Marin de Viry is a French writer and literary critic, member of the management committee of the Revue des deux Mondes. He teaches at Sciences Po Paris, from which he graduated in 1988, and was Dominique de Villepin's communications advisor during his campaign for the 2012 presidential election. Author of
Le Matin des abrutis
(ed. JC Lattès, 2008) and
Memoirs of a Snubbed
(ed. Pierre-Guillaume de Roux, 2012), he published
Un Roi immediately
(ed. Pierre-Guillaume de Roux) in 2017.
LE FIGARO.- This January 21 marks the 230th anniversary of the execution of Louis XVI. How is the monarchy perceived today according to you?
MARIN DE VIRY.-
I believe that there is a kind of automatic rejection of the Old Regime, which for most French people corresponds to the darkness that preceded the Revolution, to a black base from which political modernity has freed itself, this which allowed him to unfold until the radiant times that we know... We could clearly see this state of mind in the way in which a Cabu caricatured Philippe de Villiers: surrounded by a tonsured fanatic monk in a robe of homespun and 'a hooded executioner with pincers, to torture opponents;
or again, Balladur in a roller wig, with a pronounced double chin, seated in a sedan chair.
The Abbé de Firmont exclaiming: “Son of Saint-Louis, ascend to heaven”.
Tony Baggett / stock.adobe.com
This rejection makes impossible any study of this regime that is a little dispassionate, outside of course cultivated or scholarly circles.
From now on, the execution of Louis XVI bothers everyone a bit, because it ends up being known that he was a rather wise and well-inspired king, whom the nascent United States would have liked to save.
His death sentence is perceived as an act perhaps
a little
exaggerated - although justified in the spirit of social revenge of the time -, within a globally radiant historical sequence.
By sticking to this false idea of an isolated moment, of punctual violence, we forget to think about the terrorist slippage of the Revolution in all its causes.
Read alsoThe aborted revolution of Louis XVI
And we left the door open to political violence, even developed a certain fondness for it and for state terrorism.
In short, France is proud of its political violence, to the point of absently excusing its crimes.
This is what is most disturbing in our republican culture.
Political murder seems to us to be a good start.
There is little from the place de la Concorde, touristy and spectacular, to the place de la Révolution (
name given under the Revolution to the place de la Concorde, Editor's note
), dramatic and bloody.
Action française has greatly lost its influence. How is the royalist movement structured today?
I have the impression that Action Française is not doing so badly.
I believe that a lot of fairly educated and active young people have joined it, that it exerts a certain attractiveness, and that's very good.
As far as I'm concerned, I think that Maurras, who nevertheless remains fairly present in monarchist minds, pushed back everything he wanted to promote: the monarchy and Catholicism.
To reach this conclusion, I reminded myself that the monarchy is the King, and that Catholicism is God, and when I read Maurras I do not see at all where his support for God and the King, in any case as they appear to my mind.
If the monarchists are not able to present a presidential candidate, I don't see what use Action Française is for.
Trusting a purified, revisited, modernized Maurras to promote the monarchist idea is, in my opinion, a waste of time.
But I'm open to discussion, maybe I misread.
Moreover, the characteristic of a monarchist party, whatever it is, is that it is destined to dissolve with the advent of the monarchy.
It is a project structure, a movement, indeed.
The minimum would be for this movement to present a presidential candidate, which hasn't been the case since 1974. If the monarchists are not able to present a presidential candidate, I don't see what the point is. French action.
Emmanuel Macron himself speaks of "
the absence of the figure of the king
" in French politics, which creates "
a vacuum
".
What makes the monarchy different from the Republic?
Emmanuel Macron says this because the job description of President of the Fifth Republic is a contradiction in terms, and he lives it every day.
He is asked to be Saint-Louis and Pinay, Charles X and Mélenchon, etc.
However, he can be Pinay and Mélenchon, but on the sacred, essential and permanent side, he is completely deprived by the Constitution.
The monarchy would solve the problem.
Read alsoRequiem, torchlight march... This youth of France who vibrates to the memory of Louis XVI
Our political system should be based on the one hand on the democratic reign of the accidental, the short term, the eventual, the circumstantial, the affairs of this world in a word, which would be administered by a Prime Minister strongly legitimized and disposing constitutional bases guaranteeing it a certain stability between popular votes.
And to be based on the other hand on the long term, the essential, the historical dimension, the spiritual dimension and the idea of community of destiny.
When you separate the two orders, you make each of them better.
Naturally, there should be points of contact between the two dimensions: the accidental should not miss the essential, and vice versa.
A 2016 BVA poll indicated that 17% of French people were then in favor of the head of state being a monarch. Do you think a restoration is possible?
The number one condition of possibility is to
test
a candidacy for the presidency of the Republic of a candidate who would promise institutional reform to establish a king and a democratic regime together.
When you're in politics in a democracy, it's best to show up.
The rest is literature.
If the monarchy were to return, who would be the king of France?
The selection of the monarch is both providential and elective.
Providential, because the crown falls on the head of a man among all men, and elective, because he is chosen by an assembly.
Things started like that for Hugues Capet.
In France, Jean d'Orléans is the candidate in the providential sense because he descends from our kings;
and if the French agree, then he will become the elected candidate.
He is given to us on the throne and we will give him the throne in return, to put it another way.
To read also Louis XX, the pretender to the throne of France, majesty of the "yellow vests"
I know there is a Spanish suitor, head of the House of Bourbon, who is surely sympathetic, but he is Spanish and, perhaps in spite of himself, his followers are very respectable but feel in another world than ours.
Even Saint-Simon would find them a bit stiff.
The death of Queen Elisabeth II has once again shown the interest of the French for the British monarchy. Why are British sovereigns arousing so much interest, unlike other European monarchies?
The British monarchy is at the end of the road where the televised coronation of Elizabeth II led it.
It has since become a precious intangible asset of British “
soft power
”, and this is what gives it its place and its luster like no other in Europe.
But the other consequence is that everything now happens as if the investors in this asset that is the monarchy were asking the leaders to account: what is our return on investment?
What is your governance?
How is your performance?
The legitimacy of this monarchy is moving dangerously, for it and perhaps for the United Kingdom, from the terrain of tradition and the sacred towards that of economic and social efficiency.
Cyril Hanouna would be our king's nightmare
Like what, when you are king, you must never give in to media power, let alone bring it into the fold.
The media want direct, whether in terms of time or in terms of immediate access to sources of information;
now the monarchy bristles with intermediaries, gradations, hierarchy, and lives at a rhythm which is its own.
BFM
does not know how to anteroom and will never know;
media is not designed for that.
Cyril Hanouna would be our king's nightmare.
It would have to be defended against it, and as far as I am concerned, I find that it would be worth the trouble, that it would justify a political life.
It is clear that the English media want to destroy everything around the king, so that there is no longer anyone between them and Charles, and that they can finally talk about power to power, preferably overlooking their monarch.
I hope that won't happen.