To put my cards on the table: my mother is English. The Royals run in my blood. My entire family got up at dawn one summer morning to watch Lady Di get out of a gilded, horse-drawn carriage and slowly, in a gigantic cream dress with an endless train, mount the stone steps to princesshood, surrounded by flowers and pages. 

When I was 12, I got the Lady Di, her trademark “feathered” and layered hairstyle. 

I was heartbroken when she died. 

And I confess, I have watched all 60 episodes of The Crown. 

When I hear that the monarchy is finished, has no place in this country, is kept going in the U.K. because it’s the world’s greatest tourist attraction, I see the point, of course. It is antiquated, elitist, nonsensical. The rubbish about “royal blood.” The colonial legacy. Fergie. Andrew.

And yet. The world was unthinkable without Queen Elizabeth II, who shone like a beacon all the way through the longest reign in history — she connected us to Winston Churchill on the one hand, and to Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth I on the other. 

And the whole world took notice when King Charles visited with Queen Camilla to open Canada’s 45th Parliament on May 27, just as Queen Elizabeth did in 1957, and again in 1977. 

A throne speech to open parliamentary proceedings is a rare honour — but the visit was also notable as a careful intervention in the present, tumultuous moment on the world stage. 

Underscoring its importance, President Trump told his state propaganda network, Fox News, not to broadcast the King’s speech. It, of course, complied.

Who knew the Firm could still command that kind of attention. Not for getting married, or coronated, or cancer, but for opening parliament. 

The King spoke, not just in the late Queen’s — “my dear late mother’s” — stead, and for the Prime Minister whose parliament he was opening, but for himself, in his own words. 

“Every time I come to Canada,” he said, “a little more of Canada seeps into my bloodstream and from there straight to my heart.”

Charles invoked the royal blood right from the beginning — and with it, centuries of royal ancestors. He identified the Commonwealth’s prized realm with his own body, with his beating heart. 

That kind of rhetoric has a long lineage, to the Tudor and medieval theory of “the King’s two bodies,” which expresses the unity between his natural body and the body politic. It affirms the personal, physical and spiritual connection of the monarch to the country to which they are sovereign. 

The care, and the history, in his choice of words was deeply moving. Never mind that they were sounded out in the same cut glass accents of Elizabeth II, given new voice in Charles III — the living embodiment of a centuries-old monarchy continuing through its generations.

He closed with an echo of O Canada: 

“It is a source of great pride that…Canada has continued to set an example to the world in her conduct and values, as a force for good. As the anthem reminds us, the true north is indeed strong and free.” 

The clear affirmation of our national identity was met with an ovation. 

As both our King and Head of State, Charles stood up for Canada’s sovereignty in the face of unprecedented threats of invasion from the United States.

This is a chaotic, and a dangerous, time. The rule of law in America, the most powerful democracy in the world, is being challenged by an authoritarian extremism that would reduce its most cherished institutions — the constitution; an independent judiciary; science, research, and learning; the free press — to rubble. The havoc is reverberating across the world, threatening the peace defended by the West since WWII.

Old, timeworn — or time tested — institutions, the kind that come to the fore in times of war, are asserting their strength. 

What is happening in the U.S. now underscores how important it is that we understand our past. History is everything in this context — and nothing if it isn’t allowed its importance.

The British monarchy is, in 2025, extremely limited. That limit is the crowning achievement of the U.K.’s slow movement from monarchy to democracy. 

In Britain, as in Canada, the crown is now the symbol of a parliamentary system that allows many voices to be heard, that is founded on the importance of a balance of powers.

A constitutional monarchy, which is what Canada and Britain are, is an achievement of compromise and negotiation. The only reason the monarchy has survived is because it has accommodated, given up, and stepped aside.

This history is made vivid in the pageantry of royalty, its castles, carriages, crowns, and sceptres. It all stands for the force and might of a tradition that has survived.

This context made the King’s visit to Canada all the more interesting. Precisely because he is a King, a symbol, Charles cannot intervene in any way in the actual proceedings of government, whether in parliament, in the Prime Minister’s Office, or in foreign negotiations. 

The British government has been anxiously pursuing a “special relationship” with the U.S. since Brexit. Most recently, its PM, Keir Starmer, has been assiduously courting President Trump in a way that has precluded denouncing his threats to cripple, invade, and annex Canada. 

At the height of Trump’s “51st state” rhetoric, and amid increasingly hostile tariff threats, Sir Starmer was at the White House, brandishing yet another invitation from our King to President Trump.

Canadians were appalled at the spectacle of Britain using its King — our King — to curry favour with Trump while he was threatening to invade. 

Then-interim PM Mark Carney noted that Sir Starmer’s priorities rankled Canadians. “To be frank, they weren’t impressed by that gesture, quite simply, given the circumstance,” he said on Sky News.

That debacle has now been recast. King Charles came to Canada and gave a throne speech to open Canada’s parliament by affirming its sovereignty. This carefully scripted theatrical performance on a global stage telegraphed the backing of the British Prime Minister and his government in what can only be described as a powerful moment of international diplomacy, of crisis aversion. 

It was not a promise to send the Royal navy should the occasion arise, but it was certainly a flex of the possibility. 

Such quiet signaling of alliance offers a stark contrast to a United States opting out of such basic loyalties. The White House now betrays longstanding allies while eschewing even basic cordiality in the fight club it has made of the Oval Office. 

King Charles also demonstrated, perhaps even guaranteed, that, like London, which survived the blitz, the monarchy and everything it stands for, all it holds dear, will endure. We will meet the moment.