A feature of living at the end of an era is that some events in the present already feel like future artefacts - things you expect to see in a school history book, or a documentary many years from now. Here is King Charles's 2026 state visit to the United States, right between the chapters on the war on Iran and the global energy crisis. Here is an image of the entire constellation of Trumpland, dining on spring-herbed ravioli and dover sole. Look at this interesting antiquity of the time: the gold plates, the universal sign of a regime at the peak of excess. And there you see the foreign dignitary, making a speech that at the time felt like bold truth-telling, but as we all now know was little more than naive theatre while the whole world teetered on the precipice.

The cast of characters behind the era-ending crisis were present, helpfully concentrated in one place to illustrate to those in the future how it came to this, and by whose hands. The money men, the Lord Haw-Haws, the nepo babies, the quislings. Seven guests from Fox News, seven members of the Trump family, Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook and - a little treat for golf-loving Trump - the Masters champion, Rory McIlroy, who the president made stand up to show off, breaking away from his state address to say: "Congratulations! Very proud of you." If you wanted a snapshot of the forces that underpin the Trump administration, indifferent to its colossal violations, here it was - billionaire-funded corporate media, big tech, private equity and stars just happy to be so close to so much power.

One of the most jarring things about crisis is how much carries on as normal, how American power retains such a massive gravitational pull that even as Trump engages in all manner of unhinged behaviour or threatens to wipe out an entire civilisation, the cosy protocols of state respect and friendliness continue.

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And what well-played "subtle rebuttals" from the king. To those in the UK who constantly worry that the special relationship is withering, fret not, because in one regard, the US will still take your calls. A wealthy old monarchy, the most famous in the world, can still confer some credibility on a country long departed from its rule. One with a political establishment that prided itself on becoming a democratic behemoth in only 250 years, undergirded by a constitution and the separation of powers - yet one that is now a place in which the president is locked in battle with the judiciary and launches wars over the legislature's head. One previously swaddled in the rhetoric of a shining city on a hill and the norms of polite elite convention, but which is now steeped in indignity, suspicion of insider trading, hooliganism and blood.

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