Legitimacy and Repetition
McCarthy finally draws the sword from the stone
According to Robert de Boron’s Merlin (c. late 12th century), shortly after king Uther’s death, a sword manifested in the churchyard during Christmas mass, and on that stone was an anvil, which held a sword inscribed with golden letters claiming that whomever could retrieve it would be the next king, chosen by Jesus Christ.
This apparition marked the start of a political treatise: the noble lords and the finest knights all longed for the throne but, at the Archbishop’s behest, agreed that it was in the greater good to position a God-given mandate above their personal interests. The true Christmas miracle would not be the choice of a new king, but the method by which he would be chosen.
In 1963, Disney―as per usual―oversimplified this story, reducing it to a young Arthur removing the sword by accident, twice, before immediately being crowned as king within the last three minutes of the feature film. Robert de Boron’s original account, however, is not as succinct:
1st attempt: On the Christmas day in which the sword appears, at least 200 men attempt to pull it out in vain. 2nd attempt: Eight days later, during the feast of the Holy Circumcision, a brawl breaks out, prompting Arthur to accidentally retrieve the sword in order to replace his half brother’s missing one. 3rd attempt: Arthur returns the sword and pulls it out again before the crowd. Unhappy with the result, the lords ask to defer any decision until the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus Christ. 4th attempt: Arthur pulls the sword again after everyone else fails to do so, but a new postponement is scheduled until Easter. 5th attempt: Still unwilling to recognize Arthur as king, the lords ask to delay his coronation until Pentecost. He pulls the sword again, just for the heck of it. 6th attempt: At Pentecost, Arthur pulls the sword one final time and is crowned king.
And yet, after 155 days of reenacting the same ritual over and over again to define legitimacy, the newly crowned Arthur immediately faces the scorn of the begrudged kinglets he now rules, sparking a war that evidenced the fault lines of a kingdom that had failed to coalesce despite repeated efforts to establish power.
January 7, 2023
On his 15th attempt to establish the legitimacy of his party’s majority in Congress, Kevin McCarthy’s nomination as Speaker of the US House of Representatives is finally accepted, bringing the country no closer to being united than it was at the start of this tedious ordeal.
Highly amusing