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The amount of real power wielded by modern monarchs ranges from zero in Europe to the Old Testament authority which Emperor Haile Selassie, the seemingly indestructible Lion of Judah, still exercises in Ethiopia. Royal trappings run the same range—from the furled umbrella that Denmark's King Frederik carries to go shopping, to the nine-tiered umbrella throne of King Bhumibol of Thailand. The champagne-and-chorus-girl monarch is gone or going; uncrowned dictators or oil millionaires are much freer to be glamorous wastrels these days than are kings.
This is the time of what Critic Kingsley Martin has called "TV monarchy"; and no royal house works for its ratings so hard and skillfully as the British. The dignity and the distance, the pageantry, the speed to the spot of a national disaster, the miles of cut ribbons are something for the TV citizen to look up to and yet feel comfortable with. Sophisticated Britons consider it all a tiresome and maudlin joke and regard the royal family as the personification of squareness. But the general attitude is one of admiration, almost of religious reverence, and no one seriously wants to do away with the monarchy, if only because Britons can scarcely imagine an alternative. An indication of how seriously Britons take the institution is provided by the earnest current debate on whether Prince Charles should go to a university or not. Most people nowadays seem to prefer an educated monarch, but some feel that too much learning is dangerous for a ruler whose job, after all, is not to rule. Recalling that Elizabeth II was poorly educated when she came to the throne, Journalist Iain Hamilton observes: "She was good on a horse, though; and we have Ben Jonson's word for it that princes learn no art truly but the art of horsemanship." As for Charles, it would be wrong to encourage him to be "an 'ordinary' upper-class young man and enjoy life among property speculators, advertising agents, public relations artists, fashion photographers, pop painters, dressmakers, atheistic Anglican prelates, pornographers, social scientists and other such heroes of our day."
The problem of not being "ordinary" and yet not seeming too aloof—of lowering the barrier between sovereign and subject and yet not "staining the mystery," as Sir Harold Nicolson put it—is probably the greatest public relations problem of Britain's royalty. Scandinavia's rulers have ignored this problem, on the whole, by opting for ordinariness. No one crowds around Sweden's 84-year-old King Gustaf Adolf when he walks alone through the streets. A man passing him will take off his hat with a slight bow, whereupon the King will remove his hat and bow politely in return. At state dinners, the footmen behind every other chair are restaurant waiters hired just for the occasion. Sweden is the kind of kingdom where the leader of the Communist Party, resplendent in white tie and tails, enjoys dining with the King—despite the fact that he is the country's only political leader who says he wants the monarchy abolished.