Dr_Cornelius wrote:J.R.R. Tolkien wrote in a letter to his son during WWII that he was an anarcho-monarchist. He explained that this meant he didn't believe in Government as some sort of entity with a capital G; government should only be a verb, never a noun. He didn't believe, in other words, in the bureaucratic state; instead we should have a king who can, as Tolkien put it, sack his Vizier if he didn't like the cut of his trousers.
What an interesting insight into both C.S.Lewis and J.R.R.Tolkien! And yes, kings should be strong as both authors demonstrated in their writings. Sometimes I've found the intricate histories Tolkien worked out in his appendices of LOTR more fascinating than the books, themselves. And I suspect that for Tolkien his chief kingly character -Aragorn - is his ideal of what a king should be.
The main reason for having a king, any king, was to have a successful military leader, and an unsuccessful one might pay a huge penalty, as Tolkien so vividly illustrates in those appendices. C.S.Lewis also finds the need for strong military leaders, to co-ordinate and defend his Narnian people. That is how kings got to be so necessary. Sometimes as part of religious rites, kings in some RL communities were not sacked but were ritually put to death, having served their purpose.
Not that every successful military leader needed to be a king. Athens, where democracy originally started, had strong leaders called tyrants, but not like how we see tyrants today. One particularly strict leader was called Draco, from whom we get the idea of draconian laws. Solon, considered wise, made laws to reorganise the old tribal structures, and this in turn, led to the ideas of citizens, ordinary men fighting in armies, and the first ideas of democracy when the soldiers wanted a say in which wars they got to fight in.
When the Romans disposed of their conquering Etruscan kings they chose to rule with a council called a Senate, made up of the so-called patricians, plus a couple of tribunes to speak up for the ordinary people, the plebeians. But I wouldn't have called this Roman republic democratic as we understand it. As various successful leaders of the senate got more powerful and more competitive, the Romans ended up with first dictators then, after the death of Julius Caesar, with an Imperator, Augustus Caesar, the first Emperor of the Roman Empire, which led, centuries, even a millenium afterwards, to the Byzantine Empire and the Holy Roman Empire.
In none of these three empires was it automatic that the succeeding emperor would be the son of the previous emperor. In some cases there was too much family infighting, and a lot more "mysterious" deaths to rule out good leaders than could be attributed to co-incidence. A lot of bad emperors came to power that way, something like Miraz. Some others (Claudius) came to power because they were literally the last bloke available to do the job, and others were "adopted" to succeed, during times of some really Good Emperors. In many cases the Emperor was chosen by the army. And even in Christian times, until the rise of the Hapsburgs, the Holy Roman Emperor was often chosen by a council of Electors.
I thought I'd mention this, as there seems to be some misapprehensions about monarchies, republics and democracies. Maybe I'm just flattered by PhelanVelvet's kind remarks.
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In today's Real World, surviving Monarchies seldom rule independently of a democratically elected parliament, and not every Republic is Democratic, even when it claims to be. A couple of world nations even appear to have hereditary presidents
(North Korea & Syria). And today's monarchs, whatever powers they retain, would not rule as absolutely as depicted in
Dr_Cornelius' post. Lewis, himself, points out the dangers of kings who can sack 'their Viziers if they don't like the cut of their trousers'. Don't forget his HHB depiction of the Tisroc having a nice quiet yarn with his Vizier, Ahoshta, and his son, Rabadash, whilst Aravis and Lazaraleen hide behind the divan he is sitting on.
Phelan Velvet wrote:Monarchy works in Narnia because the kings and queens are legitimately good people. Not in the case of Miraz, but ultimately Aslan intervenes and sends the Pevensies. You can tell that Lewis thinks a lot of birth-right and royal bloodlines. I think it's all rot. ;P I don't believe there is any mystical quality in anyone's genes which allows them to be a better leader than anyone else, and I'm glad monarchy has fallen out of favour. Making someone king because their father was king is the type of tradition that leads to no ability to change the status quo without a bloody rebellion.
Yes, the kings and queens of Narnia were legitimately good people, but only when they ruled by the will of Aslan, by law, and by the will of the citizens of the country where they are king or queen. This is also the ideal of monarchy in UK, in Lewis' real world, and why it still exists there, and in the 15 other countries where the Queen of UK is also the Head of State, including Australia. And yes, she does have the rarely used authority to sack incompetent prime ministers, governments etc., should it be necessary to do so.
The main advantage of a constitutional monarchy is the chain of accountability, a bit that Lewis also emphasizes in his depiction of Narnia. I'll have to go back and check in SC, but I think Caspian X ruled with a council, headed by Trumpkin, who was regent when he left Narnia. Bloodlines do still matter, as in Narnia, as UK has its Law of Succession, which establishes who is expected to reign and why. Bloodlines, established by record-keeping and history, are eminently provable, you see.
It works like this: Australia, for instance, holds regular elections, and the incoming Prime Minister leads his winning party in making laws for the nation. The defeated parties form the Opposition, to represent those citizens who succeeded in electing them, to ensure those laws are good ones and that the winning parties don't get too carried away with themselves. When Parliament has passed the law it is ratified by the Governor-General, nominated in Parliament, who, like the Prime Minister, can also be removed if he/she is not considered suitable after all. This Governor-General is answerable to Queen Elizabeth II, who in turn is answerable to the Commonwealth, the UK Parliament, the law, and also to God. So we are quite as democratic as we need to be, and despite having an overseas and apolitical Queen as our ultimate head of state, we haven't yet had much need for a "bloody revolution" to change the status quo if we so choose. It also helps that she, herself, takes no part in our elections or in those being staged in UK.
You see how this works also in VDT. In the preceding novel, when Prince Caspian had to win back his throne from his usurping uncle Miraz, Narnia is in a bit of a mess, and its Telmarine rulers have abandoned shipbuilding and the arts of sailing and navigation. The economy is not working too well, possibly because Narnia hasn't been collecting the taxes owed to it by the Lone Islanders, whom Miraz may have forgotten. So when Caspian X pays the Lone Islands a visit, he finds that Gumpas has really let things slide, and has been getting income from permitting slavery. Caspian, as king and as Gumpas' boss, has the authority to step in to put a halt to this state of affairs. But if Miraz, back in Narnia, had been doing his job properly, Gumpas would never have been allowed to get away with what he did.
And come to think about it, the reason why Narnia never became a republic, is very likely because in that world it is personal discipline, personal choices, responsibility and accountability for our actions which is what is important in Narnia, and this can be so much better demonstrated by monarchy as it is understood by most, than is the case even with our better republics. When push comes to shove, we are all kings and queens of our own lives. We have to rule ourselves and maybe lead families, regardless of what sort of government we live in. Besides, in WW2, and afterwards, when Lewis wrote the Narnia series, the idea of republics such as that of the defeated Germany, in particular, or Stalin's USSR, did not really appear to advantage.
Getting back to your statement about monarchies and inheritance, yes there can be problems about "making someone king because their father was king". But don't you believe for one second that there aren't mechanisms set in place to deal with these problems. Before William the Conqueror, English kings were generally chosen from the ruling family by the Witanegamot, a council of the chief men of the land. So whatever William the Conqueror claimed, by killing the legitimate king, Harold II, in battle, he set back the growth of democracy in England by centuries.
And it wasn't as if he ordained clearly who was to be the next king after him. Even though he had three sons, two of whom became kings, his line almost came to an end, because his two grandsons, the sons of Henry I, were drowned in a storm when their ship sank. The legitimate successor then was his daughter, Matilda, though this was contested by her cousin, Stephen, the son of a daughter of William the Conqueror, because Matilda wasn't expected to lead armies. There have been worse succession crises. In 1316, when the French King, Louis X (Hutin) died, he was succeeded by his son, Jean I, who would not be even born for another 5 months, and who then died only 5 days after his birth.
We see this question of the problem of succession in the
Silver Chair. Prince Rilian should have been working with his father, learning the ropes, you might say, when he decided to go on a picnic instead. But on that picnic his mother was killed, and subsequently, he, himself, went missing. Then we see the workings of LOTGK.
You might consider the question posed by Prince Rilian. He could rule by conquest, with LOTGK as First Lady. Or he could rule by law and by right, with accountability to Aslan. Which is the better way of ruling a country? And could I ask, would your conclusions apply equally to a republic as it also would to the monarchy depicted?