Louis XV fell ill with smallpox at the end of April 1774. His deathbed attracted crowds to Versailles and was followed through public announcements and rituals in Paris. This chapter compares the king's conduct on two previous occasions when he had thought he would die, at Metz in 1744 and after the Damiens attack in 1757, and concludes that Louis XV – not ill-defined factions – controlled the conduct of his deathbed in 1774.

The coronation of Louis XVI, which took place on 11 June 1775, is described in detail in this chapter where it is considered as an amalgam of several smaller rituals each with its own provenance and meaning. Apparently transgressive gestures are granted positive meaning. The role of the queen in the coronation is considered, as is the meaning of tales of the king walking among the people after the ceremony.

The first of three chapters dealing with the coronation of Louis XVI, this chapter considers the preparations required at Versailles and in Reims, and the currents at work in imagining the monarch at this juncture in French history. Sentimentalism and ideas of virtue are central themes. Louis XVI's ceremonial entry into Reims prompted grand decorations offering a commentary on contemporary political events, crowned by an arch of bienfaisance.

The image of Louis XIV and his court overshadow our understanding of eighteenth-century France. Rethinking the court society is a vital part of revising our interpretations of absolutist government in this period: a new understanding of royal ceremony is one part of this. This chapter challenges the neo-ceremonialist understanding of French royal ritual in the light of French scholarship questioning the relevance of the 'two bodies' model to the French monarchy and highlighting Marc Bloch's idea of 'marvellous royalty'. The relationship between ceremony and power lies at the heart of these questions.

This concluding chapter revisits the tour guides discussed in Chapter 4 and explores how they were instructed by representatives of the state to include the term xiangchou into their scripts. The repetition of xiangchou within the old heritage site illustrates the salience of the term, its cultural resonance, as well as its political influence. However, the tour guides’ personal interpretations of xiangchou also demonstrates the way the state’s appropriation of the term had created new forms of alienation: some Heyang locals feel homesick for a hometown they once knew and seems no longer to be. A divide has emerged between the xiangchou that drew urban tourists to Heyang, the xiangchou that locals hold for the Heyang of their childhood, the xiangchou expressed as a form of concern for the future of their hometown, and the xiangchou that the state invoked to implement its policy objectives upon the village.

Through a case study of the T’aegǔkki rallies beginning in late 2016, Chapter 6 examines why and how senior citizens took to the streets in large numbers to protest the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye and oppose the democratic and peaceful candlelight demonstrations. Analyzing the widespread emotions and narratives expressed by these older protesters, I argue that right-wing elites and intellectuals marshaled citizens by evoking historical experiences that aroused intense fear and outrage among older generations. In this chapter, I describe why the protests resonated so deeply with elderly citizens by focusing on their lived experiences during the Korean War and postwar industrialization and how the rise of new digital media inspired them to take to the streets on a large scale. Through grassroots organizing and by harnessing feelings of victimhood and fear among ordinary citizens, rightists cultivated a fertile ground for conservative mobilization.