Imagine spending these last 40 years in Germany. You see a relatively homogenous nation become one in which a quarter of the population have a migrant background. It absorbs, at short notice, a much poorer country of 16mn people called the German Democratic Republic. It grows out of pacifism to wield lethal force in Kosovo and beyond. Through all this social change, which should rock the political system, you enjoy a scarcely believable level of civic stability. Olaf Scholz is just the fourth chancellor you have known since October 1982.

All praise, then, to the Hohenzollerns. Only a monarchy, I am led to understand, could have presided over such orderly evolution.

Forgive the snark. It is just that, amid Britain’s real and natural grief, some bold claims have been made of late about the uses of tradition. One is that only by keeping some key things the same can a society change: continuity enables its opposite. The implication is that, without the monarchy, the UK would never have become a polyethnic and irreligious nation, at least not so peacefully. Who believes this? And can they not think of republics that have managed the same feat? In a generation or two, Ireland swapped the pervasive church for legal abortion, agriculture for professional services, scant diversity for quite a bit, little wealth for rather a lot.