THE SHIP OF THESEUS AND THE HOUSE OF WINDSOR
Theseus, with the help of Ariadne,
daughter of Minos, King of Crete, slew
the Minotaur – that creature with a bull’s head
and a man’s body – in the labyrinth
which imprisoned him. They rescued the fourteen
noble youths and maidens of Athens,
sacrificial tribute, who had been food
for the Minotaur. With the princess
and the young people, Theseus escaped
from Crete and sailed his trireme to Athens.
(En route he left Ariadne on Naxos,
for reasons which need not detain us here).
The Athenians, in gratitude for saving
the scions of their nobility, revered
the ship in which they had returned, maintained it
for many centuries – replacing
rotten timber, frayed rope, and torn canvas.
Inevitably, this being Ancient Greece,
a problem arose, and persists even now,
of a philosophical nature:
at what point, if any, does the Ship of
Theseus cease to be Theseus’ ship?
Thomas Hobbes – sometime mathematics tutor
to Charles, Prince of Wales, later Charles II –
and most famous for opining, during
the havoc of the English Civil War,
that life in anything other than
a comprehensive autocracy
would be ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish
and short’ – posed an interesting what if
regarding The Ship of Theseus.
Imagine that, instead of recycling
the redundant parts for, say, fuel,
they had been made the responsibility
of a custodian, who rebuilt the ship
following the original blueprint,
so that, in time, there would have been two vessels,
both from the original design,
one from the original materials –
and the latter, Hobbes concluded, might still
properly be identified as
The Ship of Theseus. Some, however,
may think the issue of identity
irrelevant, one ship being seaworthy,
the other a tad dystopian –
which brings me neatly to the House of Windsor
aka Saxe-Coburg und Gotha, aka
Hanover, Stuart, Tudor etcetera.
Proper names belong, are unique, confer,
confirm, create identity: Ariadne
of Naxos, the Minotaur of Knossos –
who, by the way, were siblings, but that tale
is for another day. So, to Charles III,
tax dodger, and ersatz Renaissance man:
who seems unlike his gaudy namesakes –
the father, who spectacularly lost his head;
the son, something of a stage door Johnny –
except both his predecessors also believed
they had been anointed by God himself,
and were similarly obsessed with worldly wealth.
He can trace his line to Alfred the Great,
King of the Anglo-Saxons, and Kenneth
MacAlpin, King of the Picts. All of which is
as insubstantial and insignificant
as an imagined splinter from the deck
of some mythical ship.
Mary Clark
May 25, 2023The recombinant possibilities! ‘…imagined splinter from a mythical ship’. What happens when DNA is whittled down over centuries to a fraction of a fraction and the overall design is something else almost completely as the pieces reconnect in endless ways. As with AI. So we are products of these re-envisioned visions, reimaged, rebuilt, and the result may be beautiful or monstrous. There is a grotesque quality to Charles, like a late flashing light before darkness.
David Selzer
May 26, 2023I am rather taken with the idea of Charles III as a slightly sinister firefly!
Mary Clark
May 27, 2023Ha ha. And like the alliteration of ‘slightly sinister firefly’.
John Huddart
May 26, 2023Enjoyed the romp through antiquity and the much anticipated parallel with our own dear king. If C3 identifies Alfred the Great as an ancestor he obviously wishes to support the claim to the throne by William the Norman. Not sure I’m happy with that. Being a WASP, of course, and dedicated to sending all those heriditary dukes to the scaffold.
Jeff Teasdale
June 11, 2023David, that was an interestingly woven tale which puts me in mind of several things.
First, Charles 111. Luckily I was in Finland for the Coronation, unluckily for a funeral, but which ever way you looked at the TV screens of the gold plated event in London (which was hardly ever), and from a ‘new country’ that is forward-looking, almost class-less, no private education as such (but a well-funded state one), a sound social infrastructure, the ice just melting from a -20C winter, but with pothole-free roads, (I could go on and on), it just looked comical at best, criminally wasteful at worse, and I was being looked-to for explanations. All I could say was ”Read Peake’s ‘Gormenghast’. It’s all in there”. the long-redundant rituals, the obsequiousness of the commentators (especially Witchell, the BBC’s ‘royal correspondent’), the sycophancy, and the pageantry (which we do “so well”). I just ask the question, what are they all for? And what do they all do that the rest of us don’t do in some way? The Royal Yacht in Leith is a good example:- 400 people below decks serving a privileged handful on the top deck. Multiply that up by all the castles, houses and palaces, and you see the ridiculousness of it.
The second point was the ship….. I think if you could glue together all the pieces of ‘the true cross’ that there are supposed to be, you could probably build a third ship, let alone a complete wooden cross. ‘Faith’, anointed under a crown or otherwise, is a most peculiar thing.
Thanks.. this was a very enjoyable read.