The King.
A few steps from the Knights' Hall at Frederiksborg, where they hang in a row, the kings and queens from Christian IX onward, lies the castle church, where the kings of the absolute monarchy were anointed for a century and a half - and I think you have to hold those two rooms together in your head if you want to understand what it really is you are looking at when you stand in front of a royal portrait.
Because it is not a picture of a man.
Or rather.
It is that too, but that is not what makes it a royal portrait.
We have come to believe that the honest picture is the one that shows the Human Being behind the office - the doubt in the eyes, the tiredness around the mouth, the private man who has just put on the uniform and is not quite sure whether it fits, or feels that it pinches - and we call it presence and authenticity and courage.
But that is a question we have borrowed from therapy and laid over something that has NEVER been about how he is feeling.
A royal portrait does not ask who he is on a Tuesday in September when he is sitting on the toilet with a stomach ache, thinking about his children or about whether life turned out the way he wanted it to.
It asks about ONE thing -
What he has been set to carry, and for whom.
And here we arrive at what the West once understood so self-evidently that nobody needed to say it out loud.
A King, in our understanding of the world, is not the strongest, not the one who won, not the one who took.
He is the one who stands UNDER SOMETHING.
The Cross stands ABOVE the crown.
That is - the King is subject to the law, the law is subject to the Truth, and the Truth has a source that is higher than the King.
It is not a decorative thought. It is the very thing that set our kingdom apart from tyranny, and it is why our constitution can say something as remarkable as that the King is not answerable for his actions and that his person is sacrosanct - because the power has been placed with others, and what remains with him is not power, but FORM.
He carries what the Royal House is -
A PLACE in a people where something stands STILL while everything else moves.
THAT is what has to be painted.
Not because the man does not matter, but because the man has said yes to stepping half a pace back, so that something greater can be seen through him.
Our present King's motto says it better than I can -
Forbundne, Forpligtet, for Kongeriget Danmark. United, Committed, for the Kingdom of Denmark.
There is NOT A SINGLE WORD about himself.
A portrait that takes him at his word does not paint his mood. It paints his PROMISE. It paints the LIGHT falling on something that is GREATER than him, and that he has taken upon himself to carry until he hands it on.
We are not short of people showing us how they feel, would you say?
We are short of the ones who stay standing.
And the Crown is not his - he carries it for us.
And thank you for that. 👑
❤️🔥🪽
Happy Sunday, friends ☀️
