Why King Charles received another crown

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Two months after his coronation, King Charles was presented with another crown.

As much as that Crown of Scotland carried with it centuries of royal symbolism, the ceremony that surrounded the presentation of the Scottish crown jewels to him in Edinburgh a few days ago also reflected efforts to send signals about the monarchy's future in that corner of the United Kingdom.

Ewen Cameron, a professor of Scottish history at the University of Edinburgh, saw careful efforts to send two distinct messages from the service held at St. Giles' Cathedral to mark the coronation.

"They wanted to send this message: You know, we take Scotland seriously. We recognize what contemporary Scotland is all about," Cameron said in an interview.

"But also … they wanted to send a reminder of the Scottishness of the monarchy."

That Scottishness has deep historic roots — the crown, for example, was made for King James V, and he wore it for the first time in 1540, at the coronation of Queen Mary of Guise. But the actual ceremony last week is, in royal terms, a relatively new phenomenon.

"In some ways, it doesn't have very deep historical roots," said Cameron, who noted that while Charles's mother, Queen Elizabeth, did something similar in 1953, after her coronation, her father, King George VI, and three previous monarchs did not.

As Elizabeth came to the throne, there were some particular considerations.

"It was tricky in 1953 because that was an era when … early Scottish nationalism was beginning to develop," Cameron said. "Not really in an electoral sense. The [Scottish National Party] weren't very successful at elections, but there was a broad sort of cultural movement, feeling around that Scotland wasn't quite getting its just recognition within the union."

As much as it was a royal ceremony in 1953, there were efforts to ensure it didn't have the full flavour of a coronation. The Queen came in regular day dress rather ceremonial robes.

"They wanted the Queen to be seen in Scotland to kind of respond to this feeling," said Cameron. "But they didn't want to go too far and have anything that looked like a coronation, because that might feed the very nationalism that they were seeking to kind of manage."

However delicate that balance was in 1953, Cameron sees it more so in 2023.

"It's even trickier now because, of course, Scotland's position has changed," he said.