A guest column appears on Kennislink every week. The columnist is always a different researcher, who writes from his or her field about the science behind an event in society or from our daily lives. This week:historian Peter Rietbergen on the British Queen Elizabeth II.
Every day, Elizabeth II of England sees the statue of her great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria. The first weekend of June 2012, she knows that she has equaled her ancestor on at least one point:celebrating her Diamond Jubilee as Queen of Great Britain. She wears the enormous crown made for Victoria in 1837 for sixty years.
Two queens and two reigns of exceptional length in which the world changed. Photography didn't exist when Victoria came to the throne at eighteen. Driving her acclaim through London in 1897, it was one of the very first times that not only photographs but even moving images captured such an event, and everywhere in the new phenomenon 'cinema' were shown.
When Elizabeth was crowned at Westminster Abbey in 1952, it was the first time that a television broadcast reached hundreds of millions of homes directly and worldwide. But the idea of the PC wasn't even born yet. Her anniversary, in 2012, most people will see on their computer screen or even iPhone.
But more had changed. Victoria saw the rise of the British Empire. She experienced it symbolically when she was proclaimed "Empress of India." Elizabeth was just watching the empire fall. Symbolically, she experienced that in 1997, when the royal yacht, of course called Britannia, in which she had traveled the British world, was scrapped by the Labor government for cost reasons:it is now a museum ship, on the Edinburgh quay.
Two old ladies, who, just in the years leading up to their jubilee, had experienced that the popularity of the monarchy was not given by God.
After the death of her beloved Albert, Victoria had misunderstood the emotional needs of her people:she had withdrawn from public life. The people murmured. Elizabeth, after the death of her daughter-in-law, had misunderstood those same needs:she did not want to honor Diana publicly. The people murmured.
But the people are fickle and indeed above all emotional and sentimental. Whoever wants to survive as a monarch must know that he only exists to please the people. Certainly since the constitutional monarchy in the early 19 e century came into being, princes have had to learn that, sometimes to their disgrace.
Old ladies, in possession of their physical and mental faculties, may yet decide to do their duty to partake of the tenderness that the combination of old age and womanhood evokes in the public heart. Victoria still became popular, and so did Elizabeth.
However, popularity and old age create problems. Victoria's heir, Edward, the Prince of Wales, was an old man in 1901 at nearly 60 years old. Though saddened by his mother's death, he was also relieved:he had waited for decades, in the wings. Now it was his turn.
And although Charles will also be sad when his mother dies – she has indicated that she is not thinking about resigning – he, already 63, will also be relieved when it is his turn. But will it be his turn?
Times have changed a lot. The people want the glamor of youth. In 1901, few whispered that it would be better for Edward's son to succeed his grandmother directly. Now that same sound is being whispered by the majority of the British people, and thus shouted out by the populist papers:It is better if the old Charles accepts that not himself but the young, glamorous William, will wear the crown of Victoria.
Previous guest columns for History &Archaeology:
- The (labour) power of women (Elles van Nederveen Meerkerk)
- How do you become a terrorist? (Joost Augusteijn)
- A sealed door at 10 Downing Street (Jouke Turpijn)
- Five Centuries of Migration (Susan Leclercq)