WEEKLY ANALYSIS: Two Kings' Speeches 2023
Charles III delivered a short Christmas message about Christmas values. Felipe VI gave a 1,500 word political lecture with a Christmas tree in the background.
In 2022, religion was the most obvious thing to note in the two monarchs’ festive speeches: it was glaringly present in King Charles’s message and glaringly absent in King Felipe’s, and the Spaniard droned on for more than twice as long as the Englishman did. In 2023, neither Royal household or media team appears to have changed strategy much. This Christmas Eve, the Spanish monarch lectured Spaniards on the Constitution for a tedious 12.5 minutes in a mammoth 1,467 political monologue, while the British monarch, on Christmas Day, kept it much shorter: only 677 words in six out of a nine-and-a-half-minute video—filled in with three minutes of children singing in choirs and churches and images of volunteer activities.
A quick textual analysis shows the most frequent concepts in King Charles’s speech were ideas like “all”, “we”, “our”, “others”, “people”, “world”, "the christmas story” or “care for”; he mixed “family”, “friends”, “community”, “service”, “sharing”, “compassion”, “caring” and “volunteering” for each other, the importance and value to all of personal service and of going “the extra mile” for strangers suffering hard times as an obvious part of the Christmas story with Jesus, Joseph, Mary, the manger and “love thy neighbour”, before turning it into caring for “divine creation” as a whole in an environmental twist: “We care for the Earth for the sake of our children’s children”.
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