The Crown Jewels by Blaise Alexandre
Reprinted from Western Exile @westernexile
Few phrases have the tendency to lead discussion of monarchy astray quite like the 'divine right of kings'.
Generally speaking, this is because when people think they are defining it, they are often simply repeating slogans employed against a specific understanding of it.
'It meant that the King could do whatever he wanted', is an all too common iteration of this. This is partly because of a lack of understanding, or deliberate obfuscation, of the critical difference between monarchy and dictatorship - legitimacy - and the fatal assumption that the two forms of government are interchangeable.
Put simply, a dictatorship places its legitimacy in the life and competence of a specific individual at a specific time, and that individual's ability to maintain a monopoly of force. The second any is compromised, the entire system abruptly collapses as a result.
Dictatorships are virtually never de jure. That is, a dictatorship almost exclusively exists in a state which is legally something else, generally a republic - forcing the regime to use extra-legal means and expend significant resources to maintain power while also maintaining the public façade of that other system.
A true monarchy exists both de facto and de jure, deriving its legitimacy from the deepest roots of a people's culture and faith, with there being a clear understanding at all times where power flows from, and to whom it will pass upon the expiration of the monarch. It exists within the framework of state, natural and divine law already established before the King is even born.
There has never in Western Europe been a monarchical system where the King could do 'whatever he wanted'. Even Louis XIV himself, the very image of what many refer to as 'absolute monarchy', faced the veto of the French parlements, and prior to the Protestant Reformation undermining it in the North, all Catholic monarchs were subject to the same tremendous check on their earthly power - the Papacy, and its sovereignty over sovereigns.
This returns us to a core tenet of Christian monarchy. Sovereigns swore their coronation oaths to God, not to governments or documents. A monarch's crown is bestowed upon him by Providence, and can be taken away if that oath is broken, and while he will be judged by God after his passing, it is the Church that will hold him to account while he lives. This is why a monarch is, and should always be, crowned in a church, not a secular building.
Hence why excommunication, which released subjects from their oaths of loyalty to their sovereign, was indeed such a dangerous instrument of accountability, as it granted the population the right to legally overthrow their King, and other sovereigns the right to aid them in such an endeavour.
What the 'divine right of kings' actually entailed was understood differently in different realms at different points throughout history. All too often today, however, the term is defined exclusively through the severely distorted lens of Jacobean England - a state that had already revolted against the authority of the Church, and thus its own check on power.
Post-revolutionary Groupthink has for over a century affirmed that 'accountability' can only possibly derive from the ritual of election. Election, however, no longer enjoys widespread popular legitimacy. The vulnerability of that mechanism to bad actors and moneyed interests, its inappropriacy for large and disparate populations, and above all its failure to ensure good governance, have all been exposed to a critical mass of the populace.
No method of course will or can yield perfection, and the last centuries have been a damning indictment of those who claimed otherwise. So the question we need to be asking ourselves is this - which system is more likely to incentivise a ruler to govern well?
Election, whereby the worst case scenario for the ruler is early retirement, to enjoy one's riches for the rest of one's life without public responsibility?
Or hereditary succession, where the ruler has a direct stake in the future of the state - for the neglect of long term vision in the pursuit of short term gain will jeopardise the future of the ruler's own heirs - where there can be no idle retirement (hence why abdication historically was, and should always remain, a tremendous taboo), and where the total aberration of duty will likely place the physical safety of the ruler's own family in danger?