Jubilee’ve the hype? One hundred years of royal PR | Roman Krznaric: Television commentators reinforce the idea that these are ancient customs stretching back into the mists of time, with remarks like, ‘all the pageantry and grandeur of a thousand-year-old tradition’, ‘a pageantry that has gone on for hundreds of years’ and ‘all the precision that comes from centuries of precedent’.
This is largely, to put it mildly, nonsense. Most of these royal ceremonies and rituals, including the latest Jubilee, are creations of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They are what historians call ‘invented traditions’ – conscious efforts on the part of those in power to subtly influence our beliefs by providing a compelling but illusory sense of continuity with the past.
So why exactly did the British monarchy need to invent traditions, and how did it do so?