WRITINGS

A Five-Part Advent Series for the Christian Century

"Royalty Stoops"
Matthew 25:31–46
Christ the King, Sunday next before Advent, 1999

Not long before the onset of the cancer that finally killed him, King Hussein of Jordan undertook a small mission. He paid a personal visit to the families of some Israelis who had been killed in an Arab terrorist bombing. There was no talk of money or reparations; instead, the king quietly sat with the mourners, and by his calm demeanor, unhurried manner, and undivided attention was able to convey a sense of solidarity with them across the Arab-Israeli divide. The reaction of the relatives was out of all proportion to the simplicity of the gesture. By all accounts, they were deeply moved by Hussein's expressions of personal involvement in their loss. Their grief had been acknowledged. More memorably still, it had been acknowledged and shared by a king.

The star of Diana, Princess of Wales, has faded a bit in the year since the first anniversary of the funeral that was watched by two billion people. Though it is improper and unprofessional to venture an actual diagnosis, it does seem that she was emotionally troubled in some way. As we have learned more about her obsessions and failings, many have felt a little embarrassed about their initial reaction to her death. Among media people, there has been a lot of second-guessing about excessive coverage. Still, in all the hundreds of hours of television and the thousands of words written, I never heard anyone specifically identify the factor that I believe accounts for much of the extraordinary public outpouring. The various talking heads spoke of her beauty, accessibility, modernity, vulnerability, compassion, and common touch — all correct so far as they went — but no one precisely identified the combination that made Diana exceptional.

Many famous people have engaged in charitable activities. Show-business figures such as Danny Kaye and Audrey Hepburn have made an impression with their commitment to various humanitarian causes. Other personages have elicited near-fanatical devotion because of their beauty, talent, personal chemistry, or skill in creating a media image — Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Jacqueline Onassis. Eva Peron comes to mind, another glamorous blonde who died young and was adored by the common people. None of these, however, were able to combine in one person what was given Diana to do. In the Princess of Wales, majesty stooped. That was the key to her power. President Clinton, even in his heyday as empathizer in chief, could not convey what Diana could, because a president is not royalty. The symbolism of Diana was this: she was seen as one who was willing to lay aside her princely prerogatives to come alongside those who are downtrodden.

It may seem to be trivializing Hussein, a man of great accomplishments, to mention him alongside the unformed and often frivolous Diana; indeed, the two are not really comparable. I bring them together here simply to show that in spite of our democratic instincts, the royal archetype is undimmed in the collective unconscious. It is no denigration of Hussein to observe that Diana, because she bore the aura of the British monarchy along with her own, was uniquely able to put her ur-princess image together with a readiness to come alongside those who have no status in the world. Many who saw the video of her Angolan visit would agree that Diana's ability to communicate her concern for the wretched of the earth took the breath away. I read the testimony of an American physician who had accompanied her on hospital rounds where there were no cameras. He said she did not hesitate to caress and linger beside patients with disfigurements and symptoms that were distressing even to medical personnel. That capacity, the doctor emphasized, cannot be faked. When it is offered generously and unstintingly by a beautiful young woman who is the living embodiment of everyone's image of a fairy princess, the impact is astonishing.

Much of the grief for the princess was neurotic, like human behavior in general. I am making a different point, having to do with the power of symbols. Diana was certainly an instinctive media genius, as the first Queen Elizabeth might very well have been had she lived in our century. Elizabeth I was a great monarch in part because the people knew that she loved them, and her processions through the countryside were specifically designed to allow them to love her in return. In her limited way Diana also knew how to use her immense candlepower for the good of ordinary people. This is the right use of royalty.

These thoughts are meant to suggest that the feast day of Christ the King presents us with an extraordinary opportunity. We were speaking of archetypes;...