The Only Revolution Left: Monarchy and God Again (MAGA)

"My family has served France for centuries, and if France calls upon me, I will be at its service." ~ le duc d'Anjou. France, réveille-toi! Vive le Roi!

From The European Conservative

By Kristen Zicarrelli

The failings of kings do not disprove the form; they prove the need for transcendent grace to animate it.

Modern France is at a precipice. Its Fifth Republic is now widely understood, even in the halls of power, to be on the verge of collapse, as President Macron was forced to appoint a sixth prime minister in the space of two years earlier this month. The country is suffering from political instability, fragmenting social cohesion, economic malaise, and deeper spiritual decay, with few voices in public willing to acknowledge their Christian heritage. 

In this moment of national crisis, Louis de Bourbon, the current living head of France’s House of Bourbon, has offered himself in service. “The situation has never been so serious; the Fifth Republic is on the verge of collapse. My family has served France for centuries, and if France calls upon me, I will be at its service. The indispensable condition is that France desires the return of the monarchy—a monarchy above parties, unifying.” 

One of the greatest errors of modern Western culture is its misconstruing of the monarchy—both the monarchs themselves and the institution. Louis de Bourbon’s words, and the grounds on which he stakes his offer, are a testament to the virtue of his position—even though centuries have passed since his ancestors (who include the guillotined King Louis XVI) were removed from royal office, he feels an overwhelming attachment to his people and to his lineage—to a culture of duty. This instinct of service oriented towards unity is a bold contrast with the French Republic’s factionalism and short-sightedness.

The argument for ‘monarchy and God again’ (i.e., a Catholic monarchy) derives from centuries of church thought and tradition—it is not a self-justifying power. It is an office conferred by God and affirmed by church leadership (or, in some cases, credibly disaffirmed). Importantly, the monarchy demands high standards of honor, sacrifice, and service, and its legitimacy flows from this service ordered toward the sacred, not from popularity or consent alone. Given the record of human frailty and notoriously corrupt monarchs across the centuries, it would be naïve to claim that monarchy is intrinsically virtuous in practice. Yet the Church never taught that it must be. Monarchs are often unworthy of their office; still, the offices themselves are necessary. Both serve as visible signs that authority is not appointed but anointed by God. The failings of kings do not disprove the form; they prove the need for transcendent grace to animate it.

Where do themes of legacy, authority, and heritage fit in modern conversation, particularly in ‘democratic’ and ‘republican’ systems of Western government? The answer: everywhere, because they are not wholly incompatible. Monarchy is not the enemy of the good republic; it is its teacher. As Alexis de Tocqueville, a devout Catholic and student of both systems, wrote, both power and privilege must be linked to sacrifice. Even democracies without royalty retain aristocracies. The American founders recognized that societies of freedom do depend on discipline and devotion, anchored in a distinctly Christian moral and spiritual order. Aristocracy and monarchy have become dirty words in our post-Enlightenment-era society, but never before have we needed a revival of what may be termed an ‘aristocracy of the spirit,’ in other words, a reconstruction of the notion of honor as a natural virtue. 

The West’s Christian monarchs and aristocrats were expected to exude moral excellence, and, importantly, to act as stewards of their people’s souls. You can see France’s sympathy for that spirit even in its architecture. The grand homes of Paris, with narrow doorways leading to great inner courtyards, signal the invitation for the private salon and the exchange of sophisticated conversation, whereas the open forums of Greece and Rome, and later the Anglo-American town hall, suggest a democratic preference for spectacle over substance. The best of the French tradition cultivates reflection that nurtures aristocracy in its proper role. 

When King Saint Louis IX rescued the true Crown of Thorns from the Holy Land and placed it in Paris’s beloved Sainte-Chapelle, he made his monarchy the guardian of the sacred. Centuries later, when Louis XVI went before the guillotine during the Terror, he wrote that he forgave his enemies. As the French Revolution severed the natural connection between what de Maistre called ‘free beings’ and the ‘divine hand,’ it unleashed rippling political disorder and metaphysical confusion. George Bernanos would later describe this as an age of “de-incarnation”—God withdrawing from the world, and the demonic celebrated as human achievement. The errors of the modern condition, including growing laïcité in the Fifth Republic, also stem from this incorrect anthropology. 

Across the West, there appears a keen sense of exhaustion that explains the longing of the modern age for heroes of a different order. Perhaps it is because Gen Z knows nothing other than political turmoil and is disenchanted with the failed promises of the technocratic age. It is not hard to see how the young, new Right in both Europe and America might be drawn to monarchy, not because they personally crave domination or power, but because they crave meaning, beset by anxiety growing up in the digital age. There is a distinct clarity that comes from ordering one’s life around God, and it’s worth considering this as a primary explanation for the growing number of Catholic conversions in recent years, of which France is a hotspot. 

Properly understood, Christian monarchy is a model for how saintliness is built. Ultimately, it is character that makes one a hero. This is the foil to politics and managerialism that my generation desperately craves, and it’s something that the new Right has finally brought back into the conversation. And it’s about time that we realized this, because no civilization can endure if it forgets what it was built on. 

French writer Charles Péguy saw the modern world’s malaise long before it fully took hold. “We are the last,” he wrote, “almost the ones after the last … the world of those who believe in nothing, not even in atheism. The world of those without a mystique. And who boast of it.” Péguy warned that this precise belief in nothing—this spiritual vacuum, for lack of a better word—would lead to decay. Today, the West is indeed in decay because it has lost the audacity to believe in something: to take risks, to be passionate, to be called for something higher than comfort. 

A call for “Monarchy and God Again” is therefore not about restoring crowns and titles for their own sakes, and it’s certainly not about dictator-style power centralization. It is about re-anchoring civilization in the order that once made Europe great—the same order that baptized France under Clovis, the same that Belloc proclaimed when he said, “The Faith is Europe, and Europe is the Faith.” It is about remembering that our institutions once aimed at sanctity as much as sovereignty.  And realizing that public life once mirrored divine order, at least in its framework. 

Consider if France were to heed Louis de Bourbon’s offer, and what it might mean for its leadership in response to the civilizational crisis. Across the West, the winds are changing. As has happened consistently since the dawn of Christianity, when pagans fail to inspire, the soul of man turns once more toward God, truth, and beauty. And so, in the dusk of a waning West, the phrase that once stirred the U.S. may yet take on new meaning for the eldest daughter of the church: MAGA, but instead, it’s Monarchy and God Again.