Opinion: King Charles may help Canada escape the worst of Trump

Montreal Gazette

02-06-2025

Op Eds
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Last week's two-day visit by King Charles III and Queen Camilla to open the 45th parliament of his Canadian domain. was purely symbolic, but pundits far and wide pontificated about the profound significance of the event. That's their job, poor souls.
Later this year, probably in September, U.S. President Donald Trump will travel to the United Kingdom for his second state visit, and King Charles will swallow his distaste and welcome him to the U.K. with a clenched smile. Another symbolic event bereft of visible consequences, it would seem, but there is a real and viable strategy behind these events.
The whole show is designed to exploit Trump's fascination with the British monarchy. Charles's sole purpose in Canada was to emphasize the sovereignty and separateness of Canada in the face of Trump's insistent claims it should become part of the United States, the 51st state.
But why bring in the King of Canada, a title even Charles himself rarely uses? Indeed, why does Canada even have a king?
Every country needs a head of state, and most democracies prefer not to have a practising politician in the role. Whether president or monarch, the head of state needs to be above the day-to-day political struggle.
Kings, emperors and tyrants used to rule everywhere. They came into vogue when mass societies emerged some 5,000 years ago, and continued in most places until the 18th century or later because democracy was impossible until the advent of mass communications (initially in the form of printing and mass literacy).
Countries that won their democracies by revolution, like the United States, replaced their monarch with a president who served as both head of state and executive head of government. Some presidents in other republics were later tempted to use this dual position to seek absolute power, although the U.S. has avoided that problem until recently.
Countries that achieved their democracy later and more peacefully, however, often found it simpler just to transform their former monarchs into non-political and impartial heads of state. Kings and queens fill that role in former British-ruled democracies like Canada and Australia and in many other countries from Spain and Sweden to Thailand and Japan.
Many people in countries that swapped their kings for presidents long ago still feel a strange attraction to the mystique of the monarchies. The French popular media, for example, follow the doings of the British Royal Family at least as closely as the British do.
The mystique of monarchy is as false and deliberately fabricated as an advertising campaign for beauty products. Charles is an intelligent and well-intentioned man working hard for Canada even while under treatment for cancer, but he is not the incarnation of an ancient and sacred past.
In fact, when it comes to heredity, I am probably more closely related to King Charles I than King Charles III is. (My ancestors were mostly English and Irish; his, at least on the male line, are mostly German.)
Yet the phoney mystique of the British royal family has captivated Trump, so it made perfectly good sense for Prime Minister Mark Carney and the King to conspire in reminding Trump that Canada has a strong royal connection (even if most Canadians don't feel it).
It will make equally good sense for Charles to welcome Trump to the United Kingdom in the autumn for an unprecedented second state visit. Trump is a sucker for real power (thus his fanboy admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin), but he is also a sucker for the ceremonies, rituals and trappings of fake power (Charles).
Playing the monarchy card might protect both countries from worse treatment at the hands of Trump. After all, this is a man who loves parades in his own honour.