Altar and Throne, Part II (NYE 2020)

Yesterday was the 104th anniversary of the last Roman Catholic royal coronation (of King IV.Károly of Hungary, better known as Emperor Bl. Charles, in Budapest) to date. I find the fact that there have not been any such events more recently terribly sad. [Norway held the last Lutheran coronation in 1906, Romania the last Eastern Orthodox one in 1922, Ethiopia the last Oriental Orthodox one in 1930. The present Queen Elizabeth II, Supreme Governor of the Church of England, was crowned in 1953, as was the Wesleyan (Methodist) King of Tonga in 2015.]

Often I get so fed up with the way that most Christians (whether Protestant, Catholic, or Orthodox) today are not nearly as outraged as I am by the modern era's replacement of so many Christian monarchies with republics that with the exception of the pandemic that has touched us all I feel like I don't want to care about whatever it is that more "normal" Christian people (whether "progressive" or "conservative") today are supposed to care about. I suppose that might be considered selfish. The thing is, I want to be able to be a Christian while holding a worldview (supportive of things like monarchical government, hereditary titles, and formal class distinctions) that while once widely accepted by Christians (at least in Europe) no longer is, and I get frustrated that contemporary Christianity doesn't seem to want to let me be the type of Christian I want to be, by which I mean the sort of High Tory Anglican who loves the Monarchy, prays for his Queen (never a "President"), would have seen nothing wrong at the time with the British Empire (though in hindsight I regret that it left so many republics in its wake), and while broadly tolerant of most human traits and behaviours has very little tolerance for republicanism.

Conservative Catholics (especially ex-Anglicans) often caricature the Episcopal Church and [in the "first world"] the Anglican Communion these days as hopelessly "liberal," but in terms of the issues that matter most to me, the Roman Catholic Church of Pope Francis is no better. (Is there even one Catholic bishop anywhere who would publicly advocate the restoration of his country's monarchy? And don't tell me it's not doctrine; clergy routinely talk about all sorts of things that aren't doctrine.) At least as Episcopalians we're in communion with the most famous surviving Monarchy in the world. (I don't want to know what would happen to my relationship with Anglicanism if the unthinkable happened in Britain. Let's all please pray we never find out.)

I suppose the big historical question is, did the more hierarchical and liturgical Christian Churches (principally Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, and Lutheran) once seem to endorse monarchical government and hierarchical society (radical Protestants and earlier heretics like the Hussites and Lollards never did) because that's what God wants, or simply as a pragmatic approach of dealing with The Way Things Were (but no longer Are)? I would give the former answer, but I suspect most Christians today (if they think about these things at all) would probably give the latter. But I for one will continue to pray not only for an end to the Coronavirus pandemic but also for a worldwide return to sanity and monarchical government, no matter what year it is.

Altar and Throne

Even when I was at the height of my Latin Mass phase (c. 2004-07), I could never really accept it that most Catholics, even traditionalists, were just not that into restoring Catholic Monarchies. Even those who are sympathetic to monarchism in theory tend (especially if American) to have other political priorities in practice, whereas I, being incorrigibly stubborn, was and am far less interested in conforming politically to "the real world." Most of history's major Catholic monarchies are long gone, meaning that Catholic Monarchism inevitably appears hopelessly bound to the increasingly distant (pre-1914 or even pre-1789) past. (This is arguably even more true of Orthodoxy, which sadly has lacked a single extant monarchy since 1974.) The Kingdom of Spain (albeit somewhat beleaguered nowadays), of whose restoration this past Sunday was the 45th anniversary, survives, as do four smaller European Catholic monarchies, but modern Spain presents its own problems for Catholics unhappy with the prevailing values of modern secular democratic society, to which the modern monarchy has largely acquiesced (and yet is still hated by the Left).

The situation with Anglicanism is somewhat different, since obviously the only Anglican monarchy ever to have existed is still very much in existence (and shared by 15 other countries), and is the most famous in the world. So are four continental Protestant kingdoms. This enables one who identifies as an Anglican or Protestant Monarchist, if he can accept contemporary developments such as female clergy, to be more reconciled to the present than a Catholic or Orthodox Monarchist can be, to a certain extent, though of course I also remain passionately committed to the restoration of Catholic, Orthodox, and even some non-Christian monarchies. But I don't want to know what would happen to my relationship with Anglicanism if...I don't think I want to finish this sentence...

Coronation of King Louis VIII of France, 1223

Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, 1953

RoyaltyMonarchy.com at 20

 

Today is the 20th birthday of my website!

It was on September 29, 2000, shortly after beginning graduate school at Juilliard, that I signed up with Angelfire, beginning with a number of royal charts and lists I'd already compiled. Originally the URL was awkwardly long and my pages carried unrelated ads; I purchased my unique domain in 2004. The style hasn't changed much in 20 years; I've never been an artsy web design person and it retains something of a "primitive" late 20th century feel, though there's a lot more content, including color images, now than there was. I launched my forum in 2006 and this blog in 2008, both still available from the main page. While in recent years I've devoted more monarchist energy to social media, I still keep it updated as best I can, having maintained it from addresses in New York, Miami Beach, Charlotte, and Dallas, and all over the world when traveling. I've always enjoyed hearing from visitors who appreciated the site, some of whom are now friends. 

 

(I learned while typing this that the Emir of Kuwait has died, so that will be my next update.)

 

Both the world of royalty and the world in general have changed considerably since September 2000; when I started my website from the Juilliard dorm computer lab, the World Trade Center towers were still standing a few miles south of me, five of Europe's ten current hereditary monarchies had different sovereigns than they do today (two of whom are now deceased), Nepal still had its monarchy under King Birendra, and luminaries like Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, who linked the age of the internet to the Victorian era, were still alive. I like to think that for those who care about its subject matter I've provided a little corner of constancy in an often bewildering world.

History and Restoration

 

I don’t know why some people in online discussions think assertions of counterfactual history—which by definition no one can either prove or refute—constitute valid moral arguments.

“Hawaii would have been conquered by Japan eventually anyway”

 

You can’t prove that, and so what? The republican coup and US annexation were still wrong.

 

It is reasonable on the other hand to argue that the abolition of the German and Austro-Hungarian monarchies in 1918 paved the way for the rise of Nazism and the subsequent expansion of Communism. This can be demonstrated with facts and logic. Had the monarchies survived, their peoples might have been spared a great deal of suffering. But counterfactual scenarios, however enticing (and no one wishes 20th century European history had proceeded differently more than me), are not the core of the moral argument.

 

I believe that the abolition of an ancient monarchy, let alone dozens of them at once, is wrong in itself, regardless of consequences. It is an offence against obedience, tradition, patriotism, aesthetics, the foundation of all previous legality, and the divine order. And that is why restoration is a moral imperative even after the most obvious negative consequences have subsided. Modern Germany and Austria, and the other lands that once made up the Habsburg Empire, may be decent places to live in a narrow materialistic sense, though it took over three decades in the West and seven in the East after the falls of the monarchies for that to be the case, with unprecedented horrors along the way. But there is more to life than materialism.

 

We cannot bring the dead back to life. But when something wrong was done, no matter how long ago, that can be reversed, it must be. And that is why I will insist as long as I draw breath that the occupation of Germany, Austria, Hawaii, and other countries that used to be monarchies by republican regimes is intrinsically immoral, because it constitutes an injustice that though it could be has never been corrected.

Germany and the Hohenzollerns

CNN: Germany's ex-royals want their riches back, but past ties to Hitler stand in the way

To single out the royal family and deny them their property seized by the equally evil Communists when the ancestors of millions of ordinary Germans also supported Hitler in the beginning is grossly unfair. (The article does not mention that Crown Prince Wilhelm soured on Hitler after his friend Kurt von Schleicher was murdered in the Night of the Long Knives in 1934, before most people did.) Germans should be bowing to their Kaiser, not “negotiating” with him. But I want Prince Georg Friedrich to be given back his throne, not only his property. It is republicans, not the royal family, who should be blamed for the rise of Hitler, which was only possible in the context of the vacuum created by the stupid and evil abolition of the monarchies. Still, this is a more thorough and balanced article on the Hohenzollerns than one would normally see in the American media. (Be sure to watch the video, with beautiful footage of Hohenzollern Castle.)

I can’t stand the way that virtually all mainstream commentary on 20th century German history treats the 1918 fall of the monarchies and 1919 establishment of the Weimar Republic as a good thing that all Germans should have immediately embraced, as it those who didn’t were the problem. No. Republicanism is cancer and the Republic was and is the problem. Crown Prince Wilhelm had every right and even the duty to seek the restoration of the monarchy, though as he eventually realised himself he was wrong to put any trust in Hitler. No country has the right to abolish its monarchy, let alone multiple monarchies as happened in Germany in 1918, which with all due respect to 2020 remains the worst year in history. It is those who thought Germany could manage without kings and princes who are to blame for the rise of Hitler, for they created the vacuum that facilitated it. As C.S. Lewis put it, “spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served. Deny it food and it will gobble poison.”

 

  

Louis XVI, Death, and Vandalism

 

I have to censor myself a bit when things like the vandalism and resultant removal of the Louisville Louis XVI statue happen, because I don't want to get in trouble. But I think I can say this. The truth is that I tend to react to news of the deliberate damage or destruction of art, especially art that is specifically symbolic of my beliefs and interests, with a kind of instinctive visceral rage that I generally simply don't experience at news of deaths, even unjust ones, of people I had never heard of. Maybe this makes me a bad person, but it's how I honestly feel.

I'm sure this has a lot to do with the fact that I'm in the arts, though I don't think all musicians are like this. While I work in the performing, rather than the visual, arts, my respect for competent visual artists is such that it's not hard to see an attack on a beautiful (or even just technically proficient) statue as an expression of contempt for the labor of all artists and therefore on my vocation. The subject of the art in question does not have to be as close to my heart as Louis XVI is for me to feel that way: I'm obviously not a Buddhist, but the Taliban's 2001 destruction of the 6th century Bamyan Buddhas still horrifies me too.

 

But it's also about the fact that, whether we like it or not, death is inevitable for all human beings, whereas a statue or artwork or building can last indefinitely for multiple future generations if not deliberately destroyed. And with over seven billion people on the planet, no matter how empathetic we think we are (and I freely acknowledge that there are people more empathetic and humanitarian than I am) we simply cannot grieve for every death, even every publicized one, or we would do nothing else. There is a finite amount of man-made beauty in the world, but an apparently infinite number of idiots who do not appreciate it.

 

I am outraged as an American monarchist because there were very few statues of royalty in the USA to begin with and now one of the most notable ones has been so severely damaged that it probably cannot ever be safely displayed in public again. But even if a statue of King Louis XVI per se is not as important to you as it is to me, the arts in general (including sculpture) are essential to what make life worth living for those of us who are alive. And no cause can justify or excuse such wanton contempt for human creation, history, the integrity of public spaces, or the legacy of a kind and decent man to whom all who do believe in the United States of America owe their independence and who ultimately paid for agreeing to become the USA's first foreign ally with his life.

 

 

 

 

Frustrated

It is really hard for me when even someone who maintains one of my favourite royalty pages feels the need to explicitly declare publicly that they are not advocating the restoration of the [German] Monarchy and privately that it will never happen. I am so tired of being told that my dreams are impossible and that I should instead accept the the way things are. Never. The way things are is an abomination, the infestation of Europe with illegitimate republics a far more egregious monstrosity than any of the things normie conservatives whine about. I will NEVER accept the loss of the German monarchies. If that means that the overwhelming majority of actual Germans today are my enemies, so be it. I curse and condemn the illegitimate Federal Republic of Germany and want the world to know that I am its enemy. I condemn Angela Merkel and Frank-Walter Steinmeier and all German politicians for their treasonous arrogance in refusing to bow to their Kaiser and the rightful other kings and dukes and princes. I demand that Europe be put back mostly the way it was in 1914 (Finland, Poland, and the Baltics can keep their independence), with the Portuguese and French monarchies restored too. And I am sick and tired of "conservative" Christianity not taking a stand. Republicanism is the true sin that cries out to Heaven for vengeance, far worse than anything anyone has ever done with anybody in a bedroom. I demand royal restorations, and I want republican Europeans Left and Right to know that I despise them and their precious republican values. I spit on the German republican constitution and I spit on its Basic Law. There is only one true form of government for Germany or any other country that has had a monarchical tradition. In Europe, Switzerland and San Marino are the only legitimate republics. Death to republicanism. Monarchy yesterday, Monarchy today, Monarchy forever!!!

St. Louis 750 in St. Louis

On Tuesday I spent the 750th anniversary of the death of King St. Louis IX of France (also the 175th birthday of King Ludwig II of Bavaria) in St. Louis, the American city named for him founded in 1764. Here I am (in my “Vive le Roi!” shirt) at the famous statue (previously visited in 2015), “Apotheosis of Saint Louis.”

 

Archduke Trio

Last month for Fine Arts Chamber Players' 2020 Basically Beethoven Festival-in-Place I recorded Beethoven's "Archduke" Trio Op. 97, dedicated in 1811 to the musical Archduke Rudolf (1788-1831), youngest child of Emperor Leopold II. The video of the performance, which also includes the "Spring" Sonata Op. 24 and the "Heiliger dankgesang" movement of the Op. 132 Quartet, is now available online. I managed to work some monarchical context into my program notes video.

Archduke Rudolf of Austria (1788-1831)

Constantine and Christendom

Why is historically illiterate iconoclastic idiocy like this taken seriously at all? Because weak-willed lily-livered establishment nincompoops like that idiot Justin Welby ("some will have to come down"), who almost makes me ashamed to be an Anglican, give the radicals credibility they do not deserve. Not one monument of any church of the Church of England should come down. Not one. Certainly not this one, which I was thrilled to see in June 2015. Britain is not the USA and should not have allowed American insanity to gain ground there. Anyone who has a problem with traditional British heritage needs to not live in Britain, and make room for immigrants like me who would appreciate it. Decent patriotic British people whose heritage is under attack must not give one inch.

Update: apparently the Constantine statue is not actually under threat.

In general, classical Greek and Roman history is not my specialty. I respect it and those who are knowledgeable about it, but my passion is for the period between Charlemagne's coronation as (Holy) Roman Emperor (800) and the end of World War I (1918), which I like to call "Charles to Charles" (in the latter case referring to the last Emperor of Austria). Spanning 1118 years, that's quite a bit of history.

But Emperor Constantine the Great (272-337), who was proclaimed Emperor in 306 near the present site of York Minster and who is considered a Saint in the Orthodox Church (I bought an icon of him and his mother St. Helena at the Greek Festival a few years ago), is important to me, because if I'm honest I'd have to admit that without him, Christianity might not have ever become the sort of thing that a person like me would be interested in. I was drawn to Christianity more via the cultural patrimony of Christendom that his conversion made possible than via the Bible directly. So York's bronze statue, with its haunting echoes of the links between the old Roman Empire and the England that I love, is a particularly significant monument.

My June 2015 photo of the statue of Emperor Constantine at York Minster

Icon of Sts. Constantine & Helen purchased at the Dallas Greek Festival, Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church

Beethoven and the Future

As I prepare to record some Beethoven chamber music, I'm honestly even more terrified of the long-term impact on my profession of the current ideological climate than of that of the pandemic, as bad as the latter is. I became a professional musician because I love music that happens to have been written primarily by European men prior to about 1945, with a few later exceptions. That's what speaks to me. And I refuse to apologize for that. My brother tells me that he saw an alleged musician say online somewhere that everything from before 1945 should be "cancelled." I'm not capable of responding to such malignant idiocy in a calm and reasonable way and do not believe that statements like that even deserve a serious response.

It is commendable for living composers to try to create tonal music that people will like. But I believe there is a reason, though not necessarily an insurmountable one, why most fans of classical music connect more with music by long-dead composers. The European society of the 18th and 19th centuries (despite the sinister interruption of the French Revolution) when most of what we now call the standard repertoire was written was basically a healthier society than ours. I see the modern world as a fundamentally sick society so am not surprised that it doesn’t produce much new of value. The circumstances conducive to the creation of “Great” secular instrumental music didn’t really exist before c. 1600 either, so there’s no guarantee that they always will. All I ask at this point is that we be allowed to hang on to as much of the past as we can, rather like tending the remnants of what used to be a roaring fire 🔥 so that it doesn’t entirely burn out.
 
Even when liberals (often under attack from those even further to their Left) defend the legacies of pre-20th-century European culture that they personally like, they tend to so in an apologetic way that implicitly concedes something like, "yes, of course they were wrong about a bunch of stuff back then and our modern secular democratic egalitarian values are totally superior, but there were still some worthwhile achievements we can benefit from." But that's not what I believe. I believe that the values of the European past, when most of the music I love was composed, were in many ways superior, and that's why the music, art, literature, and architecture were better. And for those problems that did exist, the proper solution was always reform, never revolution.

Saint Louis Under Attack

The Apotheosis of Saint Louis (1906), St. Louis, Missouri

I'm going to have to be careful what I say about this, as it makes me very angry. I think it will suffice for now to say that while I am an Episcopalian, if I lived in St. Louis I would have been there in solidarity with the Catholic defenders of the statue yesterday. Monarchists in the USA don't exactly have a lot of public monuments we can relate to, and this one is probably the best, and closest to my heart since my 2015 visit. Saint Louis, pray for us!

Here is another article. I left the following comment on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Facebook page: "This diabolical campaign does not deserve any respect. King Saint Louis IX was a good man and a hero. I am an Episcopalian, but if I lived in St. Louis I would have been with the Catholics defending the statue. American monarchists like me have very few public monuments we can relate to and this one is the best and closest to my heart. This should not even be presented as a legitimate controversy. The statue's radical enemies seek only destruction and have nothing positive to contribute to society. How can anyone in St. Louis even contemplate the eradication of their city's French Catholic heritage and name? St. Louis had nothing to do with American racial problems and should not be associated with them. This movement displays gross historical ignorance and attempts to judge a 13th-century French king by modern politically correct standards. Virtually any medieval European Catholic would be considered "anti-Semitic" and "Islamophobic" by contemporary standards. That doesn't mean they can't or shouldn't be honored for the good things they did within the framework of the only society they knew. Shame on the St. Louis authorities for not making sure the statue was protected before yesterday."

Statement from the Archdiocese of St. Louis.

I just signed this petition and urge others to do the same. I've also ordered a miniature copy of the statue from the St. Louis Art Museum.

Facebook censorship

This morning on Facebook I was suspended (no posting, commenting, or Liking/Reacting) for 24 hours simply for commenting on this photo of Prince Constantine in a Greek Royal Family group, "Greeks are idiots for rejecting their Royal Family. I don't understand it." Honestly, compared to everything that gets said on Facebook, including by me, I think that's pretty mild. I suppose I might have been OK if I'd said, more precisely, "those Greeks who reject their Royal Family are idiots." Still, this seems pretty heavy-handed to me. Be careful out there!

[Sunday update: on a lighter note, here are Princes Constantine and Achileas on guitar and drums.]

Statues and Consistency

I am broadly opposed to the vandalism and removal of statues of most historical figures. However, those of us who are on the preservationist side have to do better than simply insisting that "you can't erase history." The obvious response to that is that Adolf Hitler is undeniably an important figure in German history, yet Germany properly does not have statues of Hitler. And one would have to have a cold tankie heart indeed to condemn the toppling of statues of Lenin and other Communists at the end of the Cold War. "No statue of anybody should ever be removed" is as absurd a position as "Any statue that offends anybody should be removed." 

Critics of existing statues are correct to point out that a statue of a historical figure in a public place inherently implies not only that this person existed and had an impact on history, but also that it was an impact admirable in some ways and worthy of being honoured. Therefore, we have to be able to make distinctions between individuals who, though flawed (as we all are) and holding some opinions widely frowned on today, nevertheless accomplished good things by the prevailing standards of the society in which they lived and had a positive impact on their own community and country, and individuals with few or no redeeming qualities whose evil actions clearly violated moral principles with which they were or reasonably should have been familiar.

with the eponymous statue of King St. Louis IX of France (1214-1270) in St. Louis, Missouri, March 2015

Masked Brahms

My June 13 performance of the Quintet in G Major Op. 111 by Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) with Dallas Symphony colleagues is now available online. I wore my Union Jack mask in honour of HM The Queen's official birthday. The Brahms starts at about 45:30.


Summer Chamber Concert from Dallas Symphony Orchestra on Vimeo.

Reflections on recent disturbances

Not without trepidation, I'm going to try to write something about current events that will be true to myself without being too incendiary. I doubt that ideologues of either the Left or the Americanist Right will much like what I have to say, but perhaps someone will.

The United States of America was founded on a falsehood: the idea that a "Nation" could be fabricated from scratch out of Enlightenment ideology which was mistakenly believed to be universal. That many of the founders were hypocrites who whined about their own "Liberty" while denying it to others was a fatal flaw, perhaps _the_ fatal flaw, that is proving insurmountable. For a long time, buoyed by the inheritance of European Christian patrimony despite the founding ideology being essentially at odds with that patrimony, it seemed to work--for many. But it never worked for everyone, as we're hearing loud and clear recently. For many years the USA appeared to function as a de facto "nation," mostly for Christians (especially Protestants) of European descent who accepted (as I vocally do not) the Americanist republican civic religion. But at the same time, its promises rang hollow for others. 

While I deplore and condemn the violence and vandalism, and am troubled by the obvious inconsistency between the protests and the social distancing we've all been urged to observe, I cannot in conscience be unsympathetic to those in this country who feel estranged when for very different (and--this is important--far less physically threatening) reasons I have felt estranged from it for years. One of the many things I love about Monarchism is the natural, unforced, unaffected, genuine diversity we enjoy in our community. My circle of monarchist friends and allies includes a wide variety of races, religions, and all other kinds of identities and I wouldn't have it any other way. I think it's helpful at this time to focus on what we may have in common with those who appear to differ from us.

It's distressing now to see essentially American grievances and ideologies being imported to other countries, like the United Kingdom, but that was perhaps inevitable given the monumental (and in my view negative) influence the American idea has had on the world. What we're witnessing now may be the beginning of the end of something that never should have been created, but that doesn't mean it won't be painful to live through. I have lots of thoughts about the past, but no answers for the future.

Marian Column restored to Prague

A ray of hope in an otherwise dark time: Prague's Marian column, torn down by an angry mob in 1918 due to its association with the Habsburg monarchy, rises again.

In honour of the reconstruction of the column, originally erected in 1650 under Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III (1608-1657), here are pictures of two other Habsburg Ferdinands in Prague: the Coronation of Austrian Emperor Ferdinand I (1793-1875) as King of Bohemia in 1836, and his great-great-great-great-grandnephew Ferdinand Habsburg (b 1997) in the same St Vitus Cathedral in 2019.

Thoughts on Faith

In 2009 at the age of 30, after years of agnosticism, having become increasingly sympathetic to Christianity, I decided that despite not being a naturally religious person, I loved the music, art, and architecture it had inspired too much not to believe it is true. I know that being an Episcopalian and a member of Church of the Incarnation has blessed my life in many ways. But sometimes I still can't help wondering if I ever truly understood any of it. I suspect that's what some of my Christian friends and acquaintances must silently think about me sometimes. My Anglicanism is all so inextricably bound up with both the British Monarchy and classical sacred choral music, I honestly don't know what I would do if anything ever happened to either of those things, even though I know God never promised that either would last forever. I'm not always sure what my Christianity means at a time when most Christians are, to put it mildly, focused on other matters.

 

Even though my longstanding habit of listening to Saint Thomas Church webcasts and BBC Choral Evensong prepared me to an extent for the current norm of online services, the longer we go without being able to have church as we did (and I'm not enthusiastic about resuming but without full choral or congregational singing), the more distant I feel from it all, despite the 1662 Book of Common Prayer sitting right here on my desk. And I've never really overcome a misanthropic tendency, arguably antithetical to the Gospel, to value traditions, institutions, aesthetics, and buildings over Humanity. I suppose I'm not a very good Christian by either progressive or conservative standards. Yet I am still convinced it's better to be some sort of Christian, even a bad one, than nothing at all. And somehow we have to persevere.

Westminster Abbey

Louis XVI statue vandalized in Louisville

I am furious that the statue in Louisville of its martyred namesake King Louis XVI (1754-1793), who had nothing to do with American police brutality and in fact attempted to reform the French criminal justice system and tended to err on the side of leniency, has been vandalized. ⚜️

From Charles Coulombe: The attack on the Louis XVI statue in Louisville is ironic on several levels: Louis XVI wanted to buy out the slaveowners and liberate their slaves as early as 1777 - he thought he would be able to do so in ten years at the rate his reforms were working, but the next year made the biggest error of his reign: intervening in the American rebellion. Although that intervention made rebel victory possible (hence the statue and the town being named after him), it turned George III (who felt betrayed by Louis) against Catholic emancipation, and bankrupted France. Not only was there no money to free the slaves, there was none to feed the French peasantry when an Icelandic volcano spoiled the 1788 harvest - and so began the French Revolution. Moreover, the 1792 slave revolt in Haiti began as a rebellion in favour of the King against the newly installed republican government on the island. Toussaint l'Ouverture died in one of Napoleon's prisons both a devout Catholic and loyal to the Bourbons. Truly, life is a comedy for those who think, and a tragedy for those who feel.

In Memoriam Wilson Gavin (1998-2020)

I am in shock. It seems that one of my closest Facebook friends, Australian monarchist Wilson Gavin, was found dead this morning in Brisbane at the age of 21. It is in the news but I would prefer not to link to any article. He was an amazing person and Queen Elizabeth never had a more loyal subject. We had been friends since 2014 but had never met, but I felt that I knew him. We chatted frequently, most recently on Wednesday. Let no one ever tell you that online friendships aren't real. This one was. I am utterly devastated. I don't know his family but can only try to imagine how they must be feeling. This was his most recent Facebook profile picture. Rest in peace, beloved friend.

There is so much grief now, and yet I would not for a second be without the past 5+ years of friendship with him. I wish, bitterly, that I had made it to Australia once during that time. I couldn't go to New York during his one visit to the USA. We talked about perhaps coordinating a European trip one day. For all his love of the Queen and the Monarchy, which he firmly believed was every bit as Australian as it was British, I don't think he ever made it to the United Kingdom, though he'd been to continental Europe. ("I couldn't possibly stay so long in a republic," he replied when I asked if he was still in Greece.) But of course when one's friend is only 21 one thinks there is all the time in the world. With many of the friends I've met online via common interests, our points of view overlap, but we also argue. Wilson and I never really disagreed about anything. He was Australia's finest. I think the best way to honour him is to make sure everyone knows how remarkable he was and continue the fight to preserve Australia's constitutional monarchy forever. And if you ever find Twitter toxic, get off it. I did in April and have never missed it. While social media has undeniably had benefits, including this very friendship, it also has its deadly poisonous side. I hope one day the plague of cyber-bullying will end. I will miss you so much Wilson. You were so brave, brilliant, and fun. God Save the Queen.

Brazilian monarchism in the news

Like most of my Brazilian monarchist friends, I think the association with Bolsonaro--who will inevitably fall from power eventually--is a mistake. Nevertheless, the Brazilian monarchist movement is among the most vibrant and visible in any former monarchy in the world.

Dissent

I've always thought of myself as nonconformist and counter-cultural, but occasionally I'm reminded that there are people who have never read or seen Harry Potter and people who have never watched Game of Thrones, which I have, not because they were popular, but because stories about castles, wizards, dragons, and kings are the sort of thing I like and have always liked. But I think refusing to worship Democracy, venerate the American founding, or accept the legitimacy of republican governments of formerly monarchical countries demonstrates rather more contrarianism than refusing to experience a particular book or television series.

Modernity and Loyalty

One reason I have trouble understanding "normal" contempoary people is that I don't believe in unconditional geographical patriotism. I believe in loyalty to Monarchs, not loyalty to "Countries." While fond of some specific places that happen to be located within the USA, I feel nothing for the USA as a whole as a political entity, and while I love England and the United Kingdom, if God forbid Britain ever abolished the Monarchy, I would regard the new republic(s) as my enemy. Had I (or a version of me) been Brazilian in 1889, Portuguese in 1910, Russian in 1917, German or Austrian in 1918, Italian in 1946, Greek in 1974, or Iranian in 1979, I would have then felt that I had no country and no obligations of any kind to the new regime, preferring death (with which I'm sure the Bolsheviks or the Mullahs in particular would have been happy to oblige) or exile to obedience. So the mentality of Iranians who, the New York Times tells us, don't much like the Islamic Republic regime but are nevertheless rallying to it in patriotic anger is incomprehensible to me. I don't accept that countries have the right to abolish their monarchies, or come into existence by revolting against their monarch, and still expect the kind of automatic loyalty that would have been natural when the world was relatively sane and properly ordered.

On a related note, I find the mentality of Catholics who know that the Latin Mass is superior but nevertheless willingly attend Novus Ordo "masses" they find repulsive similarly incomprehensible. (I'm not worried that this will actually happen, but if traditional music & liturgy disappeared from my Episcopal parish, so would I.) I guess I'm not very good at Obedience.

Tactics

On the internet I sometimes see monarchists, perhaps especially religiously conservative American monarchists, make arguments that rely on blaming the U.S. republican form of government for various contemporary phenomena that they (and presumably their audience) dislike. While my lack of enthusiasm for Americanism is well known, I honestly think this is a mistake, because it can easily be pointed out that the same phenomena exist in contemporary European and Commonwealth constitutional monarchies. If you wish to criticize modern laws and social developments that are not unique to the USA or republics, you're really arguing against Democracy, Secularism, and Modernity, not republicanism per se. Now traditionalists and reactionaries who are also monarchists have every right to make those arguments. But I think discussion of Monarchy versus Republic has to be kept somewhat distinct from them.  Let's make sure that we're defending Monarchy on its own merits and for its own sake, as an institution compatible with the modern world, even if there are other aspects of that modern world that we dislike and hope to change.

Happy New Year!

Sorry for the lack of recent activity on this blog. It was good to see one of its few regular interactive readers again in person last month in New Jersey. Here is something I started typing on Facebook but decided I'd rather put here instead. (There's a lot I could post about here, including my recent monarchist-themed trip to NY and NJ, but generally by the time I get done documenting everything on Facebook I tend not to feel like also making a blog post. Any remaining blog readers who want to see my monarchist posts are welcome to "Friend" me at facebook.com/royalcello ; please include a message indicating that you've been a reader of my blog.)

I love my Catholic monarchist friends, but it saddens me that Catholic monarchism appears to be almost exclusively a lay thing. Are there ANY Roman Catholic priests or bishops who publicly advocate the restoration of defunct Catholic monarchies? (Note: devotion to Emperor Bl. Karl, while encouraging and praiseworthy, is not exactly the same thing as promoting the restoration of the Habsburg monarchy--as some non-political devotees of Bl. Karl would probably be quick to point out!)

As an Episcopalian, I have several Anglican clergy Facebook Friends who are more or less sympathetic to my views, though I can't help suspecting that some of them must raise their eyebrows at my stridency occasionally. I wonder what Roman Catholic priests would think of a Catholic version of me. (Even if I were RC I would still chafe at the non-infallible, republic-appeasing political judgments of Leo XIII and Pius XI, before we even got to Vatican II.) Anglican monarchism is of course fundamentally different anyway as the only Monarchy of our particular tradition is still intact, allowing Anglican monarchists to be more "conservative" (in the sense of defending something that currently exists) than Roman Catholic monarchists whose greatest examples (apart from Spain, which presents its own problems) are long gone. That's why Anglican monarchism (though mine isn't always) can be modernity-accommodating, moderate, and pragmatic but Roman Catholic monarchism (even if its proponents are more prudent and polite than I am, which many of them are) will inevitably be accused of "LARPing" (I hate that expression!) and of being "unrealistic" and inherently reactionary, despite the survival of five (six or seven if the Vatican itself and Andorra are counted) nominally Roman Catholic monarchies in modern Europe.