Earlier this week in Los Angeles – home to the largest Iranian community in the United States – thousands gathered in solidarity with protests unfolding in their homeland. Amid the sea of national flags and chants against the Islamic Republic, some demonstrators carried Lion and Sun banners and invoked a return to the pre-1979 monarchy, signalling a strand of sentiment that looks back to Iran’s last Shah. The rally took a darker turn when a truck drove into the crowd, underscoring the depth of division within the diaspora debate over Iran’s future.

For some Iranians, particularly in the diaspora, the monarchy represents a lost period of national pride and state capacity

Similar scenes have appeared elsewhere. In Kathmandu, thousands of supporters of Nepal’s former royal family have repeatedly taken to the streets, chanting slogans and calling for the restoration of the monarchy abolished in 2008. Amid political instability and ahead of elections, demonstrators have gathered around statues of past kings chanting ‘We love our king’ and ‘Bring back the king.’ The rallies show how demands for monarchical restoration have moved from private nostalgia into public mobilisation.

For much of the past century, politics appeared to have settled the question of kingship. Monarchy was treated as a spent institution, surviving at most as ceremony or relic. That assumption now looks less secure. Across the world, the language of crowns and kings has returned to public debate – not as costume drama, but as a way of grappling with power, legitimacy, and political order as confidence in republican institutions frays.

Iran is the clearest illustration. As........

© The Spectator