The broach a woman wore over her heart caught my eye as I clattered along in a crowded London subway car 12 years ago. It framed a miniature portrait and a second or two passed before I recognized Queen Elizabeth II’s famous face gazing out from the broach.
The broach and the woman wearing it bob to the surface of my memory every so often and invite me to ponder the serious and special role royalty plays in the lives of anyone even remotely British. The memory also makes me ponder how the absence of royalty lies at the heart of what it means to be American.
I confess I am a monarchist at heart. I love pomp and circumstance and a little voice in my head with the late great James Mason’s accent endeavored to convince me to take this week off and watch all the royal ministrations leading up to the queen’s funeral.
I am fascinated by the sight of thousands of people spending hours waiting to watch the royal cortege drive by intent on shaking hands with King Charles III, William, Harry, and other royalty.
People interviewed from Scotland to Ireland and down to London this week talked about the queen as a constant in their lives and a reassuring presence. Some brought children, even dogs and cats, to the roadside vigils, explaining that it is important for younger Britons to understand the queen’s role in their nation’s history.
Americans have actors and musicians they adore and social media regularly raises the famous and infamous to national stature. Calling any of these people a constant or reassuring presence would be a stretch.
Notice I didn’t mention politicians. In his heyday, people probably waited hours to glimpse Barack Obama. Ronald Reagan’s funeral probably drew onlookers who lined roads to watch the cortege drive by.
But you have to time travel back to 1968, the cataclysmic year when Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were assassinated, to see people massed along roads and at railroad stops intent on paying their respects to someone of legendary stature.
We violently rejected royalty, crowns, scepters, lineage, coronations, pomp and circumstance almost 250 years ago. Our one-time British masters, intent on keeping us in line, eventually threw up their hands and left us to our own devices.
Americans view royalty with a fascination combining a lust for celebrity news and a nostalgic longing for a mythical time when good kings rewarded and protected their loyal subjects.
I spent about five minutes in the same room with then-Prince Charles in 1986. He was in Boston with Diana and his State House visit drew hundreds of onlookers. Seated in the State House’s Great Hall with other reporters, I glanced to my right just as the future king walked by in a perfectly-tailored suit, with perfect posture, and a perfectly polite, but neutral look on his face. I basked in the warm glow of this otherworldly personage until the bubble burst and I was back on Earth.
I wonder what the woman on the train thought about every morning when she pinned Elizabeth’s visage to that spot on her dress or coat over her heart. I wonder if she is one of the thousands of people who stood in line this week waiting to walk by the queen’s coffin.
The day will come when I, like Charles, will know how it feels to lose a mother. I will never know what it feels like to be royalty because the sometimes- violently-disputed definition of what it means to be an American leaves no room for royal sentiments.
