One foreboding royal ancestor stares down at visitors who enter Westminster Abbey through the great doors at the west end of the nave. Just steps before you reach the memorial to the unknown soldier is the first known painting of an English monarch, based on living observation if not an actual sitting.
That is Richard II on the coronation chair, his more than 600-year-old visage placid but on the verge of a sneer. He is both legacy and warning, not just for Charles III, who passed beneath him on the way to his own anointing, but for you and I.
Charles’s crowning is religious pantomime, dramatizing the special relationship between the divine and the head of the royal family — and, by extension, with Britain itself. It’s all about being the chosen one.