Personality, Character, and The King’s Speech

The entertaining new movie The King’s Speech raises a worthwhile question, through the story of a prince struggling to overcome a stutter.

Which do we spend more time focusing on -- our personalities or our character?

To define the terms:  personality is the whole bundle of individual attributes that make each of us unique. These attributes aren’t intrinsically good or bad. Is it better to be an introvert or an extrovert? Sensitive or thick-skinned? American or Mongolian? Short or tall? The questions are nonsensical.

Character, on the other hand, reflects moral distinctions:  selflessness is better than selfishness. Courage is better than cowardice. Faithfulness is better than fickleness. Of course, we don’t always act like we know these things to be true, but deep down, we do.

Needless to say, it’s a good thing we all have unique personalities, but it’s not so great that we impute moral superiority based on these attributes rather than on character. (Though it is understandable:  much of our personality is apparent to all, while our character remains largely hidden.)

Of course, some personality traits are overpraised while others are overlooked.  But the truth is that they’re simply different. (As we are quick to recognize when we’re on the short end of someone else’s preference.) Unfortunately, personality can cloud our judgment on character – in others, and in ourselves.

The King’s Speech depicts two brothers. David, the elder, has the sort of personality that garners plaudits in his world -- and in ours. He’s exciting:  he makes his arrival at one of the royal castles in a small plane he pilots. He throws the best parties.

Handsome and articulate, David’s personality is perfect for the new media age -- still in its infancy in 1936. The father of the two brothers, the aging King George V, complains of having to read his speeches over the infernal wireless, of becoming a media personality – the area in which his very modern eldest son would excel.

Bertie, on the other hand, can’t measure up to his elder brother in the personality department. The life of the party? No, nearly the death of it. He’s introverted, awkward, formal.  And of course, his inability to communicate without stuttering has shaped the rest of his personality. The film movingly shows how harsh judgment is spoken upon him not only by others, but by Bertie himself. A killjoy on the throne is the last thing Britain wants, so all agree it’s a good thing he’ll never be King. (Attentive movie-goers might’ve gotten a tiny clue from the film’s title that the bloke everyone keeps saying will never be King, eventually just might be. I’ll stop there, I’ve said too much.)

As it happens, the difference in personality is accompanied by a difference in character. Elder brother David’s accountability is to his own desires -- for excitement, passion, affection. After his father’s death, his duties as King come a distant second to his Svengali-like relationship with a twice-divorced American woman.

To David, the problem is the world’s unwillingness to cater to him. When he abdicates the throne after less than a year for ‘the woman I love’ (a declaration that might under other circumstances seem heroic), he is revealed to have a curdled, selfish character.

For the stuttering younger brother Bertie, however, life is about faithfulness and duty. He worries about the ordinary people of his empire, and wishes he could escape his regal isolation -- and speech impediment -- and come to know them. He tenderly loves his wife and daughters, and is kind and considerate to the palace staff.

All of this character would have remained hidden if not for his elder brother’s abdication, which thrusts Bertie into an unwanted role as King George VI. Fortunately, he has been meeting with unconventional speech therapist Lionel Logue to develop the ability to speak without stuttering. This work enables him to perform and gain acceptance as King, and allows his previously hidden character to shine through.

What makes it all serious, as the movie artfully brings to life, are the times. Bertie’s reign as George VI is shadowed by the rising Nazi menace. Watching a newsreel of Hitler, his daughter Elizabeth (today's Queen) asks what he’s saying. Her father replies, “I don’t know, but he seems to be saying it very well.”

As the King rises to the challenge of speaking in public, by the time the war comes, his subjects have begun to see and respect his character. The film ends at the war’s beginning, but we know from history that George VI was exactly the King Britain needed during World War II. His stoic, ‘stiff-upper-lip’ courage helped to sustain the people in standing up to evil during the darkest nights of the Blitz.

As today’s audience, of course, we know this test is coming. But the people of 1930s England didn’t (well, other than Churchill). As his life unfolded, it was likely that Bertie’s good character would never be important to, or even known by, people outside his tiny royal circle.

And that’s how it is for the rest of us, even if we’re not quite royalty.  We modern Americans are highly aware of our personalities and what the world thinks of them.  Consequently, we work on them – often in appropriate ways, as Bertie did by working on his speech difficulties with Lionel. But our character develops in us quietly, and we never can quite predict how privately or publicly we’ll be tested.

Yet we can be sure that the tests will come. Even if the world doesn’t hang on our every word.