Watching King Charles III's coronation in the time of bloody succession dramas on OTT

The coronation will apparently be screened across theatres in the UK, signalling, quite possibly, a bad day for cinema, and entertainment.

The last time the British monarchy witnessed a coronation, independent India scoffed at the idea of the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru attending an event of the commonwealth. The wounds after all were still fresh, the image of white men and women strutting their colonial supremacy on Indian streets raw, and the idea of crossing over to shake hands with the oppressor, far too demeaning to also be dreamy. Global diplomacy has a funny way of asserting itself, for India has since learned the importance of offering a hand, however lifeless, even to those we share painful histories with. As King Charles III, takes to the throne in what feels like a celebratory outro of a saga that has of late become far too public and ugly, it is worth evaluating how the world has drifted from imagining monarchs as elite, world-building gentry to dispensable, reality TV contestants.

As Indians we’ve never been alien to the concept of monarchs for rajas, maharajas, nawabs and their ilk continue to roam among us. On the other hand, it’s the calm, conflict less handing over of power, that feels far too dull and subdued. Next week Zee5’s Taj: Divided By Blood returns with a hefty supply of bloodlust, gore and sexual excess. All in the name of succession. Add to that the popularity of sprawling global epics like The Lord of the Rings and more recently Game of Thrones, and everything cultured, elite and snobby about King Charles’ coronation begins to feel a bit dull. The drabness and certainty of this most unexciting of generational takeovers, has though, been spiked by another ingredient.

If you’ve not been living under a rock, you’d know that the British royal family has been besieged by a rollicking, rollercoaster saga that has seen a royal couple detach themselves from the family. It’s been explosive, exceptional and eventually a bit draining and redundant in the end. What Harry and Meghan might have lost in royal inheritance, they seem to have accrued in the landscape of media attention. It’s been thrilling, let’s be honest, to see rigid monarchical bunkers, collapse in on themselves in the most modern, cut-price manner – through the chaos of social media. In that wider context, this coronation feels like a ritualistic tick of the box.

What Harry and Meghan might have lost in royal inheritance, they seem to have accrued in the landscape of media attention.

Most people, including young Britons, don’t get the idea of a monarchy, an antique hangover of every crime the crown committed in the colonies. It exists, as if, for the sake of existing. A cultural wand that must be waved every few years to test if its spell still works. People like us, on the other hand consume the family’s imperial pursuits through prestige shows like The Crown wishing it was more like GOT. At which point you have to wonder if the relevance of a monarchy in today’s day and age, except for their opulence and abnormal etiquette, is their ability to become fodder for the media.

The monarchy, even its extensions, have always courted the press. Even someone as distant as the last Viceroy of India, Louis Mountbatten, regularly used the press’ manipulative powers to create narratives that countered not just reality but also, in hindsight, history. In films, fictional and non-fictional, dedicated to him, Mountbatten christened himself the saviour of a nation on the verge of a violent partition. History, of course, was far more complicated than that cheery, uniform, self-image. But the royals know full well the beasts they ought to feed and the ones they must starve.

There is a punchline in a film from the goofy Naked Gun franchise. It involves an American policeman unintentionally delivering a statement that begins with ‘As ridiculous as the idea of having a queen...’ The highlight of this particular film is the Queen passing hotdogs to her staff at a baseball game, before being beaten to pulp. In Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror, the redundancy of the royal family is evidenced after a British PM is forced to make love to a pig, so a royal descendant can be freed by her kidnapper. It’s these maniacal lengths to which custom and tradition go, that make the royal family that much more baffling to rationalize.  To the point that the monarchy feels more like comedic burden than a diplomatic one at times.

Maybe our expectations of bloodthirst and spectacular drama have corrupted our image of the many methods, power is transferred in. King Charles’ ascension feels like a moody sandwich of all the ingredients that taste like nothing in particular but are still pumped in between the slices of our existence. It doesn’t feel era-defining or even era-relevant. There is chatter about the cost of such ceremonies at a time of great economic strife, the point of crowning a man well past his good health days, and the over-animated pageantry of it all. The coronation will apparently be screened across theatres in the UK, signalling, quite possibly a bad day for cinema, and entertainment. It’s when thrones and crowns have not been passed on- as opposed to popular fiction -that this royal family has truly delivered. To which effect, let’s get this needless pageant out of the way, so we can analyse the next nugget of bilious gossip to fall out of the bejewelled crown. What else is there to look forward to?