When a senior career ends abruptly, the rupture is rarely only professional. What falls away is also a structure of meaning that has long held identity in place.
At that moment, the core question is who speaks when the corporate voice falls silent.
This is the time for recursive reflection, for separating the role once worn from the presence one now wishes to inhabit. Pauses in visibility, retreats, or the refusal to rush into self-packaging are acts of regained agency.
Tradition thrives on continuity, yet every dynasty needs its fracture to remember what binds it. The Court of St James’s, centre stage again this week, offers more than gossip or protocol: it is a living diagram of rupture and repair.
Between hierarchy and affection, ceremony and survival, we read in its gestures a study of how power restores its symbolic field after the crown has cracked.
