantry of communities and the customs of day-to-day living, we function, often unknowingly, in a royal world. Monarchy has been a universal experience. While focusing on Canadian and Commonwealth history and practice, this exploration of royalty considers examples from cultures around the world.
Now You Know Royalty looks at the influence of kings and kingship, the language of monarchy, how monarchies function, the cultural role of kingship, the royal beginnings of everyday practices, and anecdotes involving emperors and empresses, kings and queens, princes and princesses, in the hope that it will both inform and entertain readers. In particular, it seeks to make Canadians aware of their royal heritage and the role that the Crown has played in the creation and history of their country.
Kingship? Queenship? What is it?
Not an ideology. Not a philosophy. It is more a directing or organizing principle. Rex, the Latin word for king, comes from the verb “to direct.” A king is someone who sets things in motion, in a constitutional sense, and in past ages in a political one. He is the legal embodiment of a nation or head of a state or multinational family of states. “A king involves an ideal of life at once social and personal.”
When did kingship/queenship begin?
The idea began with civilization itself. The earliest kings appear about the same time fundamentals of civilization do. “Royalties found they were representatives almost without knowing. Many a king insisting on a genealogical tree, or a title deed, found that he spoke for the forests and the songs of a whole countryside.” Monarchy has been a major force in making civilization possible, causing its development and growth.
Where does the concept that “divinity doth hedge a king” originate?
The earliest kings were seen as having a close relationship with divinity. Some were regarded as living gods, others as kin of the gods, still others as semi-divine. Many kings ritually impersonated or were agents of a god or goddess, executing the deity’s will, or priests — those who offer sacrifice — of a divinity. Just as the concepts of morality and law come to us from religion, so do abstract ideas of authority and beliefs about the source of power. Anointing — an act to separate the king from the profane and obtain for him an infusion of divine grace — in later times came to be regarded as giving a sacred sanction to a monarch and bestowing a special character on him.
Quickies
Did you know …