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It was a wintry and ominous November Tuesday. A crowd of 50 or 60 republicans waited outside Westminster for the state opening of parliament. “Not my king”, read their big, yellow banners. Even if you didn’t care about the existence of the monarchy one way or another, there was something ineffably sad about the whole fandango. King Charles, pushing 75, was about to perform this duty as king for the first time. He was charged with reading out unhinged oil and gas policies that directly threatened the only thing he has ever publicly cared about – the environment. Figurehead of the country, or the puppet of a hooligan regime?

那是一个寒冷而不祥的11月星期二。大约50或60名共和党人在威斯敏斯特外等待国会的开幕。他们的大大的黄色横幅上写着“不是我的国王”。即使你对君主制的存在无所谓，这整个闹剧都让人感到难以言喻的悲哀。已经快75岁的查尔斯国王，即将首次执行国王的职责。他被委托朗读出一些不切实际的石油和天然气政策，直接威胁到他一直以来唯一公开关心的事情——环境。是国家的象征，还是流氓政权的傀儡？

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Maybe, at the moment, those two things are the same. Only one of the protesters, a woman in her early 60s who declined to give her name, had zero sympathy: “He should have the guts to speak his mind,” she said, in a meld of anatomical metaphors.

也许，此刻，这两件事是一样的。抗议者中只有一名60岁出头、不愿透露姓名的女性表示丝毫同情:“他应该有勇气说出自己的想法，”她用一种混合了解剖学隐喻的语气说。

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The protesters were cheerful: theirs was the only visual impact in a Parliament Square otherwise shorn of activity. The police had put up barriers to make way for the impending cavalcade. In trying to contain the dissenting voices in a way that respected democracy and health and safety, the police had made the “Not my king” rally look densely populated. When Charles rolled around in his ridiculous gilded carriage, it would have been one of the only things to catch his attention – people whose king he wasn’t.

抗议者们很高兴:他们的游行是议会广场上唯一的视觉冲击。警察设置了路障，为即将到来的车队让路。在试图以尊重民主和健康安全的方式遏制持不同意见的声音时，警方让“不是我的国王”集会看起来人口密集。当查尔斯在他那可笑的镀金马车里打滚时，吸引他注意的只有一件事——那些不尊他为国王的人。

4You could say that Republic, the organisation that brought these protesters together, had shot the opening scenes of the monarchy’s disaster movie, the bit where the smouldering cigarette is dropped in the parched forest and no one notices. Graham Smith, who has run Republic for 20 years, is a softly spoken, unexcitable man. When we meet, he walks me through the numbers. There was a membership surge in 2011, when the Prince and Princess of Wales got married, and another two years later, during the queen’s diamond jubilee. “These big events are really helpful to us,” he says. “We get a lot of exposure.”你可以说，将这些抗议者聚集在一起的“共和”组织拍摄了君主制灾难电影的开场镜头，那个场景就像是一支燃烧的香烟掉落在干枯的森林里，而没有人注意到。格雷厄姆·史密斯(Graham Smith)已经领导“共和”组织20年，是一位温和而沉稳的人。我们见面时，他为我解读了一些数字。2011年，威尔士亲王和亲王妃结婚时，“共和”组织成员数量激增，两年后，在女王的钻石周年庆典期间再次激增。“这些重大事件对我们非常有帮助，”他说。“我们获得了很多曝光。” 5There was a deliberate change of tack to make more noise during royal celebrations: “That plays into the idea that the whole country is celebrating. We decided to keep on campaigning all the way through the big events. Even over the birth of Prince George, we did a Born Equal campaign.” During the 10s, membership grew by about half, to 2,000 people. The number of registered supporters also started growing in 2018. (Members pay dues, while registered supporters just get emails. Many supporters donate, too, though, so there is little practical difference.)为了在王室庆祝活动中制造更多的噪音，他们故意改变了策略:“这让人觉得整个国家都在庆祝。我们决定在重大活动期间继续进行竞选活动。甚至在乔治王子出生的时候，我们也做了一个‘生来平等’的活动。”在20世纪50年代，成员人数增长了大约一半，达到2000人。注册支持者的数量也在2018年开始增长。(成员缴纳会费，而注册的支持者只收到电子邮件。不过，许多支持者也会捐款，所以实际上差别不大。) 6Really, though, this story takes place in the past four years. “We’ve now got 140,000 registered supporters – up from 30,000 – and 10,000 members,” says Smith. “Membership has doubled since the coronation. In 2020, our income was £106,000. It was £172,000 the next year; last year it was £286,000. On the death of the queen, we had £70,000 in donations that month. This year, income is hitting £560,000.”然而，实际上，这个故事发生在过去的四年里。“我们现在拥有14万名注册支持者——相比于3万，人数增长了1.1倍——以及1万名成员，”史密斯表示。“自加冕以来，成员人数翻了一番。在2020年，我们的收入是10.6万英镑，到了下一年增至17.2万英镑；去年则达到了28.6万英镑。在女王去世的那个月，我们收到了7万英镑的捐款。而今年，我们的收入达到了56万英镑。” 7The case against having a monarchy is simple. As Smith puts it: “Most people in this country believe in democracy, equality, accountability and so on. The royal family stands firmly against those values.” But all that has been true for a very long time; it’s more or less what the Levellers said in 1647. What has happened to galvanise this ambient, abstract disapproval?反对君主制的理由很简单，正如史密斯所言：“这个国家的大多数人相信民主、平等、问责等等。王室坚决反对这些价值观。”但这一切价值观在很长一段时间内都是事实；基本上就是1647年平等派所说的。那么，是什么导致了这种弥漫的、抽象的反对情绪？ 8All the protesters I spoke to at the state opening of parliament had joined Republic in the past two years – more than half since the Queen died last September. There was a sense among them that her death should have represented a break in the clouds, a moment of clarity in which to examine the institution and see how it might change for the better, even if that didn’t necessarily mean the family “tiptoed away and said sorry, so we could all stop genuflecting”, as Peter McLoughlin, 69, put it. That opportunity was emphatically passed up by King Charles, who has given no indication that he is a wind of change.在议会开幕式上我与之交谈的所有抗议者在过去两年中加入了“共和”组织，其中半数以上是在去年九月女王去世后加入的。他们中间有一种共鸣，认为女王的去世本应象征着乌云的散去，是审视这个体制的清晰时刻，看看它如何能够变得更好，即使这未必意味着王室成员“悄悄离去并道歉，这样我们就可以停止卑躬屈膝”，正如69岁的彼得·麦克劳克林所说。然而，查尔斯国王明显错失了这个机会，没有给出任何迹象表明他是变革的先锋。 9“I was a realist,” said Brian Woolneough, 57. “While the queen was alive, it was much harder to convince people that getting rid of her was a good idea.” Even among people who were lukewarm about the royals, she was seen to embody the spirit of public service and the connection to the past – its greatest hits – by which the institution justifies itself. King Charles is seen as a character more likely to please himself, whether in his personal life or his public stance.“我是一个现实主义者，”57岁的布莱恩·伍尔诺说。“女王在世时，要让人们相信除掉她是个好主意要困难得多。”即使在那些对王室不温不火的人中，她也被视为体现了公共服务精神，以及与过去的联系——这是王室最伟大的成就——这是该机构为自己辩护的理由。查尔斯国王被认为是一个更喜欢取悦自己的人，无论是在他的个人生活还是在他的公共立场上。 10The death of the queen encouraged people to follow the money, which the Guardian has been doing since its Cost of the crown investigation began on the eve of the coronation. It isn’t just their wills that have been sealed from public scrutiny for more than a century; nothing is transparent. Under a custom that dates to the medieval period, the king claims the assets of anyone who dies intestate in the duchies of Cornwall or Lancaster. The royals have long claimed that they give the proceeds to charity, after deducting costs, but much of the money has in fact been used to renovate the king’s own properties.女王的去世促使人们关注金钱问题，《卫报》自加冕前夕进行的“王室开销调查”一直在追踪此事。不仅仅是他们的遗嘱已经被封存在公众监督之外超过一个世纪，整个事务都缺乏透明度。根据可以追溯到中世纪的惯例，国王宣称对于在康沃尔公国或兰开斯特公国无遗嘱死亡的人的财产拥有权利。王室一直宣称他们会在扣除开支后将款项捐赠给慈善机构，但实际上，其中很大一部分资金被用于翻新国王自己的房产。