ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that royal funerals in the second half of the nineteenth century can often be described as ‘(re)invented traditions’. It identifies the use of funerals in royal theatres of power during the Ancien Regime and assesses the importance for nineteenth-century monarchs to represent their nation in all its glory and prestige. The chapter explores the process of nationalization by analysing how the three deaths and funerals were used by journalists, politicians, architects and royal families to further the notion of a unified nation, and if the efforts were successful. It analyses some funerals as ‘cultural performances’, and looks at the broader responses to the royal deaths in media accounts. The chapter describes the extent to which the royal deaths and funerals became ‘mediatized’. It also explores the organizers consciously staged the royal lying-in-state as a public affair in order to bolster support for the monarchy.
