Jersey was the place to be yesterday if you were a football fan with a sore head after the Euros final.
Unlike the rest of the country, where the clamour for a bank holiday had been ignored by our killjoy rulers, the entire population had been given the day off – for a visit by King Charles and Queen Camilla.
And so, despite a very British downpour, there was a healthy turnout when the royals pulled into St Helier’s Royal Square at the start of a two-day trip to the Channel Islands, the first visit by a monarch since that of the late Queen and Prince Philip in 2005.
As they conducted their walkabout, brollies in hand, there were broad smiles all round, as if two old friends had stopped by for a chinwag after a lengthy absence. And, in a way, that’s exactly what was happening.
The late Queen used to say she had to be ‘seen to be believed’. We have had cause to remember those words in the last few weeks and months, as both the King and the Princess of Wales withdrew from public life to be treated for cancer.
As the Princess of Wales took her seat in the Royal Box at Wimbledon’s Centre Court on Sunday, 15,000 people rose as one to applaud her return
Kate had withdrawn from public life following her cancer diagnosis
Seeing the waiting crowds when royals reappear after months of absence from our streets and screens, it is impossible not to be impressed by the response.
Because it’s not just the King and Queen, of course.
As the Princess of Wales took her seat in the Royal Box in Wimbledon’s Centre Court on Sunday, 15,000 people rose as one to applaud her return.
It was a similar story when Prince William appeared in Berlin’s Olympiastadion to watch the Euros final on Sunday evening, and when Princess Anne, after recovering from being kicked by one of her horses, visited the Riding for the Disabled Association near her Gloucestershire home.
The royals have a quality that no other category of person can supply. These feelings are not just sentimental. What we have been missing is something absolutely central to who and what we are as a nation.
Today, while the King and Queen complete the second leg of their Channel Islands trip in Guernsey, the staff at the Palace of Westminster will be getting ready for the State Opening of Parliament tomorrow.
The Princess of Wales hands Wimbledon men’s winner Carlos Alcaraz the trophy
The King and Queen on the first leg of their Channel Islands trip in Jersey yesterday
The esoteric choreography of such ceremonies is being rehearsed even as you read these words. Heralds and others with bizarre-sounding titles – such as ‘Maltravers Herald Extraordinary’ and ‘Rouge Dragon Pursuivant’ – will be rehearsing their roles alongside eccentric figures including the Black Rod, to make sure the ceremony passes off without a muddle.
Yet behind all the ceremony and the beautiful costumes and the truly bizarre names and titles of those taking part, there is something profound, valuable and embodied every time the King and Queen, the Prince and Princess of Wales, or Princess Anne, go about their public duties.
And we have been missing it while so many of the principal actors in the royal drama have been offstage. We do not value Charles because we hero-worship him, still less because we want him to have absolute power, but because the power which he holds in trust for us is purely symbolic.
That is why the King’s Speech – written of course by the elected Government – is the King’s Speech and not Sir Keir’s Speech, or Rishi Sunak’s Speech.
If you want to know the difference between our system of parliamentary power – held in trust by a king – and that of a dictator, ask a Russian at present living under Putin.
Just ask anyone in China or North Korea, or even a Channel Islander whose grandparents lived there under Nazi occupation during the war.
The royals are the continuous historical thread which links us to the past, and reminds us of reasons to be grateful.
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