- The King is dead. Long live the King!
The King is dead. Long live the King! (French: Le Roi est mort, vive le Roi !) [The exact punctuation used when written varies from source to source, with the
full stop on occasion being replaced by asemicolon , a colon, or adash .] is a traditional proclamation made following theaccession of a newmonarch in various countries, such as theUnited Kingdom ,Canada and others. The original phrase was translated from the French _fr. "Le Roi est mort. Vive le Roi!", which was first declared upon the coronation of Charles VII following the death of his father Charles VI in 1422. In France, the declaration was traditionally made by the Duc d'Uzès, a senior Peer of France, as soon as the coffin containing the remains of the previous king descended into the vault ofSaint Denis Basilica . The phrase arose from the law of _fr. "le mort saisit le vif"—that the transfer of sovereignty occurs instantaneously upon the moment of death of the previous monarch.At the time, French was the primary language of aristocrats in England, and the proclamation was quickly taken up as ideally representing the same tradition — which in England dates back to 1272, when Henry III died while his son, Edward I, was fighting in the
Crusades . To avoid any chance of acivil war erupting over theorder of succession , the Royal Council proclaimed "The throne shall never be empty; the country shall never be without a monarch." Thus, Edward was declared king immediately, and he ruled "in absentia " until news of his father's death reached him and he returned to England.While "The King is dead. Long live the King" is commonly believed to be part of the official text of the
Proclamation of Accession read out following the decision of theAccession Council as to the rightful heir to the throne, it is in fact only tradition that causes it to be recited immediately after the proclamation is read aloud in many villages and towns.In some monarchies, such as the
United Kingdom , aninterregnum is usually avoided by using "the king is dead, long live the King", i.e. theheir to the throne becomes a new monarch immediately on his predecessor's death orabdication . This famous phrase signifies the continuity ofsovereignty , attached to a personal form of power named "Auctoritas ". This is not so in other monarchies where the new monarch's reign begins only withcoronation or some other formal or traditional event. In thePolish-Lithuanian Commonwealth for instance, kings were elected, which often led to relatively long interregna. During that time it was the Polish primate who served as aninterrex (ruler between kings).Ernst Kantorowicz 's famous theory of the "Kings's Two Bodies" (1957) showed how "auctoritas" (Kantorowicz used the synonym term - here - of "dignitas") was transferred from the defunct sovereign to the new one.Because of the memorable nature of the phrase (due to
epanalepsis ), as well as its historic significance, the phrase crops up regularly as a headline for articles, editorials, or advertisements on themes of succession or replacement, as well as being linked to the continued commercial success ofElvis Presley , thanks to his moniker of "The King of Rock 'n' Roll".Notes
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