Viewed from Canada, the coronation is especially absurd – and the contradictions of Charles III perfectly suit the moment
Say it out loud and try not to snicker: “The coronation of Charles the Third.”
In a time of post-post-colonialism, of anti-racist iconoclasm, a time in which the very notion of gender as a legitimate distinction is contested, and Christianity has been reduced to a scandal management system with costumes, a 74-year-old British gentleman will ride a fancy carriage to an old church where a few other elderly British gentlemen in gilded dresses will declare him emperor, patriarch and head of state because God says so.