Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1478813
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 11 SEPTEMBER 2022 OPINION 10 Raphael Vassallo OPINION 'Long Live The… Quing!' IT'S one of those psychological slip-ups that's just bound to hap- pen, isn't it? (Like that moment from 'Fawlty Towers' where Bas- il Fawlty is told, 'Don't mention the War!': only to prove utterly incapable of ever mentioning anything else, for the rest of the entire episode…) Well, I reckon it's going to be the exactly same with the British national anthem, you know. In fact, I can almost hear it already: that moment when the English national football team emerges from its dress- ing room, ahead of next No- vember's World Cup open- er against Iran… and a voice blares out over the Qatari sta- dium loudspeakers: "Ladies and gentlemen, please stand for the Anthem of the United Kingdom." … whereupon around 70,000 British football fans all scram- ble to their feet, and chant out in unison (oh, and feel free to sing along. I'm sure you all know the tune): "God Save Our Graaa-cious Quee… KING! I meant KING! God save the KING, damn it…!" Yes, indeed. And just after the obligatory 'minute's silence' for the recent passing of Queen Elizabeth II, too! (Leaving no room whatsoever, for any ex- cuses of the "Oops! I forgot!" variety…) But make no mistake: that is what will certainly happen. Because 'The British National Anthem' is not merely 'some- thing that is sung on occasion- al UK national events, here and there'… Oh, no. It's a motif that is deeply, DEEPLY emblazoned into the collective psyche: not just of the British people them- selves; nor just of the 'Com- monwealth' of former British colonies, either; but of the wid- er-English speaking world, as a whole… as well as, I might add, the MUCH larger category of 'people who have ever con- sumed any British culture, in any shape or form, anywhere in the entire Universe…' Ask anyone, in any of those categories, to perform an im- promptu version of 'the Brit- ish National Anthem' … and the first thing you'll proba- bly notice is how you yourself phrased the question. Be honest, now: you'd say "Sing 'God Save the Queen'", wouldn't you? Not 'God Save the King'…. even if, ironically, the latter IS the anthem's of- ficial name: having been orig- inally composed for a King - George III – and sung in hon- our of six male monarchs - to only two females - since 1745. And besides: insofar as the rest of the planet is concerned, the words 'God Save The Queen' – in and of themselves - could just as easily be a ref- erence to The Sex Pistols' cel- ebrated 1977 punk single. (In fact, I myself initially thought that the announcement of 'The Queen is Dead', last Thursday, was actually about the re-re- lease of a certain 1986 album by The Smiths…) THAT, I fear, is just how deeply this motif has pen- etrated our consciousness, over the past 70 years or so… which brings me to another reason why the transition from 'Queen' to 'King' is likely to be a cause of much global confu- sion and embarrassment, in the near future. Just look, for a moment, at the extraordinary span of time that Queen Elizabeth actually spent sitting on that throne – both symbolically, AND physically – to begin with. Seventy years. Leaving aside that it's substantially longer than most of us have even been alive – which also means that very, very few of us can actually remember an age when Brit- ain's reigning monarch was ac- tually a man – that's an awful long time for an entire nation to be singing the same lyrics, in the same order, to the same tune: over, and over, and over again. For let's face it, folks: the Brit- ish national anthem doesn't actually offer all that much va- riety when it comes to lyrics, does it? (Or at least, not the parts that actually get sung, in all those official events…) If it's not 'God Save Our Gra- cious [King/Queen]!', it's 'Long Live Our Noble [King/Queen]!' - with the rest being an as- sortment of: 'Happy! Glorious! Victorious!' (and a few other similes, straight from Roget's Thesaurus...) Not to be unkind, or any- thing: but it's not exactly what you'd call 'complicated', or 'dif- ficult to remember'. Except, perhaps, for one, teenie-weenie little detail. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the lyrics of British National An- them also happen to be in Eng- lish: which is a rather unique language, in the sense that 'gen- der' only ever seems to affect 'nouns' and 'pronouns'… but never 'adjectives', 'adverbs', or (still less) 'verb-conjugations'. In other words: while the death of Queen Elizabeth II - to be succeeded by a man – will certainly force a lot of things to change, in the United King- dom: from banknotes, to post- age stamps, to passports, to the lyrical content of British pop music (not to mention Helen Mirren's career as an actress. I mean: who the heck is she go- ing to play now, anyway? 'King Charles III'?)… … it will not have much ef- fect at all, on the grammatical structure of the British nation- al anthem itself (in the way it most certainly would, had it been written in, say, Maltese). So even if it is now a 'KING', that the British people regular- ly implore their God to 'save' – another reason, by the way, to marvel at Queen Elizabeth's sheer longevity: if God Him- self had to step in an 'save her', so very often… she must have been in an awful lot of DAN- GER, the whole time – there is no reason under the sun to actually replace any of those other, 'gender-neutral' parts of speech. The adjectives I quoted earli- er, for instance, all stay exactly the same: King Charles III will remain just as 'gracious', 'no- ble', happy, 'glorious', 'victo- rious', etc., as his mother was presumed to be before him. The same goes for 'verbs', too… even if there aren't a great many that are actually attributed to Britain's reign- ing monarch, in the song itself. (It's actually 'God' who does all the 'saving', remember?) But still: if, for argument's sake, it was also 'God' who died last Thursday, instead of 'Queen Elizabeth II' (and let's face it: judging by the global reaction, it may as well have been)… and if His successor