OVER the course of the last 10 days, a particularly meaninglessness string of words uttered by the commentator Jonathan Sacerdoti have been transformed, through seemingly endless repetition, into something of an incantation.

“She was Queen of Scots as well and it is notable that she died in Scotland, mostly because she loved Scotland and she loved to be in Balmoral, which was like a private place for her,” he opined.  

“She took her summers there, many happy family occasions took place there and actually, the royal family has quite a strong connection to Scotland.”

While it isn’t clear how the Queen’s fondness for Scotland as a landscape correlates to any kind of direct benefit to the people who live here, there has been a clear political desire to use the opportunity of have the Scottish public invest emotionally in the monarchy.  

The ceremonies of the monarch’s death and their heir’s accession are intertwined. These types of ceremonies are central to the establishment of royal authority and the dissemination of that power to the general public.

The Queen of course died at Balmoral Castle in Aberdeenshire. The vast estate — 50,000 acres of Scottish moors, farmland and forest and all the flora and fauna that lie therein — are described as the Queen’s “private property” and exist as an annexation within the Cairngorms national park.  

From there she made her way to Edinburgh. The Royal Mile is topographical spine of the Edinburgh Old Town, linking Edinburgh Castle to the Palace of Holyrood (and latterly, the Scottish Parliament.) The street has been the site of political processions — particularly royal processions — for over 500 years.  

The processions of the last week — the setting of the coffin in state in Edinburgh for 24 hours and the Accession of Charles — have awoken the medieval core of the city in a pageant which has incorporated the rituals of mourning, defence of the crown and spectacle of public punishment.  

On the road to St Giles Cathedral, a landmark more appropriately characterised by its alternative name the High Kirk of Edinburgh, the procession would have trod over the Heart of Midlothian — a mosaic inset on the cobbles marks the site of what was once the entrance of the Old Tollbooth — a prison which from 1780 to 1817 theatricalised the power of the state by making public spectacles of judicial torture and execution.

Even in medieval Scotland, the public used elaborate pageantry and street theatre to express their expectations of the incoming monarch as they made their way towards Edinburgh Castle.  

While the thumbscrews and Scottish Maiden have been long retired out of public use, during the accession proclamation a 22-year-old man was tackled to the ground and arrested on the Royal Mile for shouting “You're a sick old man, Andrew” at the Duke of York (friend to oligarchs, paedophiles and sex traffickers — and the line of succession member who has spent the most time and money defending himself in court against sexual abuse allegations).

The Mile has been taken over recently with political power of a different kind. Unlike attendees at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe, the royal procession avoided having to march the coffin through streets stinking of decomposing litter and crawling with rats — the inevitable consequence of the local authority insulting GMB members with a 3.5 per cent pay offer.  

On the morning of the Queen’s death, around 3,000 trade unionists had lined the Mile during the STUC’s Scotland Demands a Pay Rise march.

The last 10 days have significantly interrupted what had been a growing momentum among the British working class. We are at a pivotal moment and risk a growing feeling of class-based unity being superseded by a collective identity rooted in subservience, enforced from above.

As a symbol, the Queen has maintained a national self-image towards nostalgic fantasies of imperial power while at the same time gaining sympathy for her life and humanity in citizen terms — the public are encouraged to imagine her as admirable and accomplished as any female CEO, as vulnerable and familiar as an elderly relative.  

This geopolitical dysphoria has long obscured reality, having spent the last several decades having its assets stripped and sold off to foreign investors by elected representatives competent and diligent only in the task of building personal wealth, that Britain is an increasingly poor and unequal nation.

Will such a decadent display of superfluous state expenditure as seen over the last 10 days sicken the British public and poison the throne beyond salvation?

Hailey Maxwell is a Glaswegian trade unionist and lapsed art historian.