Sword of State

Following the dream reported in the post before last, I moved on to ponder the use of the sword of state in the coronation of our Queen. The thought being that it seemed slightly odd for a young queen to be given a large sword to hold in the middle of her coronation, flanked as she was by a bevy of demurely dressed, not to say virginal, maids of honour. A large sword, the proper function of which was sometimes to lop a head or a limb but more commonly to penetrate an abdomen where it might sever a major blood vessel causing more or less immediate death or so badly damage a vital organ that the owner expired shortly after. In sum a very large knife, the sort of thing so deplored on the streets of London.

Also odd that such an instrument should be lavishly decorated - although that aspect of things is carried forward onto the lavishly decorated guns favoured by some gun nuts.

But checking Roy Strong's work on the subject, I find I have not got things quite right. While kings such as William I and Richard I might well have been crowned while holding a large naked sword, this has not been the recent custom, properly reflecting the fact that modern kings and queens, unlike the two just mentioned, are not expected to fight with their troops. Their troops are not even expected to do much fighting. They no longer, when holding court, administer summary justice. And so, at the coronation of the present Queen, it looks as if a sword of state was carried, in its scabbard but point up, by one of her lords standing by, rather than by the Queen herself. It is suggested at reference 1 that this particular sword was made in 1678 and was used in coronations from, at the latest, that of George IV. While wikipedia talks of three swords of state. And Roy Strong talks of this sword symbolising the temporal power of the monarch.

So all in all, not so bad. An old ceremony, updated a bit to reflect modern circumstances. Just a bit of pomp and circumstance, not to be taken too seriously.

PS: while in the 'Game of Thrones', the good Lord Stark does his own dirty work, somewhere near the beginning of series one, while when his turn comes at the end of that series, the bad King Joffrey get an executioner to do the deed. No idea how carefully Martin checked his story against the record.

Reference 1: http://royalexhibitions.co.uk/crown-jewels-2/swords/sword-of-state/.