"There exists in human nature a liking for the dramatic and a love of display. Pageantry ministers to these inclinations. The sovereign thereby acquires an aura of grandeur and, as Professor Black has remarked, "it nullifies in the ordinary subject his feeling of smallness". It gives to royalty a glamour which as individuals they may not possess. The masses, not being really interested in abstract political theories, prefer to personify authority and to be more impressed by individuals seeming to perform interesting actions, than by institutions, organisations, and groups who perform what may appear to be uninteresting actions. Any good journalist, any advertising agent, is aware that the attention of the public is more readily aroused by personalities than it is by objects. It is the intense and yet glamorous personification of royalty that gives it a grace far deeper and wider than any President could acquire."

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Added on April 10, 2026
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Original Language: English

Sources

Harold Nicolson, Monarchy (1962), pp. 302-303

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Monarchy_of_the_United_Kingdom