What Happens After the Crown

The crowning lasts about ninety seconds. Everything people call the title is what happens in the eleven months afterwards, and almost none of it looks like the photograph.

The first fortnight is loud

Messages arrive from people who have not spoken to you in a decade. Invitations arrive with no dates attached. Some are generous, some are transactional, and in the first fortnight you cannot always tell which is which. I answered everything slowly, which felt rude and was correct.

A title is a platform, not a personality

The most useful thing I did early was write down what I wanted the year to be about: education, confidence for women who were told to shrink, and Indian textiles. Every invitation now gets measured against those three. If it fits, I make time. If it does not, I say so kindly.

A crown does not tell you who you are. It only makes more people ask.

Appearances are work

An hour on stage is a day out of your week once you count travel, fittings, hair, waiting and the drive home. I underestimated this badly for the first month and it showed in my teaching. Now I cap appearances per month and protect the weeks around examinations.

The scrutiny is real but smaller than it feels

Comments about my body arrived within days. Some were cruel and most were from strangers with no photograph on their profile. What helped was a rule: I read messages once, in daylight, never at night, and I reply only to the ones written by human beings behaving like human beings.

What it actually gave me

Access, mostly. Rooms I would not otherwise have entered, students who now believe a lecturer can also be a woman in a gown, and a much clearer sense of what I want the next ten years to hold. The crown sits in a box. The year is the part I would do again.