For a period of years early in the 15th century, England was on top of the Western
world.
After Henry
V's great victory over the French at Agincourt in 1415 (during a conflict known as The Hundred Years War)
and his successful dynastic marriage to Catherine, daughter of the King of
France, the heroic English warrior-king became heir to the throne of France. He was accorded the title "King of
England and Heir of France."
In volume one, "The Birth of Britain," of his three-volume "The History of the English-Speaking
Peoples," Winston Churchill quotes the judgment of historian Leopold von
Ranke:
"It
was a very extraordinary position which Henry V now occupied. The two great
kingdoms, each of which by itself has earlier or later claimed to sway the
world, were to remain united for ever under his successors."
No prince
in Europe could compare with him in territorial possessions or reputation. Churchill
writes: "This was the boldest bid the Island ever made in Europe... Henry
stood, and with him his country, at the summit of the world."
So how long
did this English domination of Europe last? Not long at all.
Henry made the mistake of
dying young and things fell apart immediately. Churchill describes the fate of
the son of Henry V and Catherine (crowned as Henry VI) as "long to reign over
impending English miseries."
What
happened to England during much of the remainder of the 15th century still serves as a prime
example of the absolute rivalry that takes place between powerful dynastic
families (or ruling cliques, clans, secret governments, or rival elites) whenever the
prize is something close to the absolute power traditionally granted to
"kings"... those who sit upon thrones.
"The Game
of Thrones," the title of the wildly popular TV dramatic series, is aptly chosen. During the Western world's long era
of government by royal sovereigns, all of the 'houses' of Europe, big and small,
engaged in a continual contest of influence, domination, and hegemony through dynastic force of arms,
marriage, alliance and betrayal, pretty much all of the time.
When Europe's
World War I broke out, pitting England against Germany, some members of
Britain's royal Windsor family expressed surprise, because Germany's Kaiser
William was a cousin. Another cousin was the czar of all Russians.
After the
First World War put an end to Russia's House of Romanov, Marxist Russia was
temporarily out of the traditional dynastic game. But twenty years later the Soviet
Union's Communist czar Stalin was playing footsie with Hitler. The two
tyrants signed a non-aggression pact in 1939. Two years later Hitler sent his armies in a surprise attack into Russia -- a classic Game of Thrones stab in
the back.
Today we have the internecine rivalry in the royal family of Saudi Arabia as members of the younger generation strive for the throne and contenders prove how tough they are by destroying neighboring Yemen. A dynastic family belonging to a minority religious sect in Syria bombed hospitals and turned half the country into ruins to hold onto power. In the world of so-called Constitutional government the dynastic Bush family caused a million deaths in an unnecessary American war in Iraq. The struggle to deny power to the Clinton dynasty ended up putting a dangerous maniac on the throne of the world's greatest power, just in time to confront the lunatic, now-nuclear dynasty of North Korea.
For all such dangerous contests of gaining state power, England's internecine "game of thrones," known as The War of the Roses, provides a chilling precedent.
Churchill,
a student of history and widely experienced practitioner in the arts of power himself, follows the twists and turns of loyalties, pledges, promises,
betrayals, back and forth victories and defeats of a two-generation struggle
between contenders for the English throne in the houses of York and Lancaster.
The root
cause appears to me to lie in the nature of state or 'national' power itself. The
problem is aggravated by the whole notion of hereditary succession. In fact, the
first cause of England's disastrous game of thrones was Henry V's overreaching success.
As Churchill puts it: "When Henry V revived the English claims to France he opened
the greatest tragedy in our medieval history... The miserable, destroying
century that ensued casts its black shadow upon Henry's heroic triumph."
In short,
though Henry won on the battlefield the 'right' to the French throne, England was never meant to govern France. Though deeply divided in the
medieval centuries, France is a big country. England is an island, with its own
internal divisions, facing a significant transportation barrier between its borders and the continent of Europe -- a piece of treacherous ocean.
If the
French were not content to be ruled by an English king, in any prolonged ensuing conflict
all the advantages of numbers, resources, and ease of supply lay on their side.
What caused English hegemony over France to fall apart so quickly reveals another
flaw in the "throne" system: Henry's son, who 'succeeded'
to the throne on his father's death, was never cut out to rule anything. Pious,
humble, and unworldly, he had no interest or ability in governance. His
incapacity created a power vacuum, and various English barons and ambitious 'operatives'
rushed to fill it.
An even
deeper problem in hereditary succession was uncovered when the most powerful (and power-hungry) nobles fell to quarreling
over who should take over the reins of power as their country's hold over France
collapsed and their 'king' proved incompetent. Henry VI's direct descent went
back to Henry IV, who deposed a ruling king (Richard II) for incompetence,
favoritism, and various other pretexts... and mostly because he played
"the game of thrones" better than the vainglorious Richard.
However, if
Henry IV's 'pretext' for legitimate accession to power is exposed as a fig leaf for
a power grab, then some other high-born noble possessed a better, more legitimate claim to the throne -- all of these
calculations were based on the 'divine right' belief that God somehow was delivering the baby he wanted to be king to the right family.
This was exactly the position taken by the Duke
of York: I should be king; I should have been king all along. If I were king, God
wouldn't be punishing us.
But he was not
the only contender to play the play the game. The current dynastic head of the
House of Lancaster threw his hat in the ring as well. York took
the white rose as its heraldic symbol; Lancaster the red. Hence the War of the
Roses. Churchill describes the conflict this way: "We are in the presence
of the most ferocious and implacable quarrel of which there is factual record.
The individual actors were bred by generations of privilege and war, into
which the feudal theme had brought its peculiar sense of honor... The ups and
downs of fortune were numerous and startling, the family feuds so complicated,
the impact of national feeling in moments of crisis so difficult to measure."
Only
Shakespeare, Churchill remarks, attempted to tell the story, though Shakespeare "telescopes"
events for dramatic purposes. In his own book Churchill determines to spell the whole
bloody thing out in detail.
While I
admire and respect the statesman-historian's grasp of the ins and outs and the who's who among a large cast of players, I look to history more for
meaning than for a full recital of facts. What makes
a story "heroic," as Greek tragedy taught the world millennia ago, is
the 'greatness' of the protagonist, even though he or she dies in the end.
It's easy
to see why the English public preferred the dramatic concision of
Shakespeare's history plays to the full recital. As the recently televised
version of the three parts of "Henry VI," covering the origin and core period of the dynastic wars, demonstrated, the plays still make for riveting theater. But the meaning and value for the English of the whole sequence of Shakespeare's history plays, culminating in "Richard
III" when the civil strife ends with a new dynasty (the Tudors) in control, is
"Thank God this is all behind us now. Now we have a steady hand governing the nation in the person of Queen Elizabeth. Whew! Glad those bad days are over!"
Of course
they're not; they never are.
In Shakespeare's own
times, audiences were well aware that Catholics murdered Protestants in Paris,
Catholic priests were hunted and burned at the stake in England, and the Emperor
of Spain (the current top guy in Europe, though no Henry V) first tried unsuccessfully
to marry Elizabeth and then prepared to conquer her country by launching the
Spanish Armada.
And in our own day,
entertainments such as "Game of Thrones" and "House of Cards" grab audiences because people know deep down that the desire for power is still what rules us. And both the conduct of our government and our private sectors daily inform us of what people will
do for power. Basically, anything. We watch these stories about power "games" because they show much that is true about our own societies. About us.
These reflections leave me with the question of how do we get to the place -- to the way of life -- in which
the mass of human beings no longer need to be ruled by those with an outsized appetite
for power. When we're not simply hoping for 'stable,' 'sensible,' 'realistic' governance of our society; while fearing -- with good reason -- that the current pretender
to throne is not the guy or gal to give it to us?
To put it another way: When do
human beings get to the place where we can to govern ourselves and live in
charity with our neighbors without rulers, rules, and wielders of power?
One name
for this place is anarchy. A word that literally means "without rulers."
The minister referred to here is Rev. Pamela L. Werntz, Rector at Emmanuel Church, an Episcopal church in Boston. Her Easter sermons are a revelation.
