Why do people believe the king's job is to ban things?

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There are a great many things that I dislike. These include men and women who seem to bathe in perfume, scented candles, air 'fresheners' and people who drive at 40 mph in a 60 limit without good reason. I'm pretty sure you have your own list of peeves and hates.

So let me ask you a question. If you were king for a day would you ban some or all of those things you hate? This is after all your chance to make the point and stamp out those horrid and intrusive things you loathe! It is a temptation that people find irresistible - here's lefty news presenter, Jon Snow in the Guardian:

It is midnight, the chimes of Big Ben ring in the ears of the Westminster workers setting up the pedestrian-only zone that extends from Lambeth Bridge to Trafalgar Square and from the Houses of Parliament to Buckingham Palace. As king, I shall join my people on foot and bicycle for the duration of my 24-hour ban on private cars in central London. Delivery trucks have until 7am to make their deliveries, and only then by prior permission.

Faced with all the good and positive things a king could do, time and time again people asked to speculate about the opportunity fall back on banning stuff. In the twee little Guardian series, we've had the banning of Coca-Cola and open plan offices, the execution of morris dancers, the branding of 'trolls' and prohibiting the use of cars. Now I know it's the Guardian and I should expect officious intervention but what a bunch of hideous snobby fascists.

Why do they start with the assumption that the king's job is to stop people doing something? Why the preference for bans and prohibitions? Why nothing positive and sustaining? Instead of banning stuff these lefties could have used the king's powers to help a few folk - maybe remove some trade barriers, perhaps unravel a little red tape, drop some fees or charges imposed by previous kings and maybe get rid of one or two of the more egregious bans.

Not that The Guardian will be asking me but when I'm king for the day I shall get rid of one law for every hour. I'll ask people what laws they want rid of and take the best suggestions for the chop. Other than this I'll have some champagne, go for a walk and have a damn good banquet with some of the most interesting folk out there. This is the job of the king - not banning stuff.

Banning stuff is for fascist and communist dictators not kings. Kings are way cooler than that.

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The King's Touch

"The hands of the king are the hands of a healer, and so shall the rightful king be known."

So said Ioreth, the eldest of the women who tended the sick in Minas Tirith revealing that Aragon was the king.

In using the idea of the king as a healer, Tolkein was drawing on historical truth. The touch, even the mere presence of the king was believed to have miraculous healing powers:

"His Majesty sitting under his state [canopy] in the Banqueting-House, the chirurgeons [surgeons] caused the sick to be brought or led, up to the throne, where they kneeling, the King strokes their faces or cheeks with both his hands at once, at which instant a chaplain in his formalities says, 'He put his hands upon them, and he healed them.'" This is said to every one in particular. When they have been all touched, they come up again in the same order, and the other chaplain kneeling, and having angel [coin] gold strung on white ribbon on his arm, delivers them one by one to his Majesty, who puts them about the necks of the touched as they pass, while the first chaplain repeats, "That is the true light who came into the world."

Today, of course, we no longer believe such poppycock and mumbo jumbo (alternative medicine and most of public health practice aside). But we still clutch to the remnants of this view, that kings and princes - or their more prosaic modern day equivalents, presidents and prime ministers - by their very presence can tranforms the fortune of a place.

So when there is some disaster or other, we hear the clamouring of media voices for the minister - indeed the prime minister - to visit. As if that visit, with all its attendant disruption of the good work by people who actually can help on the ground, would bestow on the victims some special blessing and transform the fortune of the damaged place.

The Somerset Levels remain flooded. And, while most of the problem is down the the weather (and its a while since we believed kings could control the weather), it does seem that government actions - or inactions - had a part to play in make the problem worse. Ministers - even a Prince - have visited the Levels and have proclaimed it "a disaster" and opponents of those people have made a thing of it: "why hasn't so-and-so visited the area" is the cry. Done for political advantage but echoing the sad sight of people with tuberculosis crawling before the king vainly seeking a cure to their terminal disease.

Every time there is a disaster, we see the disruption of grand and important people - today's kings and princes - arriving in the disrupted and broken environment because it is expected of them, a 'king's duty'. But we know this is pointless, we know it changes nothing and is an illusion of action, a pretend salvation.

Yet still we insist on the King's Touch.

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