King Charles III or King George VII? Charles has already teased us about his possible choice of royal name. But his record as Prince of Wales also suggests that he will be the most radically reforming monarch since his great-grandfather, George V, who changed the monarchy’s surname, marriage customs and values in one fell swoop in the single year 1917.

The clearest indication has come in Church-State relations. Charles has famously said that, as King, he would like to be Defender of Faith, rather than Defender of the Faith. One word, but a world of difference. The Defender of the Faith is, as the Monarch has been since Queen Elizabeth I, supreme governor of the Church of England, but the Defender of Faith would be patron of many competing and conflicting religions. Whatever Charles hopes, he can’t be both.

Is it now time for the monarchy to throw over the Church of England, just as it earlier and very successfully detached itself from the peerage? After all, the sometime national church, despite the splendours of its architectural inheritance, is now in fact weak, divided and fast shrinking into a mere sect; if religion still has strength in this country it lies elsewhere, in evangelical Christianity and radical Islam. Neither is very promising material for royal ceremony. In these circumstances, will it be possible for Charles to have a coronation at all? Is it even desirable? Might it be better instead to do the unthinkable and follow in the footsteps of Oliver Cromwell and have a civil inauguration?

It is not unthinkable. The regalia of crown, orb and sceptre could be used, but a new cast of characters and a different form of words would take account of the tumultuous changes of past decades. But will there still be a King to be crowned, or will the monarchy follow so many other English institutions into oblivion? History suggests that monarchies rarely disappear, save as a result of defeat in war or revolution, and neither seems in prospect in Britain.

Instead, the real dangers are indifference and irrelevance. For the settlement of l9l7, which established the House of Windsor, is manifestly played out. Finally shorn of executive power, the monarchy created by George V was left with two strings to its bow. First, as the family monarchy, it was the head of our morality, the focus of national sentiment and the guardian of the British way of life. Second, as the font of the reformed and modernised honour system, it was the patron and prime mover of public service and the voluntary sector.