Royal Visit Signals Special Relationship Endurance; Several Congressmembers Confirm They Know Charles “From the News, Sort Of”
Reported by Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.
PARIS / LONDON — King Charles III will become the first British monarch to address the United States Congress since his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, did so in 1991 — a distinction that the Palace notes with appropriate gravitas and that Washington is receiving with the particular mixture of genuine respect and vague historical uncertainty that characterizes American engagement with the British monarchy generally.
The address is scheduled as part of a broader state visit that is expected to emphasize the endurance of the US-UK “Special Relationship” — a term first used by Winston Churchill in 1946 and deployed continuously since in official communications between the two governments, serving as a shorthand for an alliance that is real and important and also somewhat mythologized in ways that both sides find convenient and neither side examines too closely during official visits.
What Congress Knows About King Charles
A survey of Congressional staff conducted for background by several outlets found that awareness of King Charles among US legislators runs from detailed and enthusiastic (among members with UK constituencies in their heritage or significant British-American business relationships) to “from the news, sort of” (a response that characterized approximately 40 percent of informal conversations). One congressmember from an interior state, asked for background comment, said Charles was “the one with the ears, right? The good one.” He was correct on both counts.
The protocol surrounding a monarch’s address to Congress is elaborate. Charles will be introduced by the Speaker of the House. He will deliver remarks from the well of the chamber, the same position occupied by foreign heads of state in joint sessions. Members will applaud at appropriate intervals, which they will identify through the applause of members who are following more closely. Charles, who has delivered addresses in a variety of formal contexts including the UN General Assembly and the COP climate summits, will speak well, because he has been trained for this since approximately 1955.
The Address’s Likely Content
Royal address content is developed through extensive consultation between the Palace, the British Foreign Office, the US State Department, and various advisors whose job is to ensure that what the monarch says is substantive enough to be taken seriously, non-partisan enough to be received without protest, and warm enough to produce the desired sense of shared purpose without committing either government to anything specific. This is an art form. The Queen’s 1991 address was considered an excellent example of it. Charles, who has been watching the form applied his entire life, is expected to perform it capably.
Likely themes include climate, which Charles has championed publicly for decades; the transatlantic alliance, which is the point of the visit; and the Commonwealth, which connects Britain to parts of the world that Congress finds relevant for trade and security reasons. What Charles will probably not address: Brexit, which remains a complicated topic in Anglo-American relations; the monarchy’s internal family dynamics, which Congress has not requested and which Charles would not discuss in any setting; and the specific political controversies of the Trump administration, which the Palace will have carefully avoided in speech preparation and which members of the press will ask about afterward and which Charles will decline to address.
The Royal Family’s official website provides the official context for the visit, which is available in a register considerably more formal than our reporting but that covers the same events from a different angle, which is what royal communication always does.
The France Angle
The state visit includes a stop in Paris, where Charles will meet with President Macron to discuss the same themes in a bilateral format — the climate alliance, which France and the UK have advanced jointly in various international forums; European security, which is more delicate given Brexit; and the Iran conflict’s European economic impacts, which both governments are managing with the careful coordination of allies who have real interests and real disagreements and who have learned to coordinate the interests while managing the disagreements diplomatically, which is what foreign ministers are for.
Paris will receive Charles with the formal hospitality that France deploys for state visitors — Elysee banquet, Champs-Elysees presence, probable beret-related photograph — and the mild undertone of a nation that conducted its own constitutional revolution in 1789 and that retains, 237 years later, a specific perspective on hereditary monarchy that it expresses through impeccable hospitality and occasional editorial cartoons. Le Gorafi, presumably, is already working on the headline. It will be very good. It will also, probably, be shared by several French politicians as real before anyone reads the byline. This is the Special Relationship with satire: it endures, regardless of who is speaking.
For royal coverage with historical depth and mild irreverence, see NewsThump.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
