The Return of the King

הִנְנוּ עַצְמְךָ וּבְשָׂרְךָ אֲנָחְנוּ
We are your bone and your flesh.
— 2 Samuel 5:1

There was once a country that took particular pride in having no king. It had ministers, judges, generals, advisers, parties, elections and an assembly whose members spoke so frequently in the name of the people that the people occasionally wondered whether their own presence was still required. But there was no throne. This was repeated with satisfaction on national holidays, at school ceremonies and whenever foreign visitors asked how the country governed itself.

The throne, everyone agreed, belonged to another age. It remained in museums, sacred texts and stories about warriors who had united tribes, conquered cities and received instructions unavailable to ordinary men. Those kings had lived before parliamentary committees, constitutional lawyers and televised exit polls. They made decisions beneath the open sky, often with swords nearby, and no one required them to explain themselves before a subcommittee.

The country had improved upon this arrangement. Anointed rulers had been replaced by temporary officeholders, royal decrees by legislation and struggles over succession by elections. Leaders could govern, but they could not own the government. They could command armies, but only through offices entrusted to them for a time. They could speak in the name of the nation, but only until the nation selected someone else. This was widely regarded as progress.

Then there arose a leader who remained in power long enough for the distinction between the country and his government to become inconvenient.

At first, no one called him a king. That would have sounded absurd. He wore ordinary suits, appeared before cameras and submitted his name to the judgment of voters like everyone else. He spoke of democracy often and with evident feeling. He never asked for a crown. He asked only to be recognized as the man without whom the country could not safely continue.

The request appeared reasonable. The country had enemies, and enemies make exceptionally efficient political advisers. They explain why patience is weakness, criticism is sabotage and every transfer of authority should be postponed until conditions improve. Conditions, regrettably, never improved.

The longer the leader remained in office, the more his supporters discovered that removing him would not amount to an ordinary change of government. It would endanger the country itself. His mistakes became the price of experience, his failures proof of the scale of the dangers he faced, and the charges brought against him evidence of corruption within the institutions investigating him. His endurance became the strongest argument for his indispensability.

No one said that the leader stood above the law. They merely observed that the law became strangely political whenever it approached him.

The judges continued to sit, legal advisers continued to advise and officials continued to produce reports with the solemn confidence that words printed on official paper possessed authority. The country remained immensely proud of its institutions, particularly when those institutions inconvenienced someone else. When they inconvenienced the government, however, a difficulty arose.

The judges had not been elected. The advisers were bureaucrats. The generals were defeatists. The investigators were conspirators. The journalists served hidden interests. The opposition, though technically composed of citizens, did not appear to belong to the people in quite the same way as those who supported the government.

The country had not lost its institutions. It had merely begun dividing them into two categories: those that expressed the national will and those that obstructed it. The leader decided which was which.

One day, the army closed a road near the border. The order was clear. Beyond the checkpoint lay a military zone into which civilians were forbidden to enter. Soldiers placed barriers across the road and stood beside them with the uncomfortable dignity of men expected to embody decisions made elsewhere.

Then the crowd arrived. There were flags, children, songs and ministers. The crowd announced that it intended to recover land, correct history and complete the work abandoned by weaker generations. The ministers praised its courage. Some walked at its head; others explained that the people possessed rights older than military regulations.

The soldiers looked at the barriers. The barriers looked official. The ministers looked more official. The crowd advanced.

No rebellion was declared, and no order was formally withdrawn. The state continued to prohibit passage while representatives of the state accompanied those passing through. Soldiers stepped aside, barriers were circumvented and the crowd moved forward beneath the flags of the country whose command it was disregarding. The law remained in excellent condition. Only obedience had suffered.

The following morning, commentators debated whether the crowd had truly reached its destination. Some insisted that it had; others said it had merely approached the fence. Experts discussed settlement, security, history and the intentions of the ministers. Everyone agreed that the episode was controversial. Few noticed that the destination had never been the most important part.

The crowd had not been testing the border. It had been testing the state. It wanted to know whether an order would remain an order when those violating it walked beside the government. It discovered that authority could be divided without anyone admitting that it had been divided. The army could command, the ministers could contradict it and the crowd could decide which voice represented the country more authentically.

This knowledge was never written into law. It was more useful than law, because it was carried home as experience. The crowd learned that the state might retreat if approached in the right political company. The ministers learned that an institution could be weakened without being abolished. The soldiers learned that a lawful command might leave them alone when political authority arrived from the opposite direction. The public learned that nothing extraordinary had occurred.

Thus began the return of the king.

He did not return wearing a crown. Crowns are uncomfortable, attract unnecessary attention and photograph badly under artificial lighting. He returned as a distinction between two kinds of legitimacy.

There was the legitimacy of institutions: votes counted, judgments issued, orders signed and procedures followed. There was also the legitimacy of the people, by which was meant those people who recognized the leader as the true voice of the country. The first legitimacy was technical; the second was sacred. The first could be mistaken. The second could only be betrayed.

As the next election approached, officials prepared ballot papers and polling stations. The government praised democracy and warned that powerful forces intended to manipulate it. Its supporters were urged to remain vigilant. Certain voters were suspicious, certain officials were biased and certain districts might produce results requiring particular attention.

No one announced that an unfavorable result would be rejected. That would have been premature and unnecessarily impolite. Instead, the public was taught that only one result would require no explanation. A government victory would express the will of the people. A defeat would raise serious questions.

Ballots would still be placed in boxes. Television studios would still display maps. Politicians would thank citizens for participating in democracy. The ceremony would remain intact, polished and reassuring. Only its function would have changed. Elections had once determined who possessed the right to govern. Now they were expected to confirm the right of those who already understood themselves as the country’s rightful guardians.

The difference was subtle enough to escape notice. After all, no parliament had burned. No tanks surrounded the courts. Newspapers continued to criticize the government, often with impressive energy, demonstrating that freedom remained alive and continued to generate excellent advertising revenue. Opposition politicians appeared on television to warn that democracy was in danger, usually between commercial breaks.

The country remained free to debate whether it was still free. This was accepted as conclusive evidence.

Meanwhile, the throne returned piece by piece. It returned whenever a court judgment became merely an opinion because the government disliked it. It returned whenever military discipline was demanded of ordinary citizens but became negotiable for the governing camp. It returned whenever an investigation was treated as an assault upon the nation, and whenever criticism of the leader became indistinguishable from hostility toward the country.

The throne required neither wood nor gold nor a raised platform. It required only the conviction that the departure of one man would amount to a national catastrophe. Once that conviction had taken hold, the leader no longer needed to overthrow the state. The state began overthrowing itself on his behalf.

Its institutions remained standing, but each learned the limits of its courage. Officials continued to work, though with increasing sensitivity to which decisions might actually be enforced. The law remained universal in language and selective in consequence. The government became the only part of the state entitled to decide when the state was real.

The people continued to insist that they had no king. In the narrowest sense, they were correct. No coronation had taken place, no hereditary title had been created and the leader continued to seek votes, submit legal arguments and address the assembly.

But a king is not defined solely by a crown. He appears when political power ceases to be understood as temporary. He appears when the state is no longer a public order that outlives its rulers, but an extension of the leader’s historical mission. He appears when institutions are expected not to limit power, but to recognize it.

The kings of old required prophets, priests and warriors to confirm their anointing. The modern king required opinion polls, crowds and ministers passing through checkpoints. The form had changed. The recognition had not.

On election day, citizens would enter the voting booths alone. Each would mark a ballot in private, as citizens do when they believe sovereignty travels quietly through paper. Outside, the flags would already be waiting.

Officials would count. Judges might rule. Parties would declare victory or fraud. The army and police would receive instructions from institutions whose authority had been weakened in advance. Then the country would discover whether it still possessed a government capable of losing an election, or whether, almost without noticing, it had acquired a king.

Yochanan Schimmelpfennig