ORIGINAL BLOG POST PUBLISHED IN FINNISH ON JULY 19, 2023

READING TIME: 10 MINUTES

I just came across an interesting article from October 2022 by Brendan Simms, Professor of the History of European International Relations at the University of Cambridge and Director of the Geopolitics Centre. The title reads: Charles III – why not make him King-Emperor of Europe? The subtitle adds: “Europe has problems and Britain is adrift from Europe. Here’s an idea, a historic experiment. It’s the Stars Wars solution. Crown Charles III as Charles VIII, Emperor of Europe.” The article is not satire. Simms proposes such an arrangement in all seriousness. I quote a few passages from the end of his writing:

All this raises the question of what role monarchy could play in the uniting of Europe. The Continent, or most of it, has embarked on a common political and economic project, but it lacks common rituals. There is the Eurovision Song contest, of course, and the European Football Championship, but these can divide more than unite. The same is true for the joint political institutions in Brussels, whose standing is at a very low ebb. A European head of state, by contrast, might provide a rallying point for the whole Continent, including the United Kingdom and other non-EU countries.

Here there are three possible models. The first, a purely Republican one, an elected president of Europe, would create severe difficulties. There are many monarchies in the European Union: in Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Luxembourg, and Spain; some of these lie within the Eurozone, the area most likely to form a fiscal and political union, that is a United States of Europe. Were the European Union to acquire a presidential head of state, one would be left with the anomaly of placing him or her over long-established royal houses. But simply abolishing these monarchies in the interest of tidiness or progress would be deeply unpopular and might endanger societal cohesion.

There are two other possible — monarchic — solutions. The first, which one might call ‘Holy Roman,’ would revive the tradition of the Holy Roman Empire, which was presided over by an emperor elected by the reigning kings, princes, and the most senior ecclesiastical figures. It was, in other words, a rotating headship — though effectively hereditary through the House of Habsburg from the mid-fifteenth century — based on consent rather than the divine right of a particular family. One would probably not get away with making cardinals electors today, but in most other respects the model could be applied by electing the monarch from the existing reigning houses and heads of state. There would still be problems, however. An electorate made up of hereditary monarchs and elected presidents would be neither one thing nor another. Some of the disestablished dynasties, such as the Habsburgs, the Bavarian Wittelsbachs, and perhaps even the Hohenzollerns might feel unjustly excluded. Moreover, since Britain has left the European Union and is unlikely to subordinate its monarchy to any European head of state, there would be a danger of widening the gap between London and ‘Brussels.’

For this reason, I prefer the Star Wars option which is to create a hereditary European emperor or empress, who would serve as head of state not only for whatever single Eurozone state emerges but also for the rest of the EU, and indeed the entire democratic part of the Continent. In the long term, this would avoid endless squabbles and imperial elections of the kind that destabilised the Holy Roman Empire for hundreds of years. In the short term, though, one would have to settle the issue of what dynasty to choose. One might select a particularly distinguished line of European statesmen and women, but these are in short supply and likely to be contentious (House of Macron? House of von der Leyen?). Alternatively, one could have a once-off election of a dynasty, but that would also be divisive and in many ways, weird.

The most logical, natural and organic way around this problem would be simply to choose the House of Windsor, which already commands the necessary international cachet. The emperor or empress of Europe would then rank for representative purposes above the existing European royal houses and — as the monarch already does within the Commonwealth — over the elected heads of government. There would be no reason why the elected heads of state — such as in Ireland — should not be retained, but they might also (being now an unnecessary luxury in a United States of Europe) safely be abolished.

There remains only two more issues to be addressed. First, should the new European imperial house be the main line or a secundogeniture of the House of Windsor? If the former, then King Charles would become emperor. Secondly, should the imperial title be conceived of as an entirely new office, or perhaps — as a nod to indigenous European traditions — should be carried in a chain of succession from the old Holy Roman Empire, which ended in 1806? If the former, Charles would become Charles III and I; if the latter, he would become Charles III and VIII (the last Holy Roman Emperor to bear his name was Charles VII, who died in 1745). Alternatively, if one accepts the (unimpeachable) historical argument that the Holy Roman Emperor took precedence, he would be Charles VIII and III. We would once again have a king-emperor.

No one doubts that Charles would do a good job and is in high standing across much of mainland Europe. He is particularly popular in Germany, for example, having deeply impressed them with a speech to the Bundestag in 2020. As the son of Prince Philip, the king is in fact much more German than his late mother. That said, Charles will have a lot on his plate here, and some may think that it makes more sense to split the Windsor line to give each monarch a more manageable task. There is precedent because a previous Emperor Charles — Charles V — took a step back in 1555 and split the unwieldy Habsburg lands into a Spanish and an Austrian line. 

A successful European monarchy would help to provide the EU with the common rituals it so badly lacks. The king will be very busy on this side of the Channel, but we might lend him for a few additional iconic dates in the new European political calendar, say the Easter speech, the swearing in ceremony for the Union army, and the opening of the European Senate. Admittedly, either solution may be a lot for republicans to swallow, but if it helped to bring Europeans closer together, and prevented Britain and ‘the Continent’ from drifting further apart, might the price not be worth paying?

If Brendan Simms’ suggestion is going to be implemeted, it will show again that I have been right in my eschatological studies concerning the identity of the Antichrist. This historical and future connection of Charles to Charlemagne and the rulers of the medieval Holy Roman Empire was one of the common threads of a 700-page online book I wrote between 2012-14. Its title Muhammad, Charlemagne and the Antichrist was a reference to the fact that, according to royal genealogists, Charles is directly descended from both the Islamic prophet Muhammad and Emperor Charlemagne, who was crowned Emperor of Rome (thus reviving the office of Roman Emperor in Western Europe) by Pope Leo III on Christmas Day 800 AD.

Charlemagne (or Charles the Great) is therefore known as the “Father of Europe”. His successors in the Holy Roman Empire also held the title of Emperor of Rome for almost a millennium, until Napoleon Bonaparte dissolved the Empire in 1806. At the end of my book I dove into deeper eschatological dimensions where I tried to show how Daniel’s visions linked the future Antichrist to being the successor to both Muhammad and Charlemagne. Thus, I demonstrated how it was possible to find in Daniel’s visions, for example, the rise and fall of the Ottoman Empire of Turkey as well as the rise and fall of the Western Papacy (as all the 1500s Reformation scholars also taught).

Apart from the teachings of the reformers, almost all evangelical eschatology teachers of the 20th century have understood the Antichrist to be the ruler who would emerge as the head of the “United States of Europe” or the European Union. This is what Hal Lindsey and many other influential dispensationalist prophecy teachers have taught. The eschatological views of many of these 20th century teachers were influenced perhaps mostly by the Scottish policeman Sir Robert Anderson’s 1894 book The Coming Prince. Since Europe’s monarchist heads of state no longer had the same visible influence during the second half of the 20th century as they had in earlier centuries (although they did secretly influence politics and world events through organisations such as the Bilderberg Group, which was founded by Holland’s royal family and which they still lead today), many Christian prophecy scholars began to think that the Antichrist would be some kind of president or elected politician from within Europe.

In such a scenario, however, we should ignore the entire monarchist history of Europe. For me, studying history has been interesting, partly because it gives us a clearer perspective to the future as well. We cannot, for example, think of a resurgent Roman Empire and its future emperor (as the Antichrist is seen, for example, in the light of Daniel 7 and 9) without considering European history, in which we see repeated attempts to revive the ancient Roman Empire, both in the East and in the West. In the West, this was attempted by the Roman popes and the German kings for several centuries. In the East, it was attempted by the sultans of the Ottoman Empire and by the Orthodox Christian emperors of Russia, who called Moscow ‘the third Rome’. In his book The Coming Prince, Anderson wrote, on page 157, concerning the coming Antichrist:

The prince who shall come [in Daniel 9:27] is the last head of the Roman power, the person concerning whom Daniel had received so much previous instruction.” Such is the pre-eminence of this great leader that he is bracketed with our Lord Himself in this prophecy, and the people of the Roman empire are described as being his people.

Anderson correctly predicted in this book that the state of Israel would be reborn, Germany would be divided into four parts (as happened after World War II), and Europe would be united under the leadership of this last Roman emperor. Anderson does not mention that this last Roman emperor would be named Charles. But Anderson could have concluded this in his own lifetime, given that Charlemagne and some of the most important rulers of the Holy Roman Empire – such as Charles V, who ruled almost all of continental Europe at the height of the Reformation Era – bore this same name. Even in the Middle Ages, there were several prophecies about this last Roman emperor, identifying him as a descendant of Charlemagne and his namesake.

While one might perhaps think that someone like Emmanuel Macron would be a much better candidate to lead the United States of Europe, a European president elected from among party politicians or presidents of republics like Finland would not have the same historical ties to Europe’s medieval past and the ancient Roman Empire. A republican president of the EU would not meet the full prophetic criterion of the last Roman emperor. For this reason too, the Antichrist must emerge from among the royal dynasties of Europe.

My previous writings on the subject:

• Holy Roman Emperors Charlemagne and Charles V. Why Knowing These Historical Figures Is Essential to Identifying the Antichrist (2015)
• European leaders gather in Rome for the 60th anniversary of the European Union to elevate the Pope as the moral leader of the EU Just days before Pope Francis meets Prince Charles at the Vatican. Will the Pope Soon Crown the “New Charlemagne”, Rome’s Last Emperor, as Ruler of a United Europe Led by Germany? (2017)
• Charles III travels to Charlemagne’s continental Europe next month. Will Charles Soon Also Become ‘King of the EU’? And will it be followed by a “Brexit” for the other three EU countries? (2022)

PS. By the way, I had published that last article from 2022 only about a week before Brendan Simms published his article. Either the Cambridge history professor is reading my blog or a Bible prophecy is coming true before our eyes.