‌Chapter 3

‌Of Pageantry and Political Power

Every year, in late October or early November, Queen Elizabeth II sets off in the horse-drawn Irish state coach from Buckingham Palace down the Mall, the grand thoroughfare that leads eastwards in the direction of Trafalgar Square. As crowds – many of them tourists – look on, her carriage, painted gold, turns right into Horse Guards, then left across the parade ground, to emerge through Horse Guards Arch and then along Whitehall to the Palace of Westminster, the seat of parliament. When she arrives, the royal standard is hoisted over the building.

Once inside, Elizabeth follows a carefully scripted ritual that has changed little since she first made the journey in 1952. After being helped into the robes of state and the imperial state crown, which has been carried to Westminster earlier in the day on a cushion aboard its own state coach, she proceeds through the royal gallery, with her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, at her side, to the House of Lords, the upper house of parliament.

Seated on the throne, she tells the assembled lords to sit and motions to the Lord Great Chamberlain to summon the members of the House of Commons. He signals to a parliamentary official known as the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod, who turns and, escorted by both the doorkeeper of the House of Lords and an inspector of police, approaches the doors to the chamber of the Commons. As he comes near, the doors are slammed in his face. He then strikes three times with his staff (the Black Rod from which he derives his title), and is admitted. At the bar, he bows to the speaker before proceeding to the dispatch box and uttering the following words: “Mr (or Madam) Speaker, the Queen commands this honourable House to attend Her Majesty immediately in the House of Peers.”

The Serjeant-at-Arms, essentially the head of security for the House of Commons, who since 2008 is for the first time a woman, picks up the ceremonial mace and then, together with the Speaker, leads the prime minister and leader of the opposition to the Lords’ Chamber. By tradition, they do not so much walk as saunter, laughing and joking together as they go. When they arrive, they bow to the Queen and wait by the bar. The Queen then reads out a speech outlining her government’s political programme for the year. It is traditionally written on goatskin vellum. Not a single word has been written by her, but the speech, which she delivers in a deadpan voice, is peppered with references to “my government”.

Much of the pageantry has its origins in the struggles almost half a millennium ago between the monarch and the House of Commons. The ceremony is held in the Lords rather than the Commons because of a tradition dating back to the seventeenth century that forbids the ‌sovereign from entering that chamber.1 The closing of the door in the face of the Queen’s representative – and the casual manner in which the MPs answer her summons – are further symbolic reminders of how hard their predecessors fought to gain their independence from the crown.

Away from the public eye there are some other strange twists: before the Queen arrives in the Palace of Westminster, its cellars are symbolically searched by the Yeoman of the Guard to prevent a repetition of the 1605 gunpowder plot in which a group of English Catholics were accused of trying – and failing – to blow up the building and kill the Protestant King James I.

Even more bizarrely, before the Queen sets off for the day, a member of the House of Commons, known as Vice-Chamberlain of the Household, is brought to Buckingham Palace and held hostage – a reference to the reign of Charles II, when there was concern that the King would be arrested as he entered the Houses of Parliament and suffer the same fate as his father Charles I, executed in 1649. According to past “hostages”, these few hours of luxurious captivity are a pleasant experience. “Prince Philip always greets the Vice-Chamberlain upon their return with the same words: ‘I hope you’ve looked after the shop while we’ve been away,’” recalled Nottingham North MP Graham Allen, the son of a former coal miner, who was ‌given the job in 1998.2

With its curious rituals, fancy costumes and cast of characters with archaic-sounding names, the ceremony is a reminder of the time when the monarchy, in the words of Walter Bagehot, the prominent British nineteenth-century journalist, editor of the Economist and constitutional expert, gave a “vast strength to the entire constitution, by enlisting on its behalf the credulous obedience of enormous masses”.

As with much royal tradition in Britain and elsewhere in Europe, however, the impression of continuity is misleading. Despite the frequent references to the seventeenth century, the ceremony took its current form only in 1901 on the accession of King Edward VII, who adored such pageantry and a mere three weeks after the death of his mother, Queen Victoria, processed to the House of Lords in crimson, gold and ermine robes, reading the speech himself. Victoria, by contrast, had refused to come to the state opening for years after the death of Prince Albert, her consort, in 1861, and even when she started turning up again, she and her children and their spouses would sit at the front listening while the Lord Chancellor read the speech. Queen Elizabeth II has opened every session of the parliament since her accession, with the exceptions of 1959 and 1963, when she was pregnant with her second two sons.

In 1998, a year after Tony Blair had become prime minister with a determination to “modernize” Britain, the ceremony was streamlined and speeded up. The changes were modest, however: the number of participants in the Queen’s procession that year was cut from fifty-seven to thirty-one – among those missing were such exotically named characters as the Gentleman Usher of the Sword of State and Silver Stick in Waiting – while Lord Irvine, the incoming Lord Chancellor, did without the traditional tights, breeches and buckles. And, after pulling the government’s speech from his ceremonial purse and hand-delivering the legislative programme to the Queen, Irvine turned his back on her as he walked away down the carpeted steps, rather than walking backwards as had previously been the case.

The speech the Queen read that year contained a radical proposal to end one of the most undemocratic and archaic provisions in the British constitution: the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords – even if more than a decade later the country is still without a fully elected upper house. When it came to the ceremony itself, however, the changes were limited. Some traditions, it seems, are too important to tamper with.

The ceremonial surrounding the British state opening of parliament stands out by virtue of its sheer scale and the richness of its spectacle, but it is not unique: some of the Continental monarchies also still mark their sovereign’s involvement in the political process with shows of pageantry.

Closest in nature to the proceedings in London is the opening of the Dutch parliament, held on Prinsjesdag (Prince’s Day), the third Tuesday in September, in The Hague. Starting shortly before midday, members of various regiments, resplendent in their dress uniforms, march through the streets. Then on the dot of one o’clock, the Gouden Koets (Golden Coach), carrying Queen Beatrix, her son Crown Prince Willem-Alexander and his wife Princess Máxima, sets off from the Noordeinde Palace, where she works, to travel the short distance through the centre of the city to the Ridderzaal (Hall of Knights) in the Binnenhof, the building that houses the parliament. A more modest coach carrying other members of the family precedes her. With their gilded uniforms, the coachmen look as if they have stepped straight out of a fairy tale.

Then, seated on a throne in front of members of both houses of parliament, the Queen reads out the Troonrede (“Throne Speech”), which is written for her by the government and outlines the legislative programme for the year ahead. Unlike her British counterpart, she wears a hat – and often quite a spectacular one – rather than a crown. That afternoon she and her family will make a brief appearance on the balcony of the Noordeinde Palace to the delight of the cheering crowds below.

Beatrix’s short journey, during which her coach is accompanied by members of the armed forces in their ceremonial best, is watched by spectators seated on specially erected stands along the route. Unlike the state opening of parliament in London, it is not so much a tourist attraction as an opportunity for the Dutch to display their support for the monarchy and for the ruling house of Orange-Nassau in particular. This is the day of the so-called Orangists, the grass-roots supporters of the monarchy, or rather of the ruling dynasty. Wearing orange coats or football shirts, or with garlands of orange flowers around their necks, they begin to gather as early as seven in the morning to be sure of securing the best places behind the barriers that line the narrow streets of The Hague. The Troonrede itself is broadcast not just on television but also on giant screens erected on the street, but few people seem to pay much attention: they have turned out for the glory of the spectacle, not to hear dry details of laws planned.

In recent years Prinsjesdag has also turned into an occasion for female members of parliament and for women out on the street to sport the most spectacular hats, the more extravagant the better – a tribute to the Queen’s own headgear. The creations, reminiscent of the sort seen every June at Royal Ascot, provide a colourful talking point for the Dutch media, which run competitions asking readers and viewers to choose their favourites.

Visiting in 2009, I watched the parade from a stand on Lange Voorhout, one of the oldest and grandest streets in The Hague. My fellow spectators, the majority of whom had obtained their tickets through Vorsten Royale, a royal magazine, were mostly in their sixties or seventies. I pointed this out to my neighbour, who would soon be drawing a pension himself. A tour guide by occupation, he was here for work rather than pleasure. “If I think about my own family, my parents were the monarchists, I am not really that bothered either way, while my children just talk about what it costs,” he admitted.

The atmosphere has traditionally been relaxed, but this year was different: it was only a few months since a failed attack on the royal family in Appeldoorn during celebrations marking Queen’s Day, the other important event in the Dutch royal calendar. The challenge for the authorities was how to tighten security without destroying the character of the event itself. They succeeded with characteristic Dutch aplomb. To protect the parade from a car-borne attack the centre of the city had been completely sealed off, but rather than use conventional crash barriers the authorities opted for concrete flowerpots filled with red and orange flowers. Members of the police, normally in ceremonial uniform, were this year dressed in their usual clothes, while walking alongside Beatrix’s coach were men carrying suspiciously large attaché cases. These cases, the Dutch press claimed the next day, contained special shields that would pop up in an emergency to protect the Queen from attack.

And then, at two p.m., it was all over. The Queen returned to her carriage and retraced her route back through the city. A few minutes later she and other members of the royal family appeared on the balcony of the Noordeinde Palace and waved to the crowds packed in the street below. “Leve de koningin (long live the Queen),” called out one man, and the crowd broke into applause.

Royal involvement with the workings of parliament continues to varying extents elsewhere. In Norway the King delivers a speech opening parliament on the second working day of October from a throne of gilt wood and red velvet, with his queen on his right and the crown prince on his left. In Sweden too the King makes a speech to the Riksdag, but it is only a short formal one rather than a statement of government policy and he doesn’t sit on a throne. In Denmark, by contrast, the Queen and her family are merely spectators – albeit high-profile ones whose every gesture is captured by photographer from the moment they arrive in black vintage limousines. Shots of them appearing to nod off to sleep are particularly prized by the press. The Spanish king appears only after a parliament convenes for the first time after an election, when he makes a speech seated at a normal chair and table rather than on a throne. In Belgium, the only occasion on which the monarch sets foot in parliament is to be sworn in at the beginning of his reign.

However reduced in form, such ceremonials serve as a vestigial reminder of the central role that royalty once played in the political and public life of the nation, when kings not only reigned over their subjects but ruled them. Owed their places often by virtue of military conquest, they maintained control of their realms thanks to a combination of brute force, patronage and clan loyalty. Parliaments, to the extent they existed at all, were purely advisory bodies.

The story of much of the past millennium is one of attempts by other forces in society to curb such powers. In Britain, one of the earliest such attempts was Magna Carta, the document King John was obliged by the barons to sign in 1215 establishing the principle that the monarch should rule according to law and not trample willy-nilly over the rights of his subjects.

It has not been a one-way process. In the centuries that followed Magna Carta, the power of the monarchy in England increased rather than diminished – although the execution of Charles I in 1649 and Britain’s brief, and hitherto unrepeated, republican interlude under Oliver Cromwell meant an end to the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings promulgated by Charles’s father, James I.

The monarchy was restored under Charles II, but when his brother, James II, who succeeded him, tried to reassert royal power, he was driven from the throne and replaced by his son-in-law (and nephew) William of Orange. At the formal ceremony in February 1689 at which they were jointly offered the crown, William and Mary were presented with a Declaration of Rights that marked the limits to their powers. This declaration (passed later that year by parliament as the Bill of Rights), together with a package of other laws over the following few years, known collectively as the Revolutionary Settlement, marked an end to arbitrary rule by the monarch in Britain and established the principle of the supremacy of parliament.

Initially, at least, the monarch was still left with considerable powers – even if, from then on, these powers had to be exercised within a framework of constitutional rules. As Vernon Bogdanor, one of Britain’s foremost constitutional scholars, has argued, “sovereigns still sought to secure governments which could carry out their policies, but they had to achieve this through methods of political management. They could no longer interfere with elections, but they could seek to influence them… Similarly, sovereigns could no longer ignore parliament, but they ‌could seek to influence it.”3

As a result, the British in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries saw a number of battles between successive kings and their ministers – with mixed results. Power was gradually ebbing away from the monarch, due largely to the emergence of a modern party system, which meant governments would come to depend for their survival on the support not of the King, but instead of the party that had a majority in the House of Commons. The process was reinforced by the extension of the franchise, first in 1832 to the middle classes and then in 1867 to some members of the working class too. The British monarchy had thus become a constitutional one, which, according to Bogdanor, was a term first coined by a Frenchman, W. Dupré, who wrote in 1801 of “La monarchie ‌constitutionnelle” and “un roi constitutionnel”.4

In his influential book The English Constitution, published in 1867 and widely read since (including, it seems, by the monarchs themselves), Bagehot summed up the role of the monarch thus: “To state the matter shortly, the sovereign has, under a constitutional monarchy such as ours, three rights: the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn. And a king of great sense and sagacity would want no others.” Yet despite Bagehot’s words, Victoria, who had already been on the throne for more than thirty years when his book appeared, had been far from an impartial bystander, initially adopting a highly partisan approach in favour of her beloved Lord Melbourne, a Whig, over the Tories. Her husband Albert, too, began to see the sovereign as an umpire, independent of the parties, who could use his or her influence for the good of the country. Fortunately, perhaps, for the health of the British constitution, Albert died in December 1861. Although Victoria responded to the loss of her beloved consort by withdrawing from public life, she reverted to her old partisan ways in the last two decades of her reign, favouring Benjamin Disraeli, the Conservative leader, who shared her passion for empire.

Kept away from all affairs of state by Victoria while she was alive, her son, Edward VII, intervened vigorously in all aspects of public life during his own brief reign. He was especially active in foreign policy, where he worked hard to build relations with France, creating the atmosphere that led to signature of the Entente Cordiale in 1904. His son, who succeeded him as George V, also found himself embroiled in politics. No sooner had he come to the throne in 1910 than he was caught up in the crisis prompted by the attempts of the House of Lords to block the budget. The fairness with which he treated the first Labour government in 1924 helped to ensure the party remained loyal to the monarchy rather than republican. Then, in 1931, when the nation was in crisis again, George intervened directly to encourage Ramsay MacDonald, the Labour leader, to form a “national government”, even though it meant splitting his own party. In 1945, however, his son George VI was unable to prevent the return of Labour, this time with a majority and a programme of radical change.

A similar process was under way over the same period in Continental Europe. Louis XIV, the Sun King, was as much a believer in the Divine Right of Kings as James I. His phrase “L’état, c’est moi” (“I am the state”) summarizes the fundamental principle of absolute monarchy, namely that sovereignty is vested in one individual.

Absolutism was on the rise elsewhere in Europe too. In Denmark in 1660, riding on a wave of popularity after his successful defence of Copenhagen against Swedish forces, King Frederik III, whose kingdom included Norway and the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, converted the monarchy from an elective to an absolute, hereditary one. The “Kongeloven” (or “Lex Regia”, both meaning “King’s Law”), signed on 14th November 1665, declared Denmark the personal property of the monarch, who was accountable only to God. His signature was required for all national business and once he signed a decree it became law immediately. The Danish council was an advisory body that the king could dismiss at will. This, in theory, was the most extensive and consistently defined absolutism in Christendom – even if, in practice, the Danish king’s powers and resources were as limited as in other monarchical states and he was just as dependent as other sovereigns on the general acceptance of his subjects.

Across Europe, the aftermath of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars saw monarchs obliged to accept the kind of constraints on power that had followed Britain’s Glorious Revolution more than a century earlier. In Sweden, the 1809 constitution that followed the coup d’état against Gustaf IV Adolf and his replacement by his elderly uncle, Carl XIII, did away with despotism, bringing in constitutional monarchy in its place. The king, it was decreed, could henceforth only exercise his powers within the government and under the control of the council of state. In the event, Carl, already aged sixty, was decrepit, and any influence he had was swiftly taken away by Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, the French revolutionary turned marshal who was imposed on him as crown prince. When, largely thanks to Bernadotte’s efforts, Norway was united with Sweden under a single crown in November 1814, its people were allowed to keep the liberal constitution adopted that May after the defeat of their former Danish masters. The document remains in force today.

Belgium was a constitutional monarchy from the start after breaking away from the Netherlands in 1830; Spain became a constitutional monarchy in 1837. The Dutch followed in 1848: their king, Willem II, although a conservative, saw a diminution in his powers as the only way the monarchy could survive and charged Johan Rudolf Thorbecke, who became the country’s first de-facto prime minister, with drawing up a new constitution that is still in operation today. “I changed from conservative to liberal in one night,” Willem declared. The document, passed in June 1849, ended absolute rule, established a bicameral parliament, limited the powers of the monarch and secured basic civil rights. In Sweden, following the replacement of the traditional parliament of the Four Estates with a more modern two-chamber system in 1866, Bernadotte’s grandson, King Carl XV, found his influence increasingly constrained by the legislature.

That, at least, was the theory. In practice Continental monarchs were, like British ones, often reluctant to submit to such constraints on their power. Despite his revolutionary origins, Bernadotte began his transformation into an old-fashioned royal autocrat even before he formally acceded to the Swedish (and Norwegian) throne in 1818 as Carl XIV Johan. As time went on, he increasingly chose as councillors loyal bureaucrats who would carry out his will. During the last fifteen of his twenty-six-year reign, the King – who rarely rose before two p.m. – ruled through what became known as his “bedchamber regime”, with Count Magnus Brahe, his personal advisor and favourite, acting as a kind of gatekeeper.

Belgium’s Léopold I and his son Léopold II also bridled at attempts to control their actions. Queen Isabel II of Spain, who reigned from 1843 until 1868, often interfered in politics, while Willem III, who came to the throne in the Netherlands in 1849, loathed the constitutional changes initiated by his father the previous year. His daughter, Wilhelmina, who was queen of the Netherlands for almost the entire first half of the twentieth century, was often unhappy with her government, and in the aftermath of the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 she managed to see down attempts to turn the country into socialist republic.

The first decades of the twentieth century saw a series of clashes – not all of which were won by parliaments. In 1914, Sweden’s Gustaf V, an advocate of rearmament, appealed directly to the people in a battle with the government of Karl Staaff, which had come to power three years earlier on the promise to disarm. That February, more than 30,000 farmers marched to the palace in support of the King, who denounced the government’s defence policy in a speech to the crowds gathered in the courtyard. Matters rapidly escalated into a constitutional crisis, prompting some to call for a republic – but the King prevailed, managing to form a conservative administration. The outbreak of war a few months later proved him right.

Yet the tide of history was running against Gustaf and the other monarchs, especially after the extension of the vote to the working classes – and to women – which helped the rise of the British Labour Party and other social-democratic parties. These, by their nature, tended to be less favourable towards monarchy than their conservative rivals. Even so, many leading left-leaning politicians quickly became dazzled by the allure of court once they were allowed to taste its charms, turning the most determined class warrior into a royalist. The victory of left-wing parties in the Swedish elections of 1917 obliged Gustaf to accept a liberal government again, this time in coalition with the Social Democrats, whose programme committed them to a republic. Three years later, Hjalmar Branting, who had led the Social Democrats in their battle against the King, even briefly served as prime minister.

Gustaf’s Danish counterpart, Christian X, who became king of that country in 1912, also came into conflict with his politicians. Although a conservative, he had acquiesced in the formation of Denmark’s first liberal government in 1901 but never really came to terms with the loss of the monarch’s traditional influence. He tried to regain some of it in 1920 during what became known as the Easter Crisis, when he sided with nationalists against his own government in a dispute over the return of Schleswig, a former Danish fiefdom lost to Prussia sixty years earlier. The King, who rode over the border on a white horse with a young girl on his knee, initially prevailed, forcing the prime minister to resign and replacing him with a more conservative figure. The political crisis that followed threatened the monarchy, however, and it was Christian who was eventually forced to back down: he learnt his lesson, as did his successors who, despite the formal powers still granted them in the constitution, have not tried to exert direct political influence.

Christian’s younger brother, who had become King Haakon VII of Norway in 1905 after it broke away from Sweden, trod more carefully, conscious perhaps of his own potentially more vulnerable position. During a government crisis in 1928, he took the bold move of inviting the Labour Party, whose platform included a provision to abolish the monarchy, into the government for the first time. The administration lasted only twenty-eight days, but the point had been made: the king was above politics. From that time on, the Norwegian left was not as antagonistic towards monarchy as its Swedish equivalent, although it took the outbreak of war for the Danish-born monarch to become a truly national figure.

In Belgium, Léopold I’s successors proved unwilling to accept the constraints imposed on them by the constitution. Indeed, the premature end to the reign of Léopold III was the result in part of the way in which he tried to ignore the wishes of his ministers in the 1930s. When the King himself came under fire over his war record, few politicians were prepared to support him – which, in the end, was to leave him little choice but to abdicate.

Although the general tendency was towards a reduction in royal power, Russia remained a glorious exception. The experiment with a limited constitutional monarchy after the 1905 Revolution proved a brief one. The Tsar had absolute state power, delegating it to persons and institutions only as he saw fit. He was, in a popular metaphor, the father of Russia, and the subjects of his empire were his children. It all came to a bloody end in 1917, however, when the Bolshevik revolution replaced absolute monarchy with an even more brutal form of authoritarian rule that was to endure for more than seven decades.

So what, if anything, is left of royal power today? Are Europe’s kings and queens mere figureheads or do they still play a role in the political process?

The most obvious place where royal influence can be felt is in the formation of governments, especially in those countries where coalitions are the norm. In both Belgium and the Netherlands, for example, the monarch is charged with appointing first a so-called informateur after an election to assess the political landscape and then a formateur who, all being well, will go on to become prime minister. In theory, the monarch should play a neutral role – but the larger the number of parties and the more possible combinations capable of generating a majority there are, the greater the influence of the monarch will be. That influence will also tend to grow the longer he has been on the throne.

Belgium’s fragmented political system, with the parties split not just along left-right lines but also between Flemings and Walloons, provides further scope for royal influence, by increasing the number of potential coalitions. When these administrations fall apart, as they do regularly, the king also has the power either to accept or to reject a prime minister’s resignation and allow a dissolution.

During his forty-two-year reign, King Baudouin made what some critics saw as rather too much use of such powers. In October 1991, just under two years before his death, when Belgium was in the midst of one of its periodic political crises, he refused to accept the resignation of Wilfried Martens, the prime minister, which had the result of bringing forward the general election. He is also said to have routinely struck out the names of proposed cabinet ministers of whom he didn’t approve. His younger brother, Albert, who succeeded him in August 1993, was by nature less keen to intervene, but has been obliged to do so, especially as the growing polarization of Belgium along linguistic lines has made it more difficult to form governments – as was shown after the Flemish nationalist Bart De Wever’s New Flemish Alliance won the largest number of seats in the June 2010 election.

Britain’s first-past-the-post political system, in which either Labour or Conservatives typically obtains an absolute majority, leaves considerably less room for royal intervention. There were nevertheless several occasions during the twentieth century – including during Elizabeth’s reign – when the monarch exercised discretion over the choice of leader. This was particularly the case with the Conservative Party, which traditionally did not elect a leader but clung to a curious system under which the leader “emerged” – leaving scope for royal involvement. These days, however, the Conservatives, like Labour, formally elect their own leader, which meant the appointment of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, and of Margaret Thatcher and John Major before them, was automatic rather than an example of the Queen exercising her discretion.

The general election of May 2010, which did not give an overall majority to either Labour or the Conservatives, seemed on the face of it to create a situation in which the Queen could play an interventionist role, as in Belgium or the Netherlands. This was not the British way: Buckingham Palace was careful to avoid giving the impression of any involvement, with the Queen remaining for five days at Windsor Castle while the party leaders back in London found a solution – a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition. The contrast with the active role played by her grandfather, George V, in the formation of the National Government in 1931 could not have been greater.

Behind the scenes, however, Christopher Geidt, the Queen’s private secretary, was monitoring events closely from the Cabinet Office. Geidt, it subsequently emerged, warned Brown not to resign until a formal pact between his two rivals had been concluded – in part by giving the defeated Labour leader the false impression he might yet be ‌able to cling to power.5 This averted a situation in which the country was left for a few days without a government; this is fairly commonplace for Belgium and the Netherlands, where coalition-building can sometimes take weeks or even months, but would have been an alarming constitutional novelty for Britain. It was therefore only once the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats had done their deal that Brown went to the palace to tender his resignation and the Queen invited Cameron to form a new administration.

Royal influence is not restricted to coalition-building. Between elections it can also extend to the day-to-day running of government. In the Netherlands, Queen Beatrix, as one of her former premiers revealed, would often be quite forthright as far as ministerial appointments were concerned. Monarchs have also occasionally given political direction at crucial moments: Baudouin, for example, suggested after the outbreak of troubles in the Belgian Congo in the late 1950s that independence for the African nation was becoming inevitable. In the late 1980s, a royal speech signalled acceptance of the country’s move towards federalism as the only way of reconciling warring Flemings and Walloons – even though the transfer of power from Brussels to regional and communal levels means ultimately a diminution of royal influence.

In most countries the prime minister holds weekly meetings with the monarch. Such meetings are not minuted and what goes on is known only to the participants, but as Margaret Thatcher wrote in her memoirs, “Anyone who imagines that they are a mere formality or confined to social niceties is quite wrong; they are quietly businesslike and Her Majesty brings to bear a formidable grasp of current ‌issues and breadth of experience.”6 As Bogdanor puts it, “it is a good thing that those who have political power should give some account each week ‌to those who do not.”7 The number of years that Elizabeth has spent as queen, and the dramas and crises she has lived through along the way, inevitably add to her influence. After all, she was already on the throne when David Cameron was born.

In Denmark, the Queen meets the prime minister once a week, usually on a Wednesday, unless either has a pressing engagement. She also holds a separate meeting with the foreign minister. Around once a month, she presides over the Council of State, a body that contains all the members of the cabinet. The crown prince becomes a member once he reaches eighteen. As elsewhere – with the exception of Sweden – the Queen also signs bills, laws and other documents.

Norway goes further: every Friday at eleven a.m. the members of the government assemble in the cabinet chamber of the Royal Palace in Oslo for a meeting of the Council of State, presided over by the King, seated in the original 1848 golden and red-velvet throne chair. One by one the various cabinet ministers read out their bills, which are then signed by the King. Often Crown Prince Haakon will also attend. Although the King’s signature is required, the meeting, which typically takes just half an hour, is largely symbolic these days. All the decisions have already been taken at a conventional cabinet meeting the day before – to which the King is not invited.

The nature of royal influence these days means that it is inevitably exerted behind the scenes: monarchs are as aware as everyone else that political power wielded by virtue purely of birth is an anachronism. The king or queen is not meant to have opinions – or at least they must keep them to themselves. In one notorious case in Belgium in 1990, however, King Baudouin broke this principle over the question of abortion. While other European countries had been liberalizing the law one by one, Belgium had been holding back, in part, it has been claimed, thanks to manoeuvring by the King. Baudouin’s main motivation appeared to have been his strong Catholic faith; a role may also have been played by his own personal experience: attempts by him and Queen Fabiola to have children ended in five miscarriages.

By the end of the 1980s, however, with Belgium, along with Ireland, almost alone in forbidding abortion, the popular mood was turning against him. After a bill approving terminations under certain circumstances was passed by the Senate in November 1989, the King vented his anger in public by devoting his New Year speech to a homily on the sanctity of human life. Despite his intervention, the bill was passed by an overwhelming majority in the Chamber of Representatives that spring, leaving the monarch in the invidious position of having to sign it into law. Instead he took advantage of a law that allowed him to step down if illness or “other reasons” prevented him from fulfilling his duties – but was allowed to resume his constitutional powers forty-eight hours later.

Although this did not allow Baudouin to block the measure, the republican lobby was angered by such an unusual constitutional manoeuvre. By putting his own religious faith ahead of his political neutrality, the King had clearly broken the rules – although opinion polls suggested his act of conscientious objection had actually increased rather than reduced his popularity.

The move nevertheless set a curious precedent that could have caused problems several years later when the parliament passed laws authorizing homosexual marriages and euthanasia – both of which Baudouin’s faith would have made him uncomfortable with. By then, however, he had already been succeeded by his more liberal younger brother, Albert, who signed both measures into law without objection.

A similar crisis was looming in Luxembourg in December 2008, when Grand Duke Henri, a devout Catholic, said he would refuse to sign into law an act on euthanasia voted on earlier that year by the Chamber of Deputies. The constitution was swiftly changed, making royal assent, which had been a requirement in the constitution since 1848, no longer necessary. But calls arose for a broader reform of the constitution, to reduce the powers of the grand duke, bringing his role more into line with that of Europe’s other monarchs.

Less dramatically, monarchs have also made use of their annual Christmas or New Year addresses – which, unlike the speeches to parliament, are their own rather than their government’s words – to express opinions. In the case of Queen Elizabeth II, the sentiments expressed are usually far from controversial: musings on the nature of Christianity and of family. Yet her words can also contain a more political message: in 2004, for example, she signalled support for a multicultural society – and opposition to the British National Party – by telling the story of an overseas visitor who had spoken approvingly of a trip he had taken on the Tube from Heathrow during which he had encountered children of different ethnic and culture groups, all of whom seemed to get on well with one another. “Some people feel that their own beliefs are being threatened,” she said. “Some are unhappy about unfamiliar cultures. They all need to be reassured… that diversity is indeed a strength and not a threat.” Significantly, the first stop in March 2012 on her five-month Diamond Jubilee tour of the United Kingdom was Leicester, a city with a mixed population. The Queen’s frequent references in her messages to the Commonwealth are also effectively a political statement of the importance of that organization.

Multiculturalism is a theme that has been seized on by Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands too. After the murder of Theo van Gogh, the controversial Dutch film-maker, by an Islamic extremist in November 2004, she appealed for tolerance during an unannounced visit to a multicultural workshop set up by young people in Amsterdam. In June 2006, Beatrix won praise from Jan Peter Balkenende, the prime minister – but anger from the far right – over her behaviour during a state visit to the Mubarak Mosque in The Hague to mark its fiftieth anniversary. Contrary to her usual practice she agreed not to shake hands with the leaders in deference to their belief that Islam forbids men from touching women other than their wives. Critics noted that such tolerance appeared to extend only to Muslims: the Queen had refused to meet an Orthodox Jewish group in 1982 because they also didn’t shake hands with women.

In contrast to the rest of European royalty, the Swedish monarch is almost completely devoid of formal political power, as a result of the new constitution that came into force in 1975, two years after King Carl XVI Gustaf, the current monarch, succeeded his nonagenarian grandfather, Gustaf VI Adolf. Swedish politicians had been arguing for years about how to modernize the monarchy – and indeed, whether to continue to have a king at all. The Social Democrats, who dominated Swedish politics from the 1930s, had always been committed to turning their country into a republic, even if they proved reluctant to take any concrete steps in that direction, for fear of upsetting their core voters, many of whom were ardent royalists. The right, by contrast, were determined to keep the king.

Almost as soon as Gustaf VI Adolf succeeded his father in 1950, work began on a new constitution in which everything – including the retention of the monarchy – was up for discussion. Indeed, the Bernadotte dynasty’s days looked numbered in 1966 when a bill introduced by some thirty Social Democratic MPs calling for the abolition of the monarchy won a majority in both houses of parliament. “Monarchy can only be regarded as an irrational system, with its future in its past,” they asserted. “Feelings ‌in its favour are waning.”8 Yet concerns about the reaction from the public prevailed, and the same majority rejected calls to put the proposal to a referendum. It was decided instead to hand the delicate matter to a constitutional commission.

After much deliberation, the commission hammered out a compromise in August 1971 at a meeting at Torekov, an exclusive summer resort on Sweden’s south-western coast: the king would remain as head of state but be stripped of all but his ceremonial and representational functions. The 1809 constitution had begun its definition of the monarch’s powers with the words “The King alone has the right to govern the realm” – a right that, for the first decades, had been limited only by a duty to ask the opinion of a council that he had himself appointed.

The current document starts instead with the words “All public power in Sweden derives from the people” – which is then conferred on parliament and government. However, in deference to the old King, who was due to celebrate his ninetieth birthday in November the following year, it was decided that the change, if agreed, would not come into effect until after his death.

By removing the monarch entirely from the political sphere, the Swedes were taking to a logical conclusion the gradual reduction in royal influence that had been taking place across Europe for the previous two centuries. This new document was, to a great extent, merely adapting the constitutional text to fit reality: real political power had long since drained away from the palace. But it also meant concrete changes in the way the system functions. Since 1975, it is the speaker of the Riksdag rather than the king who acts as a broker in the formation of government coalitions and appoints the prime minister. The monarch no longer presides over cabinet meetings, rubber-stamps bills or takes the title of commander-in-chief of the armed forces, though he does chair a committee on foreign policy. In the words of Olof Palme, the then prime minister, the reforms reduced the monarchy to a feather in the hat. Sweden, he declared, could easily be turned into a republic “with a stroke of the pen”.

This Swedish model is attractive to those who want to cling to the ceremonial trappings of royalty but whose democratic sentiments are affronted by having anyone granted political powers merely on the basis of heredity. It also obviates the need for a president, who could become a divisive party-political figure. Yet some critics are not satisfied, claiming the accident of the monarch’s birth still automatically gives him an authority denied other citizens, especially when he chooses to speak out on issues. Carl XVI Gustaf has certainly chosen to do so on various occasions in recent years, often provoking controversy, whether criticizing neighbouring Norway’s seal culls or upsetting environmentalists at home by calling for the killing of some of his country’s wolf population. A Christmas speech in which he urged his subjects to work harder was also seized on by critics who wondered if a hereditary monarch was best placed to express such sentiments.

Despite the attractions of the Swedish model, it has not so far been emulated elsewhere in Europe. Indeed, in May 2011, Mark Rutte, the Dutch prime minister, wrote to parliament explicitly opposing any formal restrictions to the powers of the monarch. “The monarch is certainly the symbol of power, but does not herself possess any power,” he said. Many in parliament were not convinced, however. In recent years, the Dutch monarchy’s traditional critics on the left and in the centre have been joined by Geert Wilders’s Freedom Party (PVV), which has been angered by the Queen’s calls for social cohesion and what it sees as her excessive respect for Muslim sensibilities. In September 2011, Wilders put forward a proposal in parliament to remove the monarch from the political system, but the move foundered on the requirement for a two-thirds majority to implement constitutional change. Yet, with relations between the Queen and the PVV set to remain poor, further attempts to limit royal power seem likely.

Alone of Europe’s monarchies, tiny Liechtenstein has bucked the trend towards a reduction in royal power. In a referendum in March 2003, nearly two thirds of the electorate backed a new constitution, proposed by Prince Hans-Adam II, which instead added considerably to his influence. The vote represented the culmination of a long and messy battle between the Prince and his parliament. The Prince Hans-Adam, who had been effectively running the principality since his ageing father transferred executive powers to him in 1984, had threatened that he and his family would move to Austria if the referendum failed, and even joked about selling Liechtenstein.

“We might indeed decide to leave the country,” Hans-Adam said in an interview in 2000 that reflected the unique relationship between the ruling family and their tiny country. “But that would not be the end of the principality, because until 1938 my ancestors also lived in Austria and came down here only once a year or so. My ancestors bailed out Liechtenstein when it was bankrupt and thus acquired sovereign rights. If ever the people decided time is up for this ruling family, they would have to find someone else rich enough to take our place. But I am confident ‌it won’t come to that.”9

Despite opposition led by Mario Frick, a former prime minister, the people backed their prince. He is not only able veto any law he dislikes, he can also dismiss the government or any minister at will. The result has been to make him effectively Europe’s only absolute monarch.