The good king will have a character symbiotic with his rank, the very reflexes of his intelligence will govern a disposition to cultivate the unitary in his realm, quell the divisive when he is in exchange with his subjects. And when these reflexes are awry in his nature it is immediately apparent because his behaviour is inalienable from its civil effect. This is as true for Elizabeth II as it is for Shakespeare’s Plantagenets. Richard II begins when the young king challenges his uncle, John of Gaunt, to bring forth his son, Bolingbroke, to make good a charge of treachery…