Tea at Trianon: The Aragorn Option

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, January 7, 2024

The Aragorn Option

Let us not forget St. Joan of Arc who saved France by restoring a king. And Mary Queen of Scots who died for being a Catholic sovereign. From Charles Coulombe at The European Conservative:

All that is gold does not glitter,

Not all those who wander are lost;

The old that is strong does not wither,

Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,

A light from the shadows shall spring;

Renewed shall be blade that was broken,

The crownless again shall be king.

― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

Despite the coming of the New Year, we are far from done with Christmas and its magic. Indeed, the Twelve Days land us on the Epiphany―the day of the Three Kings―and the season continues more or less merrily along until Candlemas on February 2. It is one of the few things remaining in our society that the vast majority of people can still find common rejoicing in―however obscure its origins and meaning may have been made by the dominant circles in that society. One is still reminded that “the King of Kings salvation brings,” even as―in America, anyway―the Christmas decorations are stripped away in stores and replaced with St. Valentine’s Day hearts. The immense varieties of Christmas customs in the various nations and regions of the world at once underline the distinctiveness of each and yet their union in observing the birth of Our Saviour in their own particular ways. It really can be no surprise that in assembling the 21 volumes of The Enchanted World, a sort of encyclopaedia of global folklore, the editors of Time-Life Books gave Christmas its own book―the only holiday to get one.

This enchanted time, dedicated to the birth of a King at once Heavenly and Earthly, has a great many Monarchical overtones, not least because of Christ’s Royal status. The Three Kings who visited him are enshrined in Cologne’s cathedral; their secondary place of veneration is their longtime shrine at Milan’s Sant’ Eustorgio basilica. Indeed, the Epiphany itself has been a feast much loved by Royalty. As Dom Gueranger puts it,

The race of Emperors like Julian and Valens was to be followed by Monarchs, who would bend their knee before this Babe of Bethlehem, and offer him the homage of orthodox faith and devoted hearts. Theodosius, Charlemagne, our own Alfred the Great and Edward the Confessor, Stephen of Hungary, the Emperor Henry II, Ferdinand of Castile, Louis IX of France are examples of Kings who had a special devotion to the Feast of the Epiphany. Their ambition was to go, in company with the Magi, to the feet of the Divine Infant, and offer him their gifts. At the English Court, the custom is still retained, and the reigning Sovereign offers an ingot of Gold as a tribute of homage to Jesus the King of Kings; the ingot is afterwards redeemed by a certain sum of money.

Indeed, even to-day, the sending of the three gifts to the Chapel Royal to be blessed with is as much a part of King Charles III’s observances as his Christmas speech and the trip to Sandringham church.

The latter part of January presents the anniversary of Louis XVI’s murder on January 21, the feast of Bl. Charlemagne on January 28, and, for Anglicans, the murder of Charles I on January 30, which are reminders of both the triumph and tragedy of Christian Monarchy. Here we see Charlemagne, father of Europe and first Holy Roman Emperor, sandwiched between two men who died for the very ideal of Kingship, the triumphant Frank exhibited a leadership deriving its authority from God and the Church, wielded according to traditional laws, and in itself contradicting the kind of leadership―grasping, ignorant, cowardly, and bloodthirsty―that dominates the World to-day.

The Romantic impulse is to look back at the Monarchs of yore, such as those cited by Dom Gueranger, and reflect on how many, from Britain’s King Arthur to Charlemagne to Portugal’s King Sebastian, are seen in the folklore of their peoples as being ready to return in messianic fashion when most needed by their erstwhile subjects. No less an author than J.R.R. Tolkien made such a return or restoration key to the plot of his Lord of the Rings. Aragorn, for so long the wandering heir to the glorious throne in the style of Bonnie Prince Charlie, wins at last and in a Charlemagne-like style, begins the restoration of a world wrecked by evil. It is a vision that has been acted out several times in history and is deeply rooted in the human psyche. Looking at the moral and mental midgets in charge of things to-day, one could hardly be blamed for wanting such a thing in our time. (Read more.)