Canceling the visit to France of King Charles III for reasons of social tension is obviously not very glorious. From the Brussels press conference of the President of the Republic, an English journalist spoke of humiliation for France, a term taken up the next day by the French press, in particular Le Figaro. In truth, the humiliation is not where you think it is. From the start it was inscribed in what we had resolved to show France to the King of England. Because this visit was not only marked by the desire to convince the King of England that we are a beautiful and great country; she was through and through characterized by the strange desire to show him a France that does not exist. It is enough to be convinced of it to take a look at the royal program.
On the first day, everything was to start with a memorial moment under the Arc de Triomphe, then with a speech in the Senate, followed by a visit to 19M, a very beautiful Parisian place founded by Chanel and dedicated to fashion, a hook by the 104, temple of culture according to Anne Hidalgo, then at the end of the day a state banquet in Versailles. Oh France! His Republican Guard! Its senators smelling the land! Her little dresses! Its monarchical splendor! This was supposed to attest in the eyes of King Charles to the persistence in his being of the French genius as we still imagine it in Emily in Paris. The second day, head to Bordeaux, its 18th century style town hall, then a tasting of Smith Haut Laffite after a detour via Landiras to examine the forest burned last summer.
France, we tell you! Its terroirs, its fine wines, its republican palaces, its taste for nature! The highlight was for the third day, with the visit to the flower market in Paris, where we still remember the visit in 2014 of Elizabeth II, who loved this timeless place, where small birds and exotic flowers are exhibited. in wooden sheds (and in fact become a sinister place condemned by the City of Paris, but it would probably have been repainted during a visit). Ah! Eternal France, carefree France, France proud of its arts and its dishes, the France of sparrows and multicolored flowers!
Republic Zadists
This is what we wanted to present to the monarch: a Potemkin France. We wanted to hide from him the problems of youth or old age, which he could nevertheless have grasped in a thousand ways by reaching out to students or caregivers, as a humanist that he is. We wanted to hide from him a National Assembly delivered to the zadists of the Republic to confine him to a Senate with presentable gold. We had undertaken to bring together the fine flower of the elite in Versailles, probably because we were unable to sufficiently secure the perimeter of the Elysée.
Just as well, we had no intention of having him meet fishermen from the Channel ports, associations from Calais, industrialists who manufacture arms for Ukraine, beet growers from the North whom environmental standards condemn to death, any more than we wanted to make him admire the revival of the French automobile, the excellence of its planes, the genius of its scientists, the influence of university institutions which sometimes go back to Oxford or the LSE. In short, our idea was to carefully spare him any contact with real France, the one that works, succeeds, suffers, lives and dies, far from splendor and clichés.
But reality knocked at the door. Oh, of course, there is nothing to rejoice in letting the monarch see the devastated face of a country plagued by violence and dissension. There is nothing to be proud of our trash cans and our fires. And certainly it would have been necessary to explain to him why, penetrating in the town hall of Bordeaux, the portal was charred. Because we had resolved from the beginning to present him with a postcard France, we couldn’t take the risk of letting the real invite itself into the staging. We could not allow him to see between two castles and two palaces the face of a France with flowing rimmel and cracked paint. This is what this mad desire to make him believe in a fictitious France says about us, which is, basically, more humiliating than anything. The cancellation on grounds of reality of this visit is only the logical conclusion – and, alas, the admission.