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The going was tough for the Belgians, for example, when the Germans smashed into the country in 1914. In the crisis, King Albert, once known as a playboy, bravely led the fight against the invaders. As Barbara Tuchman wrote in The Guns of August, "Belgium, where there occurred one of the rare appearances of the hero in history, was lifted above herself by the uncomplicated conscience of her King." The going was tough for the Danes when the Nazis occupied the country on April 9, 1940. Next morning the distressed Danes saw their King Christian on horseback, riding as he always did through the streets of Copenhagen, disdainfully ignoring the German soldiers. The surge of morale produced by this simple act was incalculable. Later that year, when Christian celebrated his 70th birthday, a small badge bearing his initials on the background of the Danish flag was struck—and worn by almost every Dane as long as the war lasted.
Fear of kings has always been mingled with love and longing for them. Even Saul was elevated to kingship against the advice of the Prophet Samuel, who warned Israel that a king "will take your sons . . . and he will take your daughters . . . and ye shall cry out in that day because of your king." But the people insisted "Nay, but we will have a king over us; that we also may be like all the nations; and that our king may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles." At this, the Lord gave in. "Hearken unto their voice," he said to Samuel, "and make them a king."
When to Kill the King
The mystique of kingship recedes into the mists of prehistory. Kings were not merely the well-muscled types who could grab the best females and strong-arm the rest of the tribe. They were magic—the precious contact between little groups of fearful humans and the awful forces of fertility or famine, prosperity or plague. These magic men were precious possessions, to be carefully guarded against contamination or capture. Sometimes they were incarcerated in darkness to keep them from the influence of the sun and moon, sometimes they were prevented from even touching the ground for fear that the earth might leach out their power. If the magic did fail—when the crops were poor or the hunting bad or the enemy prevailed—then it was time to get rid of the old king and get a new one.
The idea persisted to the threshold of modern times that the monarch was a divine personage with magic powers, including the gift of healing by touch. Belief in the king's divine curative powers vanished as surely as belief in the king's divine right to rule—at least in the West. Today's monarchs can be roughly divided into three types: Europe's chairman-of-the-board king, who presides over his country but is not its chief executive officer; the tribal king of Africa and the Middle East, who most of the time still really leads and still does it from horseback; and the god king of Asia, whose divinity is fading but whose power persists and most closely resembles the old notion of heaven-touched royalty.