“þæt wæs god cyning.”
Alfred the Great is almost a legendary figure, the greatest Saxon king.
His son, Edward the Elder, continued his father’s work, and drove the Norsemen out of southern England.
Alfred’s grandson, Æthelstan, as the first king of united England was arguably as great as his grandfather. He is renowned for his religious devotion as well as his political and military leadership.
Why am I giving this little history lesson? Because these kings were real. They were good. Three of the greatest English kings in history, father to son, son to grandson. From 871 to 939 AD, these three men brought peace, prosperity, order, and leadership to their land. Their legacy is immortalized.
For hundreds of years now, Liberal political theory has wanted you to think that a line of kings like this only ever existed in fairytales. That for the most part, kings have been tyrants. Not only is this not true, it goes against our human nature, our innate desire for a good king. The archetypes of the good king and the noble prince were not invented out of thin air.
While realistically the West may never see a return to true monarchy, it’s worth pointing out why monarchy is the system that best serves the human spirit, as opposed to republics or democracies. Here are ten points to consider:
A monarch has an invested interest in the prosperity of his nation from birth. Since his whole life will be spent in service to his people, he must think in the long term. Elected governments with term limits need only look out for their own short term interests.
A monarch is raised with the knowledge that he is part of a line of kings that have ruled his country for generations. He has the moral and spiritual pressure and expectation to rule well.
A monarch may become a tyrant, yes. But he is actually held more accountable than any other type of government. A king can be given blame and held accountable. Even deposed. With a bureaucracy, there is no one to clearly blame, no one to hold accountable, no one but a few scape-goats to answer for corruption.
Only a monarch has the incentive to take desperate measures for the preservation of his people and country. Elected officials in many countries will commonly cut and run when their position is threatened, as they have no reason to risk their lives for a political nation-state. Presidents do not make desperate last charges against a larger enemy for the sake of their people’s honour.
A monarch is a cultural hero in a way an elected official can never be. There is a reason kings are immortalized in stone and songs and myth. All over the world are myths of “Once and Future Kings” that will return to set their country to rights. There is no equivalent of this with an elected government. A monarch can embody his people’s cultural ethos.
A monarch can set his country to rights and weed out evil, as long as he has the conviction and strength to do so. Good men in elected governments are commonly rendered powerless to make any real change.
On the other hand, a corrupted king may have a change of heart, or be steered towards righteousness by wise counsellors or priests. A corrupted bureaucracy is corrupted forever.
A monarchy follows the symbology of the world’s hierarchy. As God is above man, so a king is above the people. Elected governments destroy this hierarchy.
A monarch sworn under God and the church has an incentive to uphold clear standards of morality and law, without regard to what the masses of his population desire. An elected government’s only morality is whatever will get them voted into office.
People simply desire to live under a good king. We see this everywhere. Even in the modern liberal and democratic West, almost all of our fantasy in our popular media revolves around stories of kings and empires, or superheroes and demigods. There is a subconscious acknowledgement that it is a good thing for a king or culture hero to stamp out evil without regard for votes or popular opinion. We have only convinced ourselves that this power was too dangerous to be allowed to continue.
Lines of good kings and happy kingdoms have existed in our world, not just in Middle-Earth or Narnia. We know this instinctively. And despite our 21st century Liberal political framework, the Once and Future Kings may yet come again.
This is bad for the Our Democracy. Please take it down
Very well said. I never understood why our charts depicting the history of the monarchy only start in 1066. King Charles is a descendant of Alfred the Great.