the.com/pageantry
Ceremony's way of making power look too expensive to question.
means Elaborate, showy ceremony and display — costumes, processions, pomp — staged to mark an occasion or impress an audience.
from Traces back to 'pageant,' which in medieval times meant the movable stage or wagon used in religious cycle plays — the platform wheeled through town so crowds could watch biblical scenes performed. The word likely comes from Medieval Latin 'pagina,' meaning a page or plank (also the root of our 'page'), referring to that wooden stage itself. Over time 'pageant' drifted from the physical platform to the whole spectacle performed on it, and eventually to any grand, costumed public show — with '-ry' tacked on to name the general practice of putting on such displays.
- origin
- from pageant, medieval stage wagons for religious plays
- function
- signals legitimacy without anyone arguing policy
- paradox
- the more symbolic the robes, the realer the authority feels
- peak form
- coronations, where a hat legally transfers a nation