“I, Charles III …” began the new British king, swearing a solemn oath as he was confirmed as monarch at St. James’ Palace in London. But behind him stood an opulent throne—a throne embroidered in golden thread with an age-old and familiar cipher: “EIIR,” Elizabeth II Regina.
At the very same moment, a mother in a high street somewhere in the UK rummaged for change in her purse, the late queen’s head jostling on bits of metal in its cramped recesses. A traveler at Heathrow Airport opened his passport for inspection, with florid words on the inside cover referring austerely to “Her Britannic Majesty. ” And in one of many Royal Mail delivery offices, a hurried worker picked up a fresh bag of post, with the old photographic portrait of the head of state peering down from the wall above.
The queen is dead. But her image and her icons are with us yet in their many iterations. Few people in human history have been depicted or symbolized as widely as Queen Elizabeth II.
And not just within the UK but across the 14 other Commonwealth realms of which the British monarch is head of state. With her passing come immediate questions as to how the new monarch, Charles III, will assert himself through iconography and design. It is a millennia-old means of establishing authority.
But for the new king, it won’t happen overnight. Even as news of the queen’s death flashed across the wires on September 8, David Gold, director of external affairs and policy at Royal Mail, was ready by his phone. Journalist after journalist was calling, urgently seeking the answer to a simple question: “What will happen to the stamps?” For 70 years, the queen’s head has featured on the vast majority of postage stamps used in the UK.
She has also personally approved all new stamp designs, including a recently launched set featuring characters from Transformers . All stamps displaying the queen’s head remain valid for use , but eventually new stamps featuring Charles III’s likeness will come into production. “The clear direction we’ve been given by the king’s team—and this won’t come as a surprise, because he’s an avowed environmentalist—is there is to be as little unnecessary expense as possible,” says Gold.
There will be no pulping of old stamps, no avoidable waste, he explains. Gold says that the financial cost to Royal Mail of updating its royal iconography is not currently known. (There are a few tantalizing indications from other quarters, though.
A 2010 response to a Freedom of Information request revealed that the bill for purchasing a single portrait of the queen for a government building in London came to £256. 74, or just over $290. ) And Royal Mail must update more than just postage stamps.
Gold points out that there are some 53,000 Royal Mail vehicles—from trucks to delivery vans—that carry the queen’s cipher. He expects these to be updated to bear the cipher of the new king, which will presumably take the form “CIIIR,” although this has not been announced by Buckingham Palace. The situation is somewhat different with postboxes.
There are 115,000 of them around the UK and most carry the queen’s cipher, though there are still some that feature the ciphers of previous monarchs, including Victoria. A few hundred new postboxes are installed every year, says Gold, and it is only on new ones that Charles III’s iconography will be introduced. Existing British coins and banknotes will also remain valid , though they will be superseded as new ones enter circulation in the coming months and years.
A team of designers will first present a portrait of Charles III in profile to the king. His head will be facing left, following the tradition of successive monarchs facing in alternating directions on coins. The king will look this design over and likely approve it for use there and then.
It will then be adopted by the Royal Mint and pressed on to the reverse of every new coin. Separately, the Bank of England will print banknotes depicting the king. One design change that might take place rather quickly regards the uniforms worn by military regiments associated with the Royal Household, such as those in the Household Cavalry.
“Every single button that you wear has got the royal cipher on it,” recalls Richard Negus, a former member of the Household Cavalry who is now a hedge layer and conservationist. Other items of uniform and paraphernalia such as swords also carry the cipher. Negus says he would expect this to be updated fairly soon: “Otherwise, it’s pretty poor form—you’re wearing essentially out-of-date uniform.
” WIRED understands that design decisions affecting the crowns displayed on military cap badges and buttons are a matter for the new king himself. Similarly, some police forces use the queen’s cipher on their uniforms. The traditional domed custodian helmet—or “bobby’s helmet”—used by the Metropolitan Police in London and some other forces features the cipher rather prominently, for example, at the center of a silver-colored emblem called the Brunswick star.
Police uniform suppliers contacted by WIRED did not respond to requests for comment about potential uniform changes to reflect the new monarch. “It’s something we would imagine forces will look at going forward after the period of national mourning has ended, likely in conversation with the Cabinet Office,” a spokesman for the National Police Chiefs’ Council says. “EIIR” as a symbol has become deeply familiar, along with portraits of the queen such as the famous Arnold Machin portrait used on postage stamps, says Pauline Maclaren at Royal Holloway, University of London.
“It’ll be so strange, it fading into the background,” she adds. But fade these things will, if not entirely. This has actually been happening for many decades as various nations have modernized and moved away from the trappings of the British Empire.
The queen’s image was once even more prominent than it is today, especially in certain countries of the Commonwealth. “At one point, you would have seen a portrait of the queen in every [Australian] school classroom—that’s long gone,” says Cindy McCreery, senior lecturer in the department of history at the University of Sydney. But all coins and some banknotes in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, to name a few countries where the British monarch is head of state, still carry her likeness.
The mere prospect of a highly noticeable change to these financial instruments is itself a prompt to reconsider what it means to live in a monarchy, says McCreery. That alone could fuel the debate over whether Australia should remain as such—or step out as a republic. “There’s been a very, partly conscious and partly unconscious, downsizing of monarchical paraphernalia and insignia,” says Peter McNally, professor emeritus at McGill University, referring to the situation in Canada, another of the realms instantly inherited by Charles III upon the death of his mother.
Some in Canada draw on the monarchy to distinguish their culture from that of the United States, notes McNally. But it does not appeal to everyone. And whether Charles III will feature on $20 banknotes in Canada, as the queen did, feels “up in the air” during this period of transition, he says.
The Bank of Canada and Royal Canadian Mint have not given any indication of what will happen with these notes. We, as members of the public, will notice iconographic changes as they unfold—and as the expense associated with such adjustments becomes clear. For most, in the end, the transition will be little more than a curiosity.
But the person to whom all of this upheaval will really matter is the king himself, since all monarchs really live through their image. The late queen famously remarked that, as sovereign, she felt she had “to be seen to be believed. ” She certainly was, frequently pictured in brightly colored outfits with matching hat and carrying her trusty handbag.
At once noticeable—and recognizable. While there may be nothing in principle preventing Charles III from donning lime green suits or tangerine lounge wear, it is highly unlikely, notes Maclaren: “Charles will not make the same impact. He’s going to be a rather gray man among many.
” It means that his iconography, and the insistence of his authority via everyday objects, in official buildings and across more than a dozen nations, is arguably even more crucial for him than for his predecessor. The king may not want institutions to be wasteful in adopting a new cipher or distributing the royal likeness. But without such things, there is a possibility that his profile will feel even more diminished in succeeding a colorful, long-reigning queen whose image more or less conquered the world.
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From: wired
URL: https://www.wired.com/story/updating-british-royal-iconography/
