Throne Speech opens Great Hanover's vicennial Parliament

Bergen

“Be good or be gone” seems to be the theme emerging for the 20^th anniversary year of the Kingdom of Great Hanover, which, when you think about it, is fitting enough. That’s essentially the attitude by which Hanover was reclaimed in the first place.

After a New Year’s Day address in which the king took anti-vaxxers and right-wing extremists to task for the part they’ve played in making the world an increasingly less delightful place in which to live, His Majesty’s government devoted a great deal of text in its first throne speech of 2022 to warning cyber-bullies and “individuals who exhibit toxic or anti-social behavior” not to expect to find the red carpet rolled out for them within the social media of Great Hanover.

Following a successful “Restoration Parliament” which was convened for a short time in late 2021, the government set forth its agenda for the 2022 legislative season in what is set to be the first of two parliamentary sessions convened this year.  A veritable laundry list of focused social policies appeared on vellum today, with issues ranging from social media regulations to anti-discrimination laws to gender-neutrality.

The government’s progressive agenda, however, could not have been presented in a more conservative package. Draped in traditional robes of state worn over the gold-embroidered coatee and white tie ensemble of a marshal of Great Hanover, King James I, seated upon the sovereign’s throne, began the speech with a tip of his fancifully plumed hat as he, in three different languages, invited the assembled aristocrats to be seated.

From a throne setting dominated by a William & Mary era heraldic tapestry, the sovereign presented his government’s programme in a clinical monotone as his gloved hands slowly flipped through the pages of the gracious speech. Next to the throne, the Jacobean State Crown was displayed as a symbol of royal authority upon a delicate 19^th century table with ormolu mounts.

The frosty temperatures of January permitted the monarch to array himself in more of the heavy regalia and clobber traditionally associated with such events, as compared with the 2021 state opening event last October when, in balmy weather, His Majesty appeared before Parliament attired in an abstemiously understated evening suit. Since the Hanoverian military is no more, martial uniforms are out, making all the more timely the Palace's roll-out of the Hanoverian marshal title. The newly-minted honour entitled the realm's "First Marshal" to don the elaborate civilian uniform proper to marshals in lieu of more conventional formalwear options.

The reactionary spectacle of an old guard Hanoverian monarch awash in ostrich feathers, gold lace, and miniver notwithstanding, the words which rolled off the royal tongue made it abundantly clear that the neoteric directives of a progressive government were destined to become the law of the land. Since the restoration project began last year, in fact, the Hanoverian crown has made less of an effort than it has in the past to disguise its tendency to lean forward (some might say 'leftward'). 

Taking its cues from Enlightenment era monarchies of yore and associating Great Hanover in spirit with the canon of moderate sensibilities belonging to the rules-based international establishment, St George's Palace has resumed in earnest the solemn pontifical bomfoggery which the Marchmains have been known for through the decades.

From her very origins back in 2002, as it happens, the Hanoverian state has been characterized by a tendency to advocate in favor of progressive social policies while at the same time embracing a highly traditionalistic approach to the projection of her monarchical and aristocratic institutions. The latter, however, have often so successfully disguised the former that less astute observers have occasionally written Hanover off as a kingdom of paleoconservative hard hats mired in the past. Saving a time when the crown found herself in thrall to tractarian ecclesiasts, however, such assertions have been rather wide of the mark.

That traceable pattern of progressivism in traditionalist garb has weaved its way throughout the history of the small monarchies of the Jacobean provenance, including the kingdoms of Hanover and Scone, the Glennish Kingdoms, the Prince-Abbacy of Inselwald, and most latterly the Kingdom of Argonne. In almost every case, politicians quick to modernize have appealed to the monarchy to shed its outwardly conservative habits here and there in order that the packaging might better reflect the contents. 

In response, the monarchy has had to resist, attempting (often unsuccessfully) to explain that the sugar of tradition was necessary to help the medicine of progress go down. The old royal house has always maintained that populations tend to be, by and large, rather more conservative than those on the urgent left imagine them to be, necessitating patience, stealth, and a highly tactical approach when attempting to gradually implement reformist policies. “Idealistic attempts to rush reform and to divorce progress from pragmatism will, in the end, produce nothing but a stubborn reaction,” one old Marchmain once warned.  

The Hanoverian monarchy has been sufficiently adept at employing the smoke and mirrors routine through the years, however, and the crown’s pragmatic sanction of progressive reform was certainly on full display during Wednesday’s opening of session ceremony. If the government's policies pointed to the future, the king's appearance loudly hearkened to the past, providing ample reassurance to the shiny objects crowd.

In addition to the announced cascade of liberal social policies, the speech revealed that foreign policy would continue to play a significant role in the government’s agenda this year, with a short-term focus upon Hano-Glennanic relations and a longer-term focus upon establishing more formal ties with the Grand Duchy of Westarctica. It was also announced during the speech that the current monarch of the Kingdom of Scone, King Erik, would address Parliament on 28 February, which is the eve of the anniversary of the dissolution of the Glennish Kingdoms. Erik will become the first foreign monarch to address the Hanoverian Parliament.

Hanover would hardly be Hanover at all, of course, without the reigning monarch provocatively wading into the waters of religion during a sitting of Parliament, and Wednesday’s agenda concluded with the king announcing in some detail that the crown intended to do just that, establishing a “spiritual peerage”, as the address put it. 

In a bid to put the kibosh on any future attempts to revisit the idea of resurrecting the old state religion, the government’s speech explained that “lords spiritual”, unaffiliated with sectarian denominations and unsupported by a state church, would be created by the crown as a “compelling alternative” to the establishment of a state religion.

During the days of the Glennish Kingdoms, King James, then the archduke of Hanover, led the charge against the established Church of Hanover (which was by then a defunct Whig-era relic) with a bill which aimed to abolish it once and for all. Objections by the sitting prime minister to the contrary, the bill passed, consigning the established church to the dustbin of history.

The crown’s current legislative push to create spiritual lords attached to the monarchy rather than to a church aims to serve as something of a contraceptive against the future conception of state-sponsored religion, rendering “permanently moot,” as the speech put it, “all agitation in favour of an established church”.

Descending from the heavens of religion into the more practical realm of parliamentary accessibility, the government’s first piece of legislation this session will be a bill sponsored by the cultural heritage ministry to allow the great and the good to cast their votes in Parliament by proxy at times when, for one reason or another, peers find themselves unable to access social media.

The proxy bill, to be written and proposed by the duke of Marchmain, is inspired by a predicament some have found themselves in lately, wherein certain social media platforms have temporarily suspended the posting privileges of users for inadvertently stepping on landmines in the form of arcane social media rules. The duke’s bill will allow peers to ask their colleagues to cast votes on their behalf if necessary.

This winter’s throne speech is certainly filled with enough government objectives to keep Parliament busy through the fall, particularly when we consider that a healthy summer recess will likely be in order. The present session is slated to run through late September or early October, when Parliament will be prorogued until Gunpowder Day, November 5, the date assigned for openings of session going forward.

THE KINGDOM OF GREAT HANOVER  .  2022