The sight just sets off an uncontrollable fit of giggles when I see the Brits wobbling around under those ponderous crowns they love so dearly.  They sure do like to decorate themselves with ribbons, leather, ermine, uniforms and medals, precious gems and sashes, tiaras,  rare fabrics and golden ropes, necklaces, and lavish embroideries etc. etc., and I often wonder how they can stand upright once bedecked in all that adornment.  But the funniest, at least to my eyes, are those  giant crowns.

I wish I knew when and why big weird hats began. I mean back in the cave days, did some bored cave guy on a rainy day put a bunch of vines around his head to get a few laughs from the other cavemates? And did some of them poke a few shiny stones into the vines, or tongues or shells or eyeballs, teeth or bones just to add to the hilarity (it could get awfully boring in Cave World back then,  so doing stuff like this helped pass the time between foraging and slaughtering), so did the gang all laugh and cheer the crazy dude with all that stuff piled on his head? Did he dance around to get a few more laughs? Did one of the gang then maybe wrap a few yards of pelt-of-the-hour around that head frippery? Did any of the shiny pebbles and shells and bones begin to fall off as the guy jigged around and rocked with laughter?  Did the gang put them back on with a little recently warm dung-of-the-hour to keep the decorations from falling?

And then, the guy with this huge headdress maybe stopped working the room and getting laughter and stood still, pulled out his sharpened yak horn knife and glared threateningly at his sycophants, and they maybe stopped leaping about and stomping with joy and stared back at the guy with the huge thing on his head, and maybe they all gasped in unison because behold, cave guy, without their understanding why, had become the world’s first king. And maybe cave gang instinctively fell to their knees which wasn’t too hard to do because they were a stubby-legged lot to begin with, their knees being not too far from the cave’s floor, and maybe they began to hum or grunt or whatever cave guys did to do the homage thing, because even though they had no idea what they’d started, they’d just then,  on that long and boring rainy afternoon, crowned one of their own a king.  Or maybe a queen. Who’s to know? And thus, royalty was born.

Hey, it could have happened. And so perhaps crowning began that rainy boring day a kazillion years ago, and today in England they go through long involved ceremonies and then get to wear a big heavy and, sorry, to me, hilarious hat, encrusted with enough precious jewels to be able to buy a medium sized country and feed everyone in it.  The jewels are held in place no longer by precious dung, but by  very very precious and beautifully engraved metals, like platinum I guess. Gold and silver too. And velvet is involved also in that headgear,  and worst of all, ermine.  Yeah, the hide of an adorable little mink- like creature with a sweet face, whose white hide with black spots for some unknown reason,  became essential to the trappings of royalty and other national VIPs.  And yes, alas, a strip of their skin was and still is important to the accoutrements of the royal crown. So, these sweet tiny animals had to die to make those top-heavy ostentatious bonnets a bit more comfortable on the heads of the well-borns? Hmmm.  Troubling, right? Well,  “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,” from  Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part II, who I’ve heard was also from those Isles.

So now we have King Charles II and his queen Camilla having to go through a longish, elaborate ceremony to be ended by their crowning.  Camilla had to have her giant headpiece balanced on top of her blond poufy ‘do which sent me into gales of laughter. She had to hold her head so stiffly immobile to keep her crown from tumbling to the royal marble floor.  And Charles? Sorry sorry, but he looked as if his enormous crown would cause him to tip over.  The poor Newly Kinged had to reach up to adjust it a couple of times lest it tip over and fall and smash to pieces of gems, platinum and ermine, which, as we know, is simply not done. And the expression on the King’s face beneath that giant headpiece? Priceless!

Please don’t write in, folks.  I have all kinds of respect for traditions and ancient beliefs but when I see those people trying to hold their heads still while attempting to walk majestically and oh so solemnly out of the building where they’ve just been consecrated, while balancing a huge bejeweled pyramid on their poor heads, I just quite lose it.  They look as if one small puff of wind would send them sprawling, their giant, priceless helmets  wheeling across the red carpet to land–where? Who knows?  And then later they are expected to make a grand entrance on The Famous Balcony of Buckingham Palace to do their opening-mayonnaise-jars-upside-down waves to the adoring masses, still trying to support those weirdly funny crowns on their heads while I always will wonder if their necks are screaming in pain. I guess to be crowned a king or a queen means agony is a given. They proudly show they are willing to make great sacrifices for their adorationers.

Again folks, don’t write in.  I am full of respect for all the Brits are and do, and if circumstance and pomp is part of it, so be it. Some hate the royals, thinking they are useless, expensive and way past their sell-by dates. I’m not one of them. I find the whole thing great theater, fun to watch and follow, and in fact I think those royals do a lot of good for the UK. I also think most people from the UK love their royals. I’m not from there but I enjoy those families a lot.  Hey, in a way I kind of am from there, my former name having been Elsie Wolcott Scott Richardson.  Can’t get much more UK-ish than that, right?  My beloved grandmother went to England to watch the coronation of George VI and his wife Elizabeth in 1937,  and I still have the souvenirs she brought back.  I am making sure they’ll be left to the worthiest of my kin when I go toes up.