On January 21, 1793, the French people beheaded King Louis XVI to cheers. Two centuries later, as the announcement of Queen Elizabeth II’s death generates almost 1,834 tweets per second on Twitter, France seems as heartbroken as the United Kingdom. As if republican France had just lost an important figure in its history.
The declarations of the President of the Republic and its Prime Minister have only maintained this paradox of a profoundly republican people fascinated by crowned heads. “Tonight, the French are also in mourning,” Elisabeth Borne said Thursday. “His death leaves us with a feeling of emptiness,” added Emmanuel Macron. According to a study carried out by the Appinio company, 60% of French people declare themselves affected by the disappearance of Elizabeth II.
Same story with artists. However, the son of Sicilian immigrants, the singer Calogero took on Thursday night during a concert some notes from God save the Queen. Behind him, a giant screen broadcast the image of a British flag. “The death of Queen Elizabeth II is an immense pain for me and for the world,” actress Brigitte Bardot reacted on her part on Twitter.
Flags at half-staff?
“We loved her so much,” he proclaimed. the Parisian after the Queen’s death. A cover that echoes that of the July/August 2021 issue of the two worlds review, which titled: “The British model, the sacred thing we miss”. In an article published in the magazine, Stéphane Bern considered that the United Kingdom and Monaco were “our two substitute monarchies”. “The French have a taste for the prince, but they look for him abroad,” General de Gaulle said.
In addition to the Eiffel Tower, which was turned off the night of the Queen’s death, the flags of the official buildings were at half-staff last Friday, an act reserved for special circumstances such as national mourning or a tribute. Emmanuel Macron, who wants to associate the French with the mourning of the British, placed a British flag on the steps of the Elysee. The flags will be lowered to half-staff again on Monday, September 19 for the funeral of Elizabeth II.
This decision is not unanimous. Friday, the mayor of Faches-Thumesnil (North), Patrick Prois, refused to follow the president’s instructions. “Is this done for all the heads of state who die? Does our Republic give preference to a monarch, head of a Church?” he wondered. An outrage shared by Yann Galutthe mayor of Bourges (Cher): “I respect the pain of our English friends but I will not put the French flags on the pediment of municipal buildings”.
A passion that comes from afar
This French passion for Elizabeth II, and more broadly for the British crown, goes back a long way. An official visit by Queen Victoria to the Château d’Eu in Normandy in 1855, forty years after the defeat at Waterloo, had aroused “extraordinary popular enthusiasm”, recalls Philippe Chassaigne, professor of contemporary history at the University of Bordeaux-Montaigne. and specialist in Great Britain. “The French had been very sensitive [au fait] that the queen and her eldest son also go to the Invalides to meet in front of the tomb of Napoleon I”.
Relations between the two countries were forged more precisely at the beginning of the 20th century. King Edward VII visited France in 1903, five years after the Fashoda Crisis, a diplomatic incident that almost led to war between the two countries. “The reception of the Parisian population is initially very cold,” says the historian. “So Edward VII, through his good nature, his playful character, his simplicity, managed to tilt public opinion in his favor. It was after this visit that the process that would culminate in 1904 with the Entente Cordiale was set in motion”.
In 1936, the abdication of Edward VIII in order to marry the American socialite Wallis Simpson also fascinated the French. “France did not understand why the monarch could not marry the woman he loved. The public was unaware of the religious and political obstacles to such a union,” adds Philippe Chassaigne. In 1938, George VI went to Paris to recall the diplomatic ties between the United Kingdom and France while the international situation was tense in the East.
Ten years later, Princess Elizabeth II is not yet queen, but she travels to France in place of her father. “The press speaks of the ‘little princess’ in a paternalistic tone. She gives a speech in impeccable French. And when she leaves Paris, everyone shouts, ‘Long live the queen!’ When she still isn’t!” laughs Philippe Chassaigne. In 1957, Guy Mollet, President of the Council, proposed joining the Commonwealth, but London rejected the proposal.
In France, a republican monarchy
Since June 2, 1953, the day of Elizabeth II’s coronation, every royal event broadcast on French television has been a huge hit with the audience. To attend the coronation, all of France was equipped with television. Millions of French people will also follow the wedding of Charles and Diana on July 29, 1981, and then Diana’s funeral on September 6, 1997, in front of her television.
On April 29, 2011, 9 million French people followed the wedding of William and Kate. In 2012, almost 4 million watched the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. On May 19, 2018, 8.1 million French people attended Harry and Meghan’s wedding. On April 5, 2020, the Queen’s speech to encourage Britons affected by the Covid pandemic attracted almost 2.5 million viewers. And on April 17, 2021, almost six million French people attended the funeral of Prince Philip.
This fascination is not rooted in the queen’s Francophilia, but in the foundations of the Fifth Republic. The president has more institutional prerogatives in France than any other of his counterparts. “With the Fifth Republic, the president is a republican monarch. We change monarchs every five or ten years”, analyzes Philippe Chassaigne. “Even if France is a republic, there is this personalization of power in one person. So we can more easily project ourselves into a real monarch across the Channel.”
For the historian Jean Garrigues, in Point, this enthusiasm testifies to a “nostalgia for the monarchical figure”, which “is manifested by the periodic recourse to ‘transcendental’ authority figures or, at least, providential men”. France is passionate about this figure of the providential hero, from Gambetta to Pierre Mendès-France passing through Clémenceau, Pétain and General de Gaulle. But Elizabeth II did nothing to assume this role, especially since she had not planned to become queen.
Distorted image of royalty
Yaël Goosz, a political columnist for France Inter, sees in it the expression of a “people who regret having beheaded the king”, “a repressed complex in the face of a vanished transcendence”: “Hence the republican splendor. The Elysee is a palace” , he insists. “If the British royal family is so popular in France, it is precisely because it embodies that symbolic power capable of bringing together an entire people and of which we feel like orphans”, adds Stéphane Bern in the two worlds review.
For many commentators, this nostalgia is “consubstantial to the sentimental dimension that the monarchy possesses”, analyzes Frédéric Rouvillois in The Figaro. According to him, there is also “a deeper link, which is due to the very nature of the monarchy”: “The monarchical regime is made up of two opposing principles: a fantastic distance, which places the monarch in a historical continuity, and a familiarity that allows the embodiment of power in a family”.
For Charles-Eloi Vial, author of several works on the monarchy, this fascination refers more to a “misunderstanding of the realities of the operation of the old monarchical systems [qu’à un] deficit of the materialization of power in our Republic”, he explained to the blog news words.
However, the French are not entirely fooled by the fairytale images of the British monarchy. In 2016, according to a BVA survey. Fewer than one in five French people (17%) said they favored a king as head of state.
Source: BFM TV
