Has anyone else been chuckling upon hearing the words ‘Charles III, king of Australia’? In my household, the movie Anchorman is a sacred text, and its buffoonish 1970s news anchor protagonist Ron Burgundy is our holy fool. So devoted is our fandom that we own the Anchorman out-takes DVD. In one scene that was cut, the ambitious and glamorous television journalist Veronica Corningstone confides to Burgundy that she dreams of being the first female network news anchor. Incredulous at the idea that a woman could helm the network news, Burgundy declares mockingly to her: ‘And I want to be the king of Australia.’ The joke lands not only because Burgundy is a moustached American and such crass swagger precludes noble dignity, but because the very idea of a king of Australia seems preposterous in the twenty-first century. And that is why my family are in stitches: it has come to pass; there is a king of Australia; underlined by twenty-one gun salutes in Canberra and free public transport in Sydney so that we can witness the proclamation of Charles’s ascension on the steps of the State Parliament House.