The King towers above the confines of history, draped in the mantle of sovereign authority and crowned with the identity of his people. If we are all image-bearers, then The King bears a double portion. He is merely a man, but within him is that nexus where mythos, virtue, and power converge. A king must be the champion of his people. He must stand as the head of his nation's household. The actualized archetype of The King is not a political leader but a living symbol of the good masculine order that bridles chaos and crushes perdition beneath its feet; the power of eternal mediation between heaven and earth, always manifests imperfectly yet tangibly in the lives of those men who strive to embody it. The king holds in his hands the keys to civilization. Not all those who govern a kingdom actualize within themselves the archetype of The King, and not everyone who manifests The King governs a kingdom, but the intersection between archetype and ruler is responsible for every great leap forward in civilization.
The modern age brims with men who have malignantly feminized themselves or men who fill the resulting vacuum with the dark masculine powers of destruction and personal gain. The King stands opposed to this as both a disciplinarian and an exemplar. He takes hold of the wicked world, shrouded in shadow and mist, and pierces it with the glint of sword and crown. His castle defies the horizon like a solemn promise: stern and unyielding, warmed by the light of the hearth within. This is the paternal promise of The King, who defends his family against the wild and dangerous men outside and proffers safety and warmth within his own dominion. The stone walls of his castle are the outward expression of his inner fortitude; they symbolize the bulwark of civilization against the wildness that gnaws at its edges. His whole life will be spent navigating the paradox that comes with power: the imperative to rule with strength and the desire to do so wisely; to rule not only by sword but also by scepter.
King Arthur embodies the dream of perfect order: a Camelot where justice flows like a wellspring, untouched by the muddying hands of cynicism or corruption. Arthur’s tale is shadowed by tragedy: Lancelot’s betrayal and Guinevere’s divided heart reveal the king’s true burden. He will fight bravely on the battlefields of external war, but his real struggle will lie in the endless skirmishes of the human soul. In this, Arthur reflects the Jungian archetype of The King, who harmonizes opposites, ensuring a balance between man’s instinctual nature and his self-temperance, upon which lasting civilizations are built.
Charlemagne fulfills The King even more so, as “The King archetype comes close to being God in his masculine form within every man.” His coronation by the Pope is not simply a moment of political aspiration, indeed he remarked later that had he known the Pope's designs he would not have traveled to Rome. His coronation represents an apotheosis of kingship: A man crowned by divine will, exercising an irresistible force of authority, choosing to live and die a servant of Christ in his fullest capacity. The laws he decreed and the lands he conquered were transformed by the ferocity of his mission: the insatiable drive to reshape the world in the image of a heavenly order. His mission led to the creation of Europe, perhaps the most beautiful civilization yet to exist. But even the grandeur of Charlamagne is not without its cost. Titan that he was, he could not live forever. In dying, he forever fractured his great empire into the many nations of Europe, a sobering reminder that no mortal king, however mighty, can fully embody the King. Indeed, there has only been and shall only be one lasting fulfillment of this archetype, and all men are measured according to his standard and inherit the depth of his mercy.
The King is a figure who calls to something deep within us - a yearning for order, a longing for justice, and an aching desire to believe that one man, through the power of determination and sacred anointing, by virtue and by vision, might bring harmony to a fractured world. The King reminds us that leadership can be more than an exercise of power. It can be a sacred duty, a calling to ascend not just to a throne, but to something that transcends mankind altogether.
Although our history has directly involved kings for longer than we can remember, the modern man is painfully ignorant of what kings were and what they did. The "kings" of today are hollow, vestigial shells of what they once were, their station dismantled by the Enlightenment and reduced to pomp and circumstance. Enlightened man continually declares that he has outgrown the need for a king's authority in matters of national affairs; but he chooses instead to die a death by one thousand, inefficient bureaucratic cuts.
You cannot blame the average person for their shallow understanding. The history of kings has been marred: we paradoxically maintain our enlightened anti-authoritarian attitudes and scoff at the thought of living beneath the avarice and tyranny of a king, while we simultaneously grovel in puerile dependence on the nanny state to provide for us from cradle to grave.
That is not to say that there are no better governments than a king, certainly the American experiment survived for a century and a half with a smallish government that respected its boundaries. Likewise, the Lockean concept of personal property and the Magna Carta, themselves characteristically anti-monarchial, owe their existence to the Enlightenment thinking that scoured the West of its kings and lieges.
When assessed honestly, the station of a king conveys a certain unifying power that we cannot achieve through popular governance. It is The King's power to unify that we lack in our politics and so desperately need. Oswald Spengler confirmed this in his work The Decline of the West, where he declares that the age of Caesars is the only thing that can sustain a diversified and stagnant civilization. Such as it has been, The Enlightenment gave man far more power over the specifics of his own life than he would have enjoyed under a king, but the bill comes due, always.
Of what relief is a democratic or representative government when the issue at hand is the moral character of its very own population? Perhaps John Adams said it best:
“ [...] Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but while it lasts, it is more bloody than either. … Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty. When clear prospects are opened before vanity, pride, avarice, or ambition, for their easy gratification, it is hard for the most considerate philosophers and the most conscientious moralists to resist the temptation. Individuals have conquered themselves. Nations and large bodies of men, never.” - A letter from John Adams to John Taylor, 17 December 1814
Representative government has been fine for a while, and it may continue to be fine for a little while longer, but it is by no means man's natural state to be his own king, nor is popular government the only form of government that could be good for man. These are luxuries that are made possible by the health and self-discipline of a civilization in its early stages. With the increase of decadence and degeneracy arises the need for a king.
The more thoughtful conservative of the Western tradition will know that the central tenet of our conservatism is the appeal to tradition. Of course, this necessitates an appeal to monarchial tradition since the majority of the West's foundations were laid by feudal men who lived beneath the authority of a king. Yet such a statement presents with discord to the modern, enlightened ear. I believe that the popular disdain for kings is a result of ignorance or guilt rather than enlightenment. The wicked flee when no man pursueth. There can be no love for a righteous king in a wicked heart just as an undisciplined child cannot help but despise the correction of their parent.
When you ask the modern man what a king is, his answer will be disappointingly banal. He will reply with all the nuance of a six-year-old boy, brandishing a wooden sword, who has just watched or read Robin Hood. He will say that a king is some sort of nepotistic tyrant, or at the very least a greedy and temperamental dictator who can occasionally act in benevolence, but more often deals in malice.
Considering the prominence of kings in human history, this question deserves a more thoughtful answer. And since there are so many examples to draw upon, we must dissolve the station of kingship down to its essential parts and examine them in the light of human nature and governmental philosophy (in the style of Hilaire Belloc).
Feudalism - Aristocracy - Democracy
First, we must establish clearly what the duties of a king are. Looking through history, there are three clearly defined eras of European kings. The earliest kings were those who lived in Feudal Europe. These were the real kings, the ones who built Europe and maintained it, defended it from Islamic invasion, and widely shared in the collective society called 'Christendom.'
These first kings immediately defy the modern imagination. They did not have limitless authority, since feudal Europe practiced the same kind of subsidiarity that the founding fathers envisioned for America. Decisions were made at the most local level wherever and whenever possible. A town would have its decisions made by the mayor, a smallish collection of towns would have been the responsibility of a count or a duke, and only those issues that were too large or demanding to be solved locally made their way to the king. The king also would have governed a town or city, his capital city, but he very rarely intervened in the affairs of his vassals. Indeed, the sheer volume of decisions that arise in the king's domain would be impossible for one person to manage. The king could not effectively govern such an area, nor would he want to. The subsidiarity of medieval feudalism meant that the king's attention was directed towards larger issues. The local areas were attended to by their mayors and local lords, while the king was preoccupied defending his people's continued existence against external threats and encroachment.
Because of the contracts which defined his vassals' feudal obligations, the king could not simply demand manpower or tribute. The obligations of a mayor or duke to his king were minimal. A king could not generally keep an army of his own, save for what manpower he could raise from his city or purchase from mercenaries. The wealth of feudal kings was not limitless, and the training, maintenance, and provision of standing armies was one of the surest ways to become poorer. By contrast, the armies of the king's vassals were often comparable in size or even larger than the king's own corps. In times of war, he would call on his vassals for manpower, but even then he could not demand their participation, he could only rely on the contracts between them or the urgency of the threat. Thus the king could not govern by force as the modern man often believes. In reality, the fealty of his vassals was based solely on contract, tradition, and loyalty. This acted as a check against despotism and pushed the king to spend much of his time maintaining relationships with his vassals. What he received in taxes was considered payment in exchange for providing legal administration and adjudicating disputes between his dukes.
It defies the modern imagination that a king could persist without being an absolute monarch. Why would so many dukes choose to pay tribute to a king who likely could not win a war against one of them without the support of all the others? Furthermore, since the king was in such a weak position, why was he allowed to exist at all, or was not more often overthrown by a coalition of his vassals? What made the king's persistence necessary and less enviable was his duty to unite his people beneath the banner of their commonalities, and defend them against outside threats. When the kingdom fell under siege, the lower lords looked to the king for a response. It fell squarely upon the king to rally support for the common defense and lead the charge to victory. A failure here would result in his deposition or worse. When one duke grew capriciously expansionistic and threatened the autonomy of the others, they all looked to the king to mediate and defend the order of his realm. When the growing Islamic expansions began to chew at the edges of Christian Europe, it fell upon the shoulders of Her kings to defend it. The position of a king was one of noble privilege to be certain, but no other position in Europe held such magnitude of responsibility or severity of consequence for failure.
Feudal kings were able to govern because of the deference provided to them by their dukes, rather than by divine right or use of power. This would change after the growth of the aristocracy on the heels of the black death; fifteenth and sixteenth-century Europe saw the rise of aristocratic monarchies, led by so-called absolute monarchs. These sovereigns began as kings but grew to think of themselves as emperors, a term which once was bestowed only by the papacy as an honorific. The Holy Roman Emperor was declared by the Church to be the 'defender of the faith,' responsible for defending Christianity in civilized Europe against barbaric assault. As absolute monarchs consolidated their power (The Sun King, Louis XIV, famously proclaimed "I am the state") the title of emperor grew to mean less and less. By the end of the Renaissance, it only meant that the king possessed great tracts of territories and ruled them absolutely, without contract or imperative beyond his power and glory.
It is these aristocratic monarchs who are responsible for our popular objections to monarchy today. These same men leave such a stain on the concept of kingship that we cannot bear to think of living beneath one. But in reality, the number of these despots is small compared to the total number of European kings, and the evils we charge them with are symptomatic not of monarchy itself but of aristocracy and excess, two problems that we wrestle with just as ineffectively today.
The French, as is their tendency, overcorrected for the aristocratic problem and embarked on one of the most inefficient patterns of regime change in all of human history. This involved killing Louis XIV, founding their first republic, and then following with a consulate, and another empire with Napoleon at its head. It then took another monarchy, another republic, a second empire led by Napoleon's nephew, and finally, a third republic before the runaway French government was finally halted after being taken by the Third Reich.
Perhaps the most damnable thing to come out of the failed French experiment in self-governance was the creation of Enlightenment philosophy, which began to work its mischief by targeting the aristocracy itself, though it quickly spread to target any institution that would seek to impede the common man's social mobility. In solidarity with this, the growing protestant revolution further accelerated Enlightenment thinking, allowing for the proliferation of secular nations that were governed by man's imperatives rather than Biblical truth.
The result of The Enlightenment was that men no longer needed to maintain their reverence for the crown or the papacy. Each man was free to be his own king and high priest, all in one.
As I said in the first place, the initial results of The Enlightenment appear to be positive for Western man, who had been undeniably stepped upon by the aristocrats in Europe. However, this was remedied with overcorrection. Slowly at first, but increasingly during the next several hundred years, anthropocentric ideologies arose, casting aside the Western tradition of order and morality. The cultural influence of the church waned after the protestant reformation, which paired nicely with the increase of popular self-governance. Man grew less able to govern himself uprightly, and at the same time secured more power in government. Marxism and leftism were fueled by the fires of runaway enlightenment. Postmodernism is similarly driven by the fusion of hedonism and nihilism, which both sprouted from the fertile, humanistic, Enlightenment soil.
Thus the Enlightenment quieted the aristocracy for a time, but today it seems that "the aristocracy" has remedied this by residing in every man all at once; what was initially the tyranny of a few absolute monarchs has become the tyranny of the vast, glutenous majority. Perhaps in a later article, I will contrast the aristocracy of sixteenth-century Europe with the modern man, but it should suffice to say that whatever vanity, pride, selfishness, divisiveness, or avariciousness existed in the aristocracy in 1685 exists ten times more in the modern man, but this time around it is lauded as enlightenment rather than disparaged as vice.
A King? Why Now?
Certainly, it is an outlandish position to argue that we could benefit from a monarchy today, and would surely not be met with support, but there are a few things to consider.
First, consider that conservatism is not opposed to monarchy, but turbulence. Edmund Burke, the father of conservatism, saw monarchy as an essential component of a balanced and hierarchical society. He was keenly aware of the unifying power of the king to provide social stability, governmental continuity, and a shared sense of national identity that extended beyond factionalism and selfish interest. He knew that a king linked the present generations to their ancestors and their historical and cultural heritages. Russell Kirk, himself the father of American conservatism, admired constitutional monarchies as well, especially in Britain, for their ability to balance the symbolic and cultural power of a king with the practical self-governance of parliamentary institutions. For Kirk, the king represented a non-partisan institution that sat above the dirtiness of politics, embodying a nation's traditions and unifying its people more than a political party ever could. The king is unsurpassed in his ability to unify the nation.
As John Adams observed in the quote earlier, monarchies were far more durable than representative governments. Since they change so slowly, if the system is set up properly, they are not nearly as authoritarian as people would like to believe. The system's integrity is a fair caveat since the same must be said of constitutional republics. For the great successes of America, there have been hundreds of failed republics that could easily skew the data if they were not carefully sorted out based on their starting conditions and underlying philosophies.
Secondly, a monarchy unifies its people beyond ideology, which is especially poignant since one of the most divisive factors in American politics today is the insurmountable ideological divide. I do not think it is unreasonable to say that the divisions caused by ideology in America might not be remedied in time to save the concept of what America has been. But this is a necessary consequence of collective rule. America is what Americans are, it can be nothing else. Our government is made of the American people, there are no classes of people who depend on the continuity of one national identity for their wealth or power, so when the moral fabric of Americans changes, so does the soul of America. No amount of romantic cultural reverence for cowboys or pioneers (although this, too died in the 80s) can change the fact that the "American spirit" can only persist if it is carried in the souls of its people. As soon as those people who embodied the American spirit were gone, then it became the worship of ashes. A new spirit has since arisen in its place. If you think about it, there has not been a solid new cultural innovation in America since the middle of the last century. We are trapped in a descending cultural spiral where all we can do is consume and regurgitate the cultural currency of the past, and with every iteration, it becomes more washed out.
Christmastime is a great litmus test for the virile creative power of a culture. It is the highest point of celebration and yearly reset. It is the careful synthesis of the Church's most joyful feasting and celebrating with the older, tribal traditions of yuletide and harvest time. For millennia the peoples of the West have spent the short days of Christmas time celebrating, socializing, and convalescing after a year of hard labor. There is no other time of the year that comes close to possessing a similar degree of cultural power. During this time, the richness and diversity of Christmas traditions among the many peoples of Europe is hard to comprehend. This could not be further from our situation today. We have listened to the same Christmas songs since the 1960s, and every year we seem to lose more of the cultural power of Christmas and Yuletide. We cannot seem to create new Christmas songs that don't flop; the new stuff is utterly devoid of that thick, rich cultural essence that is so appealing and permeates the old stuff.
There will always be a dominant cultural force directing the course of a nation, and since ours depends on the character of the people to maintain it, ours is a culture in moral decline. But a monarch sits at the helm of his culture, he has de facto authority over his nation's traditions and heritage, and it is in his greatest interest to preserve those traditions, since they afford him his very title. The king keeps the culture alive.
This is why the first thing that the Marxists did in Europe was convince the common people to overthrow the last remnants of their monarchies. An assembly of self-governing men is easily seduced by the offers of Marxism, but since a monarchy is necessarily conservative it is thus ontologically insulated from Marxist corruption.
Furthermore, in the absence of a global aristocracy (which we have already reasoned is a symptom of human nature rather than monarchy itself,) the king's greatest interest lies in the longevity of his nation, which contains his wealth and his posterity. A president or prime minister has between four and eight years to shake as many hands as possible before retiring and spending the rest of his life living off of his networking skills. Only the very best presidents would have such long-term vision and devotion to their country that they would set aside their own prosperity in defense of the national spirit.
A king is invested by default in the well-being of his nation. As the nation prospers, so do the king and his descendants. If the nation degenerates, so too does the king. There are no term limits, there are no ways out. The king is the personification of his nation and his people. Even if he reigns miserably and abuses his authority he, cannot escape his his fate.
The modern man insists that to live beneath a king is to invite despotism and tyranny. Certainly, there are many examples of kings who ruled despotically, but there are just as many presidents who have done the same, like FDR, and caused just as much damage, or likely far more in the case of FDR, than the average king.
Finally, the European style of king embodies Christendom itself and increases chivalry and moral uprightness. The reason why the Crusaders, despite their small numbers, disorganized military structure, and long journey, were able to route the Saracen invaders from Byzantium derives from the quality of their honor and their cohesion. Their entire lives were steeped in the same Christian traditions and moral fiber that empowered the American pioneers to tame the frontier Great cultural tasks require immense cultural strength and cohesion. As Belloc demonstrates in his work The Crusades, the feudal Christian Europeans did not think like anthropocentric, enlightened men. That is to say that their own success or individual well-being was not the issue pressing on their minds. The Church and the Kingdom of God were always what pushed them towards the finish line. You could consider this temperament to be something like a cultural-mindedness that drove them to create, tame, and order. The king served as the archetype of this drive since social order was his to maintain.
The medieval men devoted themselves and many generations of their families to building cathedrals, over the course of centuries. The first mason who laid down stones knew that he would not live to see the completion of his work. In modern terms of thinking, his own life would not amount to much. However, he knew that as his descendants who also labored on, faithfully building the cathedral, they would eventually be able to witness the indescribable beauty that comes with lifetimes of honest work and devotion to higher ideals. This is not to say that they had bad lives since they had feast days and holidays, far more than we have even now. They had their families, their culture, and their Churches. They lived simpler lives than we do now, but they were undeniably happy. The point is that the feudal man had a perspective so much larger than himself that he counted it a joy to participate in working for the Kingdom of Heaven and the advancement of his culture, even if he would not live long enough to enjoy all the fruits of his labor. The modern man has difficulty even thinking in terms larger than himself, and when he does, he is met with severe resistance from the men around him.
The same is true of the American founders and pioneers, who set out to live in a log cabin and tame the wilderness. They lived brutal lives full of uncertainty, but if American tradition is to be believed, they were inescapably happy. The joy of the American pioneer and the insatiable urge to live on the edge of the frontier, toiling for the benefit of the generations to come and growing closer to God is akin to the spirit of the feudal European man. Only time and circumstance separate these men, their inner drive is much the same.
This principle of culture-minded thinking and joyful toil sees its utmost realization in the mantle of a Christian king, who is tasked with defending the realm, upholding Christendom, and working to create a more beautiful world, despite man rather than because of man. These are lofty ideals, but they apply to every political station of the king. The modern Church does not win many battles in the culture war, because the Church is not a political machine. In centuries past, the church has worked in cooperation with the state, informing the necessary politics to maintain a Christian cultural conservatism. Unfortunately, Christians today shy away from politics and real cultural intervention since they inherit a culture that was purchased with generations of Christian blood and centuries of Christian toil. A proper king is the embodiment of the positive Jungian masculine energy, which wrests order back from the clutches of chaos and arresting the runaway negative feminine Jungian drive that has destabilized and pacified our culture into resigned mortal apathy.
A king is the necessary metaphysical fulfillment of one-half of the collective human unconsciousness as it manifests in the political and cultural world. A king is not always needed to ensure social order, but as Spengler observed in his work, the first half of an age concludes with the stagnation of the positive feminine creative spirit and the cessation of meaningful artistic and cultural creation. It is only through the masculine energy of a king or Caesar that the society can become a lasting civilization and persevere for a while longer before the cycle ultimately renews itself.
Where Spengler has a cold regard for the West as the mere continuation of an eternal cycle, he fails to understand the redemptive nature of Christ, the highest King, who has in many times past worked through the power of earthly kings.
His Heavenly Kingdom was once so deeply integrated with our civilization that even its smoking ruins are unbearably caustic to those who hate goodness and beauty. Those who froth at the mouth while they deride the West are merely scalded by the remnant of convicting majesty and order which emit from its rubble.
There is no denying that a civilization can align itself so closely with Christ that it works his great plans through its kings. This was the case for millennia, it could easily be the case once again. All that stands in the way is the Enlightenment and the unwarranted, depraved hubris of modern man.
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